S3 E7 - The Buck Stops Here - Ending Mass Shooting Attacks

Whenever gun violence takes place, the politicians in charge throw up their hands and blame someone else.  They enact new gun laws and the people are satisfied - until it happens again.

It's time for a new approach.  Let's stop letting off the politicians for shedding crocodile tears but doing nothing to stop the crimes.

There are many examples of politicians being held accountable but only for other failures.  Anything and everything is punished - except the failure of letting your constituents be shot.

Commentary on trending issues brought to you with a moderate perspective.

Transcript

In Korea, in 1982, a mass shooter killed 56 people. And the Korean Home Minister resigned. There's not been another shooting since. What America could learn from South Korea about preventing violence, today, on The Tenth Man.

Actually, it was both the Home Minister and the National Police Chief who resigned. The Provincial Police Chief was suspended and four other policemen arrested. Interesting how they hold the government responsible when there's violence in Korea. 

But it makes sense, if you’re going to lose your job when there’s a tragedy, then you – or your replacement - will try to do a better job. 

To tell the truth, there actually were two mass shooting attacks in the years since then, but South Korea is nevertheless a very safe place to be.

How do we do it here? In America when there's a mass shooting on your watch you get to run for higher office. Ladies and gentlemen let me present your next candidate for governor or even president: Quinton Lucas, mayor of Kansas City. One of the most dangerous cities in the country, Kansas City shattered its previous record of homicides in 2023 while violent crime is actually going down in the rest of the country. I'll bet you didn't know that. Yes violent crime has gone down double digits in most of the country. 

But in KC, now that Quentin Lucas has had a famous so-called “mass shooting” in his city the one at the Super bowl parade - it's a sure bet that he'll soon be running on that tragedy like other politicians with similar records of death.

President Biden is backing him up. Rather than point out the Mayor’s poor record of maintaining public safety, Biden demands more gun laws, including bans on high capacity magazines and so-called “assault weapons”, in order to end what he says is an epidemic of gun violence.  Crime goes down while gun sales go up.  There’s no “epidemic” in cities like Detroit where people are able to protect themselves.  Detroit – even with Democrats in charge – had its lowest number of murders since 1966.  Not lowest murder rate – lowest number of murders, but the brother in the D be legally packing. 

And there weren’t any so-called assault weapons or “high capacity” magazines at the KC shooting.   No, Biden is just a member of “glow” –  G L O, the Gun Law Obsessed.  Their answer for the city with the highest violent crime rate in America – Kansas City with 2100 per hundered thousand - is to demand more laws to outlaw things that were not even present at that celebration.  The people arrested were minors – already possessing guns illegally, and this just five days after a woman in Michigan was convicted of manslaughter for allowing a minor to have a gun. 

Obviously that conviction didn’t deter anyone.  Because it isn’t laws that deter crime; it’s law enforcement.  So let’s convict the mayor instead for poor law enforcement and see how that works. If it saves just one life, it’s worth it.

This mayor, Quinton Lucas, he’s real presidential material. He’s taking this event, where just one person died – tragic, but what about the other three hundred people who die each year in Kansas City?  Here’s what he says – the city has inevitable crime in the bad neighborhoods, but this was right out in the bright light where the white people go. We’re paraphrasing, only slightly. 

And the rest of the Democrats what do they do whenever there's a tragedy?  They line up behind a microphone, like the president, like the mayor of Kansas City, they go on the air, and they complain about what is happening if they had nothing to do with it. They're outraged, and they blame it on somebody else. Somebody dies on your watch, and you get up and blame someone else. In Kansas City they say the reason they have so much crime is because the state of Missouri has lax gun laws.  But it isn’t the law that deters crime, it’s law enforcement.  

The fact is that Missouri has the highest homicide rate in the country only because St Louis is the most dangerous city in the country with KC not far behind.  It was the same last year with Louisiana; when New Orleans was the most dangerous city in the country they blamed the laws of the state for the crime in the city. Entire state is not violent.  Just the cities.  The laws are the same throughout the state – but law enforcement is local.

That’s why it’s so offensive when they cry and say how outraged they are when they themselves have blood on their hands. While blaming others they say “nothing has been done” referring to more gun laws, and they say “no more thoughts and prayers”, and they fly the flags at half staff and say “’F’ anybody” who disagrees with them.

It's not just the mayor of Kansas City. It's not just Joe Biden. It's the same all across America. Take Kathy Hochul for example, the, governor of New York. She presided over the tragic shooting at the Tops Supermarket in May of 2022.

She expressed her outrage, placed restrictions on one of the guns the shooter carried, just one, and threw a bunch of money to the people of Buffalo to buy their votes - and called it “good”. That didn't seem to stop the mass shooting in the New York subway on this past February 13th however. Kathy Hochul is the one in charge; maybe it's time to hold her truly accountable.

There are many more governors like this. Let's look at California's Gavin Newsom. 

He had two mass murders in January, 2023, there were 18 people killed and 10 injured just a few days apart. What does Gavin Newsom do? He blamed the Republicans for “not doing more”. Later that same month, on January 31st a police officer was killed by a felon in possession of a firearm. A felon who had been twice caught and allowed to go free by Democrats’ soft on crime attitudes.  Passing another law is not going to stop deaths by government negligence.  We need more law enforcement, not more laws.

And then there's Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan.

Gretchen Whitmer has had multiple, multiple mass attacks. She only acknowledges two. She acknowledges the one at Oxford High School in the fall of 2021 and the one at Michigan State University fifteen months later. And what she does is, eliminate other attacks through the simple expedient of referring only to “school shootings”.

There's really no such thing as a school shooting per se; one of these was a mass attack in a public space and the other was a targeted school attack according to criminologists, but by calling them school shootings; that allows her to ignore her other mass attacks in public spaces like the one in Detroit on August 28th of 2022 or multiple-stabbing attacks like the one in Pontiac which sent four people to the hospital.

Whitmer’s state has one city on the top twenty murder rates list, as well as TWO on the top-twenty violent crime list. How does she react to this?

She seems to boast of her victim status. She’s on the air at every anniversary of two of the three attacks – the ones affecting white people – and while she claims to be sad, she’s beaming for the camera with her cronies as she signs more laws blaming the people, and spreading money around the towns where the tragedy occurs.

Then all of the “Moms Seeking Purpose for their Lives” in groups with the actual names like “Moms Demand Action”, proclaim a “job well done” until the next attack happens.

And all these Moms in their matching T-shirts guarantee that these death governors will be reelected. Those politicians got their new laws, they spent money, naturally they get reelected even though they do nothing of substance to actually  prevent future shootings.  

Actually in Governor Whitmer’s case, she did worse than nothing.  At Oxford High School, multiple policy violations by public servants, were found, leading to the 2021 shooting which killed 4 and injured seven more.  The courts said the government is immune from prosecution so we’ll never know the whole truth about the violations due to that coverup.

But we know the school’s guidance counselors failed under Whitmer, and we know that Michigan has the second worst caseload for counselors under Whitmer – 49th place.  It actually got worse under Whitmer and she knows it – she sent Oxford money to hire more counselors, also satisfying the formula to trade money for votes in a crisis, but proving her guilt.

There are other problems with Oxford High but let’s look at the Michigan State University shooting.  Whitmer passed more gun laws a month after that event, but they had nothing to do with the crime.  That shooter was already an illegal possessor of a gun. If not for a plea bargain he would have been incapable of carrying out his crime. Another failure of Whitmer’s government.

With authority comes responsibility – in theory – and no governor in America has more authority than Gretchen Whitmer.  She’s issued more executive orders than any Michigan  governor since 1953.  When the legislature – the branch representing the people – tried to make her follow the law during Covid, she defied them, eventually going to the supreme court who restricted her powers of dictatorship. 

Gretchen Whitmer is the best possible target for us to start holding a governor responsible when his constituents are killed. 

With authority comes responsibility.

After the shooting at Michigan State, and after the one at Oxford, and then at every anniversary, they have a big celebration, a celebration where they boast, she boasts about her being a victim of having two shootings in her state. 

During Covid she did the same thing, boasting of Michigan’s high infection rate and the power it gave her.  She loves a crisis so much that she continued saying Michigan was in  third place for infections, even after they fell to twelfth.  

That’s just the Democrat formula: never let a crisis go to waste.

They wait for violence, then they point fingers at gun owners, they take no responsibility, and then they try to be the loudest mourners and they say that gun laws mean compassion and no gun laws means you're callous, so, do it my way because I'm sadder than you are.

This is why supporters of the Second Amendment must go on the offensive. Stop apologizing to these people. We are more outraged about these preventable deaths than they are, and the democrats ranting the loudest are responsible for the deaths.

And they always say, “nothing has been done”. Fine. Nothing HAS been done until we start holding politicians accountable. Not more laws, more law enforcement, and more accountability.

So let's try something else. Imagine this. Just imagine there's a shooting at a school, and afterward the school board and the mayor are called to the state capitol. Imagine the governor not giving speeches of outrage, bragging about her victim status.

Imagine instead Whitmer’s being called to the Senate Floor to explain what she did wrong and what she would do to stop it in the future.  Imagine her being thanked politely and then being asked to step down.

Imagine a world where the governor is more worried about losing her freedom when killers strike rather than gun owners worrying about losing theirs when she messes up.

The governor has no incentive to stop the violence now, not while we let the Tee-shirt Moms and the Gun Law Obsessed guarantee her reelection.

Let’s pause for a moment to make a request that you share this podcast with a friend.  With its unique topics, original material, information density, and no ad, this should rate as one of the finer conservative to center podcasts available, so please, tell a friend.

Now, to stop these attacks, we just need to adopt the principle of “the buck stops here”. 

And this is not a new or a novel idea. On October 7th, 2023, Hamas attacked Israel. Demands for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's resignation surfaced immediately due to his failure to protect the people.  

This is much like the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941. Within a week Admiral Kimmel, the commander at Pearl Harbor was asked to step down. Kimmel had a long list of resources that he wished he had had to defend Pearl Harbor but nobody listened. The US government said maybe it wasn't your fault but we can't take a chance, and we got plenty of good men to take your place, and Kimmel was sacked. Governors are no different. Maybe for the sake of argument the deaths at Michigan State and at Oxford were not Governor Whitmer’s fault. But why take a chance when there are plenty of qualified people to replace her.

This type of action is actually quite common. Less than a year ago, in March 2023. A passenger train and a freight train collided in central Greece, killing 36 people and injuring many more. There was no proclamation of government immunity there. Instead, a station master was arrested. Arrested. He's going to jail. And the National Transportation Minister, that’s the National transportation minister of Greece, resigned.

In the area of gun violence: a year earlier, August of 2022, Japan's National Police Chief resigned. Following the assassination of Shinzo Abe, the National Police Chief of Japan resigned because he failed to safeguard the former Prime Minister. Now, many in our country envy Japan's low homicide rate. Maybe it's because in Japan, their leaders take responsibility, in addition to sentencing murderers to death at a much higher rate than does the United states as we mentioned in a previous episode.

Also in Japan: after the Fukushima earthquakes of 2011, the Prime Minister of Japan – the top guy - resigned due to a perception of a poor leadership. Not after a trial mind you. He took it upon himself to resign because of a drop in his approval ratings.

Three years later the Prime Minister of South Korea resigned in the aftermath of a ferry sinking that killed 300 passengers. South Korea is another country with an enviable record for violent crime levels, and of government officials’ taking responsibility . . .

Because Korea is where we had the twin resignations of Korea's Home Minister and the National Police Chief 1982, after a mass murder, as we mentioned at the beginning of this episode. 

The buck stops here - period.  It’s the only way to manage tragedies.  And it's not as though we've forgotten that completely in the US. 

We do have some examples of consequences in the same three states we’ve been discussing. New York governor Kathy Hochul's predecessor, Andrew Cuomo resigned in 2021 for sexual harassment. Interesting that Kathy Hochul’s murders are okay, but alleged sexual harassment - that’s the offense that gets you thrown out?  Hochul had just been granted her wish for Red Flag laws.  Hochul could have taken away the Tops Supermarket shooter’s guns.  She didn’t enforce the law, ten African Americans were shot dead and she was reelected six months later. 

Back to Gavin Newsom of California, we mentioned him. He made it past a recall vote, barely. But it was a recall vote not for the mass murders. It was only for incompetence and California’s high taxes, low quality of life, and high homelessness.   

To recap - in New York you have to resign for alleged sexual misconduct and in California you can face recall for low quality of life but for mass murders and complete loss of life you get off Scott free.

And now there’s Whitmer in Michigan. Let’s look at Gretchen Whitmer's predecessor, Rick Snyder. 

He was governor during the Flint water lead contamination crisis. Governor Snyder was not merely impeached for the lead, but prosecuted. They tried to send him to prison.  

While Snyder was governor, a chemist in Flint failed to treat the water correctly and people got lead poisoning.  The effects may be serious but are actually unknown, and nobody died. There’s no excuse for the contamination, but it was accidental and was one sixth the contamination level of the kids poisoned by applesauce in 2024.  But it should not have happened and Snyder said how sorry he was, took responsibility and they put him on trial. 

Under Whitmer, school counselors and others made mistakes and multiple people were gunned down.  Shot, injured and killed.  Whitmer gets reelected and congratulated for being sad and spending money.

But the Flint tragedy, whatever else we might say about it; it was a one-time event. It required a combination of rare circumstances to take place but the governor was still held accountable and charged with willful neglect of duty.  Compare that to attacks at schools where the means of prevention is a well-documented formula based on repeated events.

Snyder has at least the excuse of novelty where Whitmer has none.  Why do we put one governor on trial for a unique event where no one died, and re-elect another with multiple tragedies and many deaths?  Whitmer, Newsome and Hochul should all be on the street if not in jail, yet they all still live in governors’ mansions.  Whitmer and Newsome are both being considered for president.  Who knows, one more shooting could put either one over the top.

This channel is not so much pro gun as it is anti stupidity. You want more gun laws? Pass all the laws you want. As long as you guarantee what they're going to accomplish and fire the people who put them in place when they don't work. 

So the next time there's a tragic mass shooting in your state, tell your representative in the legislature that you want the governor to resign. And if your governor is Gavin Newsom, Kathy Hochul, or Gretchen Whitmer, don't wait for yet another tragedy. They should resign now before they have any more blood on their hands. 

Be sure to tell a friend about this podcast.

And thank you very much for listening.