Today normal life has suddenly become a lot more complicated and perhaps dangerous with the coronavirus threat, or [...]]]>
Today normal life has suddenly become a lot more complicated and perhaps dangerous with the coronavirus threat, or at least that’s how many Americans must feel, as shown by increased numbers of firearms sales in recent days.
Tucker Carlson noticed the trend and surmised that many Americans must not feel safe for so many newbies to be buying guns.
He also observed that State Department continued to resettle refugees from corona-infected nations through this week, showing how old preferences live on.
SPARE AUDIO:
]]>TUCKER CARLSON: Across the country, Americans are literally the lining up outside gun stores ahead of what could be some kind of shutdown.
UNIDENTIFIED LOS ANGELES REPORTER: Toilet paper, hand sanitizer and now gun supplies. Lines weave around gun shops.
UNIDENTIFIED GUN SHOPPER: I’ve been robbed before, you know, who says that the people aren’t going to start robbing for food, and that’s scary.
ANOTHER GUN SHOPPER: When you feel uncertainty about your security, you want to do something about it.
COLORADO REPORTER: Many of them are first-time firearm owners who are learning how to use a weapon to protect themselves and their families.
ARIZONA REPORTER: Coronavirus uncertainty has led to a spike of guns and ammo sales at his store.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They sold upwards of 40 to 50 guns yesterday alone.
ARIZONA REPORTER: That is a big uptick from a typical day.
NEW YORK STATE REPORTER: Owner Andrew Chernoff says sales are soaring as fears of coronavirus continue to climb.
GUN STORE OWNER ANDREW CHERNOFF: We got in a bunch of guns, I’m sure by the end of the day, we will be out of guns again. We are now seeing a lot of first time gun buyers who never would have thought to buy a gun before who are now saying I need to have something to protect myself.
CARLSON: And just to be clear, a lot of these people who have never owned a gun before, if the public believes their leaders would protect them, they wouldn’t be buying guns; but they know their leaders won’t, and so they are, and this infuriates Democrats.
In New York, Nassau County Executive Laura Curran attacked people for trying to protect themselves amid this uncertainty.
LAURA CURRAN, D-NASSAU COUNTY EXECUTIVE: Guns are not going to fight the virus. What will fight the virus is people staying home and isolating themselves and not having birthday parties and weddings and clustering together in big groups.
CARLSON: Arrogant, stupid, totally uneducated, nasty. That’s the face of it right there — Laura Curran.
Tim Schmidt is President of the U.S. Concealed Carry Association. He joins us tonight. Tim, thanks so much for coming on. I mean, it does seem pretty clear that when you trust that the authorities are going to keep you safe, you’re probably not fixated on protecting yourself because you don’t have to be. People know that they need to protect themselves, correct?
TIM SCHMIDT, PRESIDENT, U.S. CONCEALED CARRY ASSOCIATION: Of course, Tucker, and as you’re talking about before, our law enforcement professionals and police departments, they had their hands full before the coronavirus, and so now, it’s only going to be worse.
Now more than ever, people need to understand that they need to be their family’s first line of defense.
CARLSON: Well, of course, and by the way, I thought there was a constitutional right guaranteeing that, and if there was ever a moment to invoke it, it’s now. So how can leaders lead? Air quotes around it, leaders like Laura Curran, the one we just saw right there from Nassau County, New York, how can she — I mean, how can any of them get in the way of your constitutional right to protect yourself?
SCHMIDT: Well, you’re right. They shouldn’t be, and honestly, I applaud all of these brand new people that are buying guns, but Tucker, what I’m about to say is going to become a little bit of a shock to you, especially coming from a guy like me, and that is that that so many — 90 percent of these brand new people buying guns have never owned guns before. They’ve probably never even touched a gun.
And that means they’re untrained. Now, don’t get me wrong, Tucker, I personally think that firearm ownership is a natural born right of free people. But with that, right, comes a tremendous responsibility and that responsibility is to be trained.
And so I will make a request right now if you’re watching this and you just bought a gun for self-defense, get training. Get training as fast as you can, whether it’s in person or even online, it will help you be a better defender, which we all know you’re going to have to be.
CARLSON: I think that’s really wise advice and anyone who has hunted a lot or has had guns, you know, they tend to have real respect for firearms because they’re dangerous tools. Thanks so much for that. Tim, we appreciate you coming on tonight.
SCHMIDT: My pleasure, Tucker.
CARLSON: Well around the world, thanks to this pandemic, countries are rediscovering the value of borders. Canada, believe it or not, has announced is closing itself off from foreigners. Obviously, it’s time we did the same.
And yet remarkably, until this very afternoon, the United States was still resettling refugees in the country, many of them from countries battling coronavirus outbreak. Let’s repeat that. Until this afternoon, our State Department was resettling refugees in your neighborhood from countries with virus outbreaks.
To stop a virus, while millions of Americans can’t go outside, the State Department was still dropping outsiders, foreign nationals into their communities. We’re glad the Trump administration put a stop to that. Thank God, at least for now.
It’s amazing how little political leaders know about the people over whom they preside. Or maybe elites just pretend to be ignoramuses so they can display their power and perhaps stir up some trouble in the process.
Clearly, armed Americans defend their own or someone else’s safety all the time. Monday’s Washington Times had a front page photo of Stephen Willeford who used his firearm to chase off a shooter from a Texas church in 2017.
Here’s Laura Ingraham chatting with an agreeable Virginia sheriff about the event and issue:
]]>LAURA INGRAHAM: Today thousands of law-abiding gun owners rallied at Virginia’s capital to oppose the gun-grabbing policies of Democrats in the state house. The media did their job, and best job, to smear those at the rally as gun toting racists. So we sent Fox’s own Griff Jenkins to Richmond to give you the real story.
CROWD: USA! USA! USA!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: None of us out here want to cause violence at all. We all just want peace. But I would love to have the ability to protect myself, my family, and everyone else around me.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And I heard a lot about violence. There’s really no violence happening out here.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They want to have universal background checks, which we know is a first step toward gun registration, which we don’t need. Target criminals and violations of law-abiding criminals whether it’s weapons or other things, don’t target the law-abiding citizens.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It all starts with the Second Amendment. Once they take that from you than it’s one right after another.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The rest of Virginia if you look at the Second Amendment sanctuary city movement and counties, we don’t want gun control. We’re not going to comply with your gun control.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You would have a better chance of laying in the creek and kissing a copperhead than you would getting the firearms from Virginians.
INGRAHAM: I want to hang out with all those people; they look really fun. Joining me now is someone who was at that rally, Richard Vaughan, sheriff of Grayson County Virginia.
Sheriff, we really appreciate your being with us tonight. I know it wasn’t easy, so thanks so much. What is going to happen in your county if the bills that the Virginia Democrats are pushing go into effect?
SHERIFF RICHARD VAUGHAN: Grayson County is a Second Amendment sanctuary, and if these bills are passed as proposed, I know they can still make some changes on this bill. But if they are passed as proposed, they will not be enforced in Grayson County because they are unconstitutional. We took an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Virginia, and that’s what we’re going to do. We are not going to arrest law-abiding citizens for having guns.
INGRAHAM: I pressed one of the State Democrat gun control advocates who serves now in the statehouse last week; he insisted, sheriff, that guns that are in possession of people now would be grandfathered in, and they wouldn’t be forced to be turned over, you wouldn’t have to turn your guns over. But that is not what I understand. There is a lot of loosey-goosey language in this legislation that would mean you become a felon if you own a particular type of semi-automatic weapon that has a big enough magazine in it, 10, more than 10, you are in big trouble.
VAUGHAN: Absolutely, Senate Bill 16 that died in the committee last week thankfully, but then there’s also a House bill to the same effect that could gun grab semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15 which is an Armalite rifle. That is nothing but a .22 caliber rifle, it’s not much more than a squirrel gun. So these high-capacity magazines, why are we telling homeowners that they can’t have a high-capacity magazine there to defend themselves in these situations? We hear of cases all the time where we have home intruders coming into residences, and they need a high-capacity magazine to be able to defend themselves. A lot of people that are disabled have guns in the home and have to defend themselves.
INGRAHAM: Sheriff, we sent our Griff Jenkins down there, and he was all through the crowd today. These are people from all parts of the state, they were men, women, ethnically diverse, racially diverse, people who, most of them were carrying their weapons because they were outside the perimeter, but Northam didn’t allow anyone to go on the property near the capital with their firearm. And also, you can see the crowd is much more representative in the overhead shot there.
And then they didn’t allow drones. I didn’t understand that. The FAA said no drones could be flown overhead either, I guess to take pictures? I don’t even understand that. It seems like they are curtailing everybody’s rights going into this rally, almost hoping to tick people off to spark some kind of unrest, but that never happened.
VAUGHAN: Absolutely. It definitely was not a state of emergency. I spent several hours in the crowd in uniform with two of my deputies and some of my constituents. We met some of the best people in the country. We ate breakfast this morning with a gentleman from Houston who drove 19 hours just to be here in Virginia to help us protect our Second Amendment rights. We met people from Florida, Pennsylvania, militia groups, people carrying Armalite rifles, everybody there was armed. And they estimated nearly 60,000 people, yet there wasn’t a single person even arrested.
And the governor made the statement today that law enforcement did a great job of de-escalating the crowd. And I agree, law enforcement did do a great job, but there was no de-escalation needed. Everybody we met there came up to us, shook our hands, and thanked us for being there and standing up for their Second Amendment rights.
INGRAHAM: Sheriff, compare that to the Antifa rallies, what happens at those things, right? You’ve got people with clubs, and cement they’re throwing at people, and trash everywhere, and assaulting people, and the media does a big collective yawn. You guys show up, a huge rally for the Second Amendment, no problems, no trash, no assaults, and you get the sense the media is unhappy that this happened. They are unhappy it didn’t play up to their stereotype.
Sheriff, we are with you all the way. Stay safe out there. Thank you for what you do for the Commonwealth of Virginia, and for the cause of the Second Amendment. Thank you, sir.