I will just say it upfront: I am extremely
cynical of any and all mass shootings—and the one in Las Vegas is no exception.
Soon after the shootings, I posted this on my Facebook page:
Some
preliminary thoughts:
*How
does ONE guy take that many long guns and that much ammunition into a hotel
room without being noticed or raising someone’s suspicion? Those Vegas casino
hotels have cameras everywhere. This is Las Vegas, for heaven’s sake. Every
staff person in these establishments is trained to be alert for suspicious
behavior.
*Witnesses
said that “strange” people were going through the crowd prior to the shooting
telling folks that they were going to die. What’s that all about?
*There
were reports of shots coming out of a lower floor window in the hotel. What’s
that all about? Early reports quoted people saying that there were several
shooters. Then later, it was declared that there was only one shooter. This
seems to happen in every single mass shooting incident.
*The
shooter was found dead from an apparent suicide when police entered his hotel
room. No one else around to tell the story. This seems to be another common
denominator in these mass shooting incidents. All we know is what law
enforcement officials tell us.
*Pro-gun
legislation currently before Congress, including a bill legalizing silencers
and a bill legalizing national concealed carry reciprocity, is now dead. And
pro-gun control zealots are out in force pushing for more gun control. This is
another common denominator.
*According
to the shooter’s brother, the shooter was not a “gun guy” and only owned a
small number of guns. So a man in his early sixties suddenly becomes a “gun
nut” and starts amassing all of these firearms during the couple of years after
moving to Nevada, while he had never done so throughout his entire life
beforehand? Really?
By
the way, the media is acting as if the ownership of 28 (or whatever the latest
number is) firearms is something far out. That might be true in New Jersey or Massachusetts,
but here in Montana it is barely average. Reports say the average home in
Montana has 27 guns in it. Heck, there are more guns in the average pickup
truck here in Montana than in the average home just about anywhere else.
If
this was another government false flag event (I don’t buy the claim that the
shooter was an ISIS convert for one second), I doubt that local police were in
on it. Local police do what they are trained to do, and that means looking at
the crime scene AFTER it takes place. False flag events are perpetrated by
national and even international professionals. They know how to make it look to
local police the way they want it to look. After all, they have been doing this
since the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Could
this have been what police are telling us: one “lone wolf” shooter? Of course.
But forgive me: I am just VERY cynical of EVERY mass shooting—and this one is
no exception.
Either
way, as I said in my message last Sunday, so much of what we see happening
tells me that God is taking His hand of protection off of this country. America
has turned its back on God, and we are paying the price.
The
answer is not gun control; the answer is for America’s pastors to stop play
acting in the pulpit; stop worrying about offending people; stop following
these prosperity preachers; and start being the courageous prophets to the
nation that they should have been all along.
At
any rate, my heart goes out to the victims’ families. We should all remember
them in our prayers.
See
my Facebook page here:
With
a few more days’ worth of information to review and more time to think about
it, I will add the following:
Regarding
my first point, I will concede that it’s possible for one man to perhaps carry
that number of firearms and that much ammunition to his hotel room without
being noticed. Perhaps. But it would take an incredible amount of work and
planning. We are being told he took over twenty rifles and hundreds (maybe
thousands) of rounds of ammunition into his room. The photos I’ve seen so far
do not come close to showing that number of rifles in the room. But, again, I
will concede it’s possible. No doubt law enforcement and the media will
eventually show us a whole bunch of firearms that were supposedly either at the
hotel or in the man’s home.
And
for the life of me, it’s hard to imagine why the shooter would want to take so
many rifles (if he took twenty or so) with him. I can somewhat understand the amount
of ammunition. But why so many rifles? Did he really think he was going to need
that many rifles? Did he think he would be able to keep shooting out that
window forever? Was he thinking most of his rifles would jam, so he would need
that many spares? I have to tell you, the logic of this one escapes me.
My
second point has been confirmed by several witnesses. Some will respond saying
that in a crowd that large it is not uncommon for “weird” people to be roaming
around and talking about dying. I suppose that could be true. However, you
couldn’t prove it by me.
To
be sure, I detest big cities and big crowds and would rather go to the dentist
than be in them. But until seven years ago, I lived in a populous area, and my
nearly one million miles of domestic travel took me to the largest of cities
and to the largest of crowds: professional sporting events, concerts, political
rallies, etc. I’ve been there, done that. And I’ve never had a single person
approach me or anyone around me with an ominous “you’re going to die” augury.
But, again, I will concede that it’s possible.
My
third point seems to be holding true—at least the part about shots coming from
a lower floor than the 32nd floor, where we are told the shooter
was perched. With all of the videos I have seen of the incident, I never saw
muzzle flashes from a floor that high up. But videos have surfaced showing
copious muzzle flashes from floors MUCH lower to the ground. Several witnesses
are heard saying the shots were coming from the fourth floor. This is a
discrepancy that needs much more investigation.
This
particular point is consistent with mass shootings: shots seem to come from
places where the “lone wolf” shooter was NOT located. Granted, in any traumatic
event such as a mass shooting, many people will panic—and people who are
panicked do not think, speak, or act rationally. However, while we see many
panicked people in the various videos, we also see many people who were as calm
and collected as they could be. Many of the calm people were taking video, and
I never saw muzzle flashes from the 32nd floor. Did you? That seems
almost impossible to me. Remember, it was night. Hundreds (maybe thousands) of
bullets flying out of the barrel of a rifle are going to produce a LOT of
muzzle blast.
But
we DO see muzzle blasts coming from around the fourth floor of the Mandalay Bay
Hotel. Look at this video clip from eyewitnesses:
This
video clip is from a taxi cab driver who inadvertently found herself directly
under the gunfire:
Clearly,
we see and hear gunfire coming from around the fourth or fifth floor of the
Mandalay Bay Hotel—NOT the 32nd floor. This seems to be
convincing visual proof that much of the fire came from the lower floor.
My
fourth point is another familiar scenario in mass shootings. At first, it is
thought that several shooters were present; then police say there was only one;
then they say that the one shooter committed suicide before police arrived. In
fact, of the last five largest mass shootings (Las Vegas, Pulse Nightclub in
Orlando, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook Elementary School, and Luby’s Cafeteria in
Killeen, Texas) only the Pulse Nightclub shooter was ostensibly killed by
police. All of the other shooters reportedly committed suicide.
Of
course, if there is only one shooter and that one shooter is dead—especially if
he died before police even arrived—there is no one around to say what happened.
All that is left is for police to try and piece together what they believe
happened. Again, all of this is possible, albeit I have to tell you that things
like this only make me more and more cynical.
My
fifth point is absolutely true. Any major shooting event quickly derails any
and all potential pro-gun legislation pending before Congress, and it brings
out all of the anti-gun extremists from under every rock and crevice.
The
fact is, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
have been sitting on a silencer bill and concealed carry reciprocity bill all
year. If those two men were truly pro-gun, these bills would have already been
passed in both houses of Congress and signed into law by President Trump. Ryan
and McConnell are total phonies on the Second Amendment. And now that the
shootings in Las Vegas have taken place, you can bet your bottom dollar that
these bills will never see the light of day. In fact, as I was writing this
column, I learned that Ryan has already announced that the silencer bill has
been removed from consideration.
Plus,
you folks who think that Donald Trump will never cave on the Second Amendment
need a quick dose of reality. In 2000, Trump said, “I support the ban on
assault weapons.” Couple that with his most recent statement that he will be
“talking about gun control as time goes by.” That could mean virtually
anything, folks. I realize that Trump campaigned as a staunch supporter of the
Second Amendment; but he campaigned in support of a LOT of things that he has
since reneged on. And don’t count on the NRA to not compromise on future gun
control legislation either. Most—if not all—of the gun control laws on the
books today (going as far back as the 1920s) were put there with the support of
the NRA.
My
friends Larry Pratt (Executive Director Emeritus of Gun Owners of America) and
constitutional attorney Bill Olson wrote an article regarding Donald Trump’s
Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch with regard to the Second Amendment. I quote
their article:
On
the other hand, there is reason for pause with Judge Gorsuch’s record.
Judge Gorsuch joined in one opinion, United States v.
Rodriguez, 739 F.3d 481 (11th Cir. 2013), which causes us to have some concern
about his understanding of the relationship between the government and an armed
citizenry. To be fair, Judge Gorsuch did not write the Rodriguez opinion
– his colleague, Judge Bobby Baldock, was the author. Nevertheless, Judge
Gorsuch joined the opinion. He could have filed a principled dissenting
opinion, or even a concurring opinion agreeing only in the judgment.
See
the article here:
We
need to keep an eye on Donald Trump, and I mean a close eye. He has already
caved on most of his promises; that he would cave on the Second Amendment is
not far-fetched. Not at all.
We
all need to remember this quotation attributed to Franklin D. Roosevelt: “In
politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was
planned that way.”
My
sixth point still greatly troubles me. The alleged shooter’s brother testified
that his brother was NOT a “gun guy.” He said the brother only owned a small
number of firearms. But this 60-year-old man suddenly becomes a “gun nut” after
he moves to Nevada and amasses this large number (to the New York media) of
firearms that law enforcement is telling us he owned.
This
little detail smells VERY rotten. A 60-year-old man doesn’t just suddenly
become something he never was. It just doesn’t happen. He was a millionaire who
was into gambling; expensive cruises; country music; flying airplanes; and
living the good life. But he was NOT a “gun guy.” I’m not a professional
criminal profiler, but even an amateur can smell a rotten egg this obvious.
Federal
police agencies are saying the shooter had a long history of gun purchases and
was indeed a “gun guy.” Is it possible that the brother was truly that ignorant
of his brother’s love of guns? Seems hard for me to believe, but I suppose it’s
possible. But I’m a “gun guy.” Many of my friends are “gun guys.” We love guns,
and we talk guns. I don’t know how a man could be a “gun guy” and keep it
quiet. Could a “car guy” keep it quiet? Could a “sports guy” keep it quiet?
Honestly, that’s hard to believe
I
then said:
If
this was another government false flag event (I don’t buy the claim that the
shooter was an ISIS convert for one second), I doubt that local police were in
on it. Local police do what they are trained to do, and that means looking at
the crime scene AFTER it takes place. False flag events are perpetrated by
national and even international professionals. They know how to make it look to
local police the way they want it to look. After all, they have been doing this
since the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
I
stand by this paragraph. If this was a false flag event, it was perpetrated by
national or even international professionals. Our CIA, the British MI6, and the
Israeli Mossad are experts at creating false flag events that are virtually
undetectable by local police agencies—not that most local police agencies would
even think about looking for such a possibility. They wouldn’t, and they don’t.
Were
the Vegas shootings the work of covert professionals who were doing the bidding
of the dark forces of government? I don’t know; and we will probably never know
for sure. But, truly, the more we look at the video evidence, the more we must
conclude that the fellow on the 32nd floor was NOT a “lone
wolf” shooter. Why is the government telling us that there was only ONE shooter
and ignoring the gunfire coming from the fourth floor? There could only be one
answer to that question: the second shooter on the lower floor was a covert
government operative.
Let
me again say: if there was a second shooter, it was NOT someone from ISIS or
any other religious or political extremist group. This would have to be a
professional killing; a professional government-sanctioned killing. Only
professional government operatives could organize and carry out an operation
this massive and then totally disappear into thin air. No one else would be
capable of such a meticulous and flawless operation. Of course, these
professional killers could make ANYBODY appear guilty. If they wanted to
implicate a Muslim or a Christian or a conservative or anyone else, they could
easily do it. That’s usually what they are all about: destabilizing a country
using massive death and destruction in order to create division and hate that
ultimately leads to national instability, civil unrest, or even civil war.
These monsters do this all of the time in nations around the world. Now, they
are doing it here in America.
Were
all of these mass shootings in America committed by covert professionals
working for the dark forces of government? Again, we will never know. But I
will say this: THEY EASILY COULD HAVE BEEN.
It
would be easy for professionals to commit and get away with any of these mass
shootings. EASY. Local law enforcers will never look for them (or be told NOT
to look); the media will never look for them; and you can bet the politicians
in Washington, D.C., will never look for them. They are invisible. So, yes, it
would be easy for them to get away with these shootings. And, of course, they
always leave behind a dead body to take the rap.
And
I will hasten to add the following:
*At
the time of this writing, there are many people speculating that the weapons
that were used in this attack were fully automatic machine guns—NOT AR-style
semi-automatics with “bump stocks” that mimic a fully automatic.
For
the sake of discussion, listen closely to the audio of the attack. The gunfire
sounds very similar to machine gun fire. Please watch and listen to this video
of two soldiers firing belt-fed M240 machine guns. These weapons closely
resemble the sound we hear on the videos of the Vegas shootings. Please notice
the difficulty these two young strong trained soldiers have in keeping the
weapon loaded and firing it accurately. Of course, the Vegas shooters would
probably have had a platform set up from which to shoot.
Could
a sixty-year-old man with virtually NO military or weapons background be able
to lug up heavy machine guns (plural) and belt ammunition, operate the machine
guns flawlessly, keep them loaded, and be able to stay on target for 10 to 15
minutes ALL BY HIMSELF? This DOES NOT seem probable.
I
spoke with a former Army machine gunner friend of mine about this. He says he
doesn’t think the Las Vegas shooters were using belt-fed machine guns; he says
that to his ear the report of the firearm(s) used in Vegas is different from
that of a belt-fed machine gun. He was an expert machine gunner who qualified
expert with several different types of machine guns, so he knows a lot about
it. He says that if these were belt-fed machine guns being handled by
professionally trained soldiers, there would be hundreds dead, not dozens.
That’s a good point.
Yes,
it is true that if the shooter’s rifles were equipped with “bump stocks,” as
police reports say was the case in the Vegas shootings, the sound would be
identical to what we hear in the videos.
I
can almost guarantee that Republicans will join Democrats in the U.S. Congress
and pass a bill outlawing “bump stocks,” and President Trump will sign the bill
into law. And it won’t take long. As I understand it, several Republican
congressmen and senators are already open to such a bill.
*Every
mass shooting only serves to strengthen the need to preserve and protect the
Second Amendment, not abolish it. Most mass shootings take place in gun-free
zones. As I have said repeatedly, and as the facts consistently prove, gun-free
zones are great places to get SHOT. The bad guys love it when people are not
able to shoot back.
While
Nevada is a gun-friendly State (to Nevada residents and to concealed carry
permit holders from 27 other states), the Vegas shooter or shooters took the
defensive handgun out of the equation by virtue of the position and distance
from which he or they fired into the crowd: 300 to 400 yards distance from an
elevated position. In addition, most casino hotels in Las Vegas refuse to
recognize a person’s right to be armed and will ask people to leave their
establishments if they see them armed. The Mandalay Bay Hotel even went so far
as to require that their security guards NOT be armed. So, while Nevada law is
friendly to bearing arms, the casinos and hotels themselves are in effect
gun-free zones.
*The
modern American media, scholastic, religious, and political establishments have
created a depend-on-government mentality for virtually every part of the
American existence, including for self-protection, safety, and security. Anyone
who believes in the personal right of self-defense is deemed to be a kook or
radical or worse. The American citizenry is constantly bombarded with media and
governmental propaganda that pounds it into our psyche that we are supposed to
wait helplessly for law enforcement personnel to arrive on the scene and come
to our rescue. Of course, by the time police arrive, the damage is done. But
that’s okay. It doesn’t really matter to these Big Government freaks how many
people die; all that matters is that we depend on government. It’s not about
safety and security, my friends; it’s about government CONTROL.
The
first people at any crime scene are almost always ordinary everyday citizens.
And when those citizens are armed and have a true American mindset that, as an
armed citizen, they are part of the citizen militia and are, therefore,
responsible to help defend their fellow citizens, they will almost always have
the first opportunity to confront and remove an attacking miscreant. The same
was doubtless true in Las Vegas.
I’m
reading conflicting reports detailing the timing and sequence of events on the
32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel. We are told that the shooter opened fire
on the crowd at 10:05pm and stopped firing at 10:15pm, which is probably when
he killed himself. While he was firing, an unarmed hotel security guard
discovered the room the shooter was firing from, and when he tried to open the
door, the shooter shot through the door and wounded him in the leg. He then
called the information in, and eight or ten police officers arrived around
10:30pm. Here is where the reported timeline diverges. One report says that
when the police officers arrived, they tried to enter the door, and the shooter
shot at them through the door. No officers were reported hit by that gunfire.
The officers then called for a SWAT team and waited. Another report says the
police officers didn’t try to enter the shooter’s room and, therefore, were not
shot at, but that they went up and down the hallway clearing people from the
floor. But both reports say that the SWAT team arrived at 11:20pm and breached
the door. The shooter was already dead, of course. Both reports are consistent
in saying that from the time the shooter first opened fire, it took about an
hour and fifteen minutes for police to be able to confront the shooter (of
course, he was already dead).
My
point is, the 58 people killed on the street were dead before police were even
able to locate and attempt entry of the hotel room where the shooter was holed
up.
But
there must have been countless numbers of people in the hotel who knew what was
going on in that room long before that first security guard arrived. Had many
of them been armed and recognized their responsibility as a citizen militia,
this story might have ended much differently. Had armed citizens began knocking
down those two doors, the shooter would have been just as distracted—and fearful—as
he was when that security guard (and maybe police) arrived. And who knows, he
may have taken his life even sooner—before so many people were killed on the
street below. (This is, for sake of argument, accepting the official story that
the man on the 32nd floor was the ONLY shooter.) Yes, I realize that some of
those men may have been killed or wounded in their attempt to stop this
atrocity. But what is better: to let dozens of innocent young adults, women,
girls, and boys die on a bloody pavement with no way of fighting back or to use
the Natural means of self-defense that God gave us (including especially the
arms that we, as free men, carry with us) and the opportunity at one’s disposal
to be willing to sacrifice oneself to save others? It’s not just a policeman’s
job to do that; it’s all of our jobs.
However,
Americans are not allowed to think that way anymore. Americans are not allowed
to take responsibility for their own safety and security. But for your
information, this is what the militia part of the Second Amendment is all
about. It is NOT the responsibility of policemen to protect us; it is the
responsibility of the citizen militia (of which we are ALL part—unless we are
disarmed) to protect itself.
Herein
lies another major part of this story: American citizens carrying their own
arms are the militia of the various states and, along with their firearms,
carry the responsibility to defend their fellow citizens. As soon as
big-government toadies convince you 1) that it is NOT your responsibility to be
armed so as to be prepared to defend your fellow townsmen, and 2) that it is
only the government’s responsibility to protect you and your community, you
have ceased being a CITIZEN and have become a SLAVE.
By
removing the concept of a citizen militia from the hearts and minds of the
American people, and by making it harder and harder for the American people to
lawfully exercise their God-given duty to defend themselves and others, our
mainstream establishments (public and private) increasingly force the citizenry
to face killers, rapists, robbers, thugs, etc., unarmed and to sit back like
sheep and wait for the government to come to their assistance—and pray they
will still be alive by then. That’s NOT what it means to be an American. And
that is NOT what the Bible teaches either.
Now
more than ever, it is necessary that people read the book co-authored by my
constitutional attorney son and me entitled “To Keep Or Not To Keep: Why
Christians Should Not Give Up Their Guns.” This book shows that God’s Word (in
both Testaments) strongly teaches the Natural right of self-defense and that
Christians are NEVER instructed to disarm themselves. In fact, we show in this
book that those professing Christians who willingly disarm themselves are
denying the Christian faith.
Order
our book “To Keep Or Not To Keep: Why Christians Should Not Give Up Their
Guns.” here:
The
Mandalay Bay Hotel’s gun-free rules are as culpable in these killings as the
rest of these gun-free zones around the country that have experienced mass
shootings—so are the gun-control media and gun-control politicians.
*For
once I agree with Bill O’Reilly. Bad guys shooting people is the price of
freedom. Liberty is risky business. That’s why our Founding Fathers recognized
our God-given right to shoot back.
Liberty
requires personal responsibility and personal accountability. That’s what
people need to understand: when government takes away our right and
responsibility to protect and defend ourselves, what they are actually doing is
taking away our liberty. My dad used to tell me, “A bird in a cage is safe; but
it’s not free.” Amen!
These
media, corporate, and political elite who don’t want to recognize the right of
the American citizenry to be able to defend itself should move to some place
like China, where the government can put them in the cage of oppression in
order to “protect” them. Oh, that’s right. I forgot: the media, corporate, and
political elite have hired a bunch of people WITH GUNS to do the shooting back
for them—just like the government elite in Communist China.
I
also agree with Ben Franklin: “Those who would give up
essential Liberty for a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor
Safety.” Franklin also said, “Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other
men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.” Hear! Hear!
*The
Second Amendment was not inserted into our Bill of Rights for the purpose of
hunting or target shooting. It was put there for the purpose of the people
being able to defend themselves from criminals AND from oppressive governments.
Over
the past 120 years, more than 160 million people have been murdered by their
own governments shortly AFTER having been disarmed by those same governments.
Disarmament almost always leads to government mass murder. Talk about mass
shootings: NO ONE has killed the masses of people like oppressive governments.
Not even close. And in almost every case, the people had been disarmed and
could not fight back.
Take
the AR-15-type rifles away from the American citizenry, and you are inviting
government oppression and murder. Do you really think Nancy Pelosi, Chuck
Schumer, Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan really care whether you live or die? I
don’t think they do—not for one second. All they care about is promoting and
protecting their own power and prosperity.
What
these shootings demonstrate is that the American people need to STOP listening
to the establishment elite who keep telling us that we must depend on THEM to
protect us and start getting serious about our own responsibility to protect
ourselves. Furthermore, any sheriff or police chief who opposes our liberty and
responsibility to protect ourselves needs to be voted out of office POSTHASTE.
*Finally,
as I said in my message last Sunday (BEFORE the Las Vegas shootings on Sunday
night), what we are witnessing in our country is the price a nation is paying
for turning its back on Almighty God. And the cause of THAT problem is that for
decades America’s pastors and preachers have been far too concerned about
offending the people in their congregations (or the potentates in their
respective denominational hierarchies) and far too desirous about entertaining
people and being liked by everyone and not nearly brave enough about being the
prophets to the nation that they should have been all along.
Find
that message here:
Yes,
I am extremely cynical of any and all mass shootings—and this one is no
exception. And I’m sure the more we learn over the next several weeks and
months will only serve to augment, not allay, my cynicism.
P.S.
Today the debate over firearms rages, and on the heels of national tragedy and
death, schools and other places have become “gun free zones.” In addition, many
in government are attempting to pass laws disarming the American
people—especially after a mass shooting like what happened in Las Vegas. And,
sadly, a host of pastors and churches are telling their congregations that
Christians are obligated to surrender their firearms should civil government
require them to do so. Such teaching is an egregious violation of the Word of
God.
Written
by my attorney son and me, “To Keep or Not To Keep: Why Christians Should Not
Give Up Their Guns” is a CLASSIC defense of the right to keep and bear arms—not
just from a Constitutional perspective—but from a Biblical one.
Order
“To Keep Or Not To Keep: Why Christians Should Not Give Up Their Guns” here:
Reprinted
with permission from Chuck Baldwin.
Chuck Baldwin is a radio
broadcaster, syndicated columnist, and pastor dedicated to preserving the
historic principles upon which America was founded. See his website.
Copyright © 2017 Chuck Baldwin
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