ITALY: POPULISTS BLOCK MUSLIM GROUP’S BID TO TURN CHAPEL INTO MOSQUE

ITALY: POPULISTS BLOCK MUSLIM GROUP’S BID TO TURN CHAPEL INTO MOSQUE 
BY CHRISTINE DOUGLASS-WILLIAMS
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and 
research purposes:
 

In an effort to protect Christianity in Italy:

Lombardy’s populist League-led local government has
blocked plans to turn an old
chapel into a mosque after an Islamic group
outbid Christians at the auction of a church in Bergamo, northern
Italy.


Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Interior Matteo Salvini named Islam as “one of the greatest threats to Italy” and stated months ago:

Centuries of history are at risk of disappearing if Islamisation, which has been underestimated until now, finally wins.

Before the rise of Salvini’s “populist” movement, a scenario was
reported two years ago that demonstrated the direction that Italy was
taking with respect to mass migration. Christians at the Church of St. Anthony in Ventimiglia
were ordered to “pray in silence” by the Catholic charity Caritas,
which  facilitates mass migration to Europe, so as not to disturb Muslim
migrants who were living there. The faithful were told by Caritas that
they could not recite the rosary. The organization even boasted “that it
contributes to and seeks to influence European Union (EU) asylum
policies.”

“Italy: Populists Block Muslim Group’s Bid to Turn Chapel into Mosque,” by Virginia Hale, Breitbart, October 30, 2018:

Lombardy’s populist League-led local government has
blocked plans to turn an old chapel into a mosque after an Islamic group
outbid Christians at the auction of a church in Bergamo, northern
Italy.

The region’s president, Attilio Fontana, announced at the weekend
that the council had utilised a 2004 law which allows regional
government to halt a sale in the name of safeguarding cultural sites.

According to local media, the auction for the former hospital chapel
was won by the Muslim Association of Bergamo which sought to turn the
building into another mosque in the city after outbidding the Romanian
Orthodox Church, which had used the site for worship since 2015.

Lombardy “will exercise our right of preemption and there will be no
room for an appeal” regarding the sale of the church, said Fontana,
stating that the council intends to “protect” Christianity in Italy.

“I would never have put a church up for sale and I am amazed that the
hospital management did not understand how sensitive this issue was,”
the League politician said.

“I have already contacted Father Gheorghe Valescu, head of the
Romanian Orthodox community in Bergamo, to reassure him and illustrate
the actions that are being taken to ensure the community does not lose
their place of worship,” added Fontana.

League leader Matteo Salvini, who has served as Italian Interior
Minister since June, had vowed ahead of national elections earlier this
year his party would “put a stop to any irregular or abusive Islamic
presence in Italy”,….

THE INGRATITUDE: ISLAMIC STATE THREATENS TO ASSASSINATE POPE FRANCIS

THE INGRATITUDE: ISLAMIC STATE THREATENS 
TO ASSASSINATE POPE FRANCIS 
BY ROBERT SPENCER
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and 
research purposes:
It is understandable that the Islamic State would want to murder the 
most prominent exponent of Christianity, but in this the jihadis are 
being short-sighted. Pope Francis and the Catholic Church are among 
their best and most useful friends. Ahmed al-Tayeb, the Grand Imam of 
Cairo’s al-Azhar, thanked Pope Francis for his “defense of Islam against 
the accusation of violence and terrorism.”

Francis is not just a defender of Islam, but a defender of the Sharia
death penalty for blasphemy: after Islamic jihadists murdered the
Charlie Hebdo cartoonists who had drawn Muhammad, Francis obliquely justified the murders
by saying that “it is true that you must not react violently, but
although we are good friends if [an aide] says a curse word against my
mother, he can expect a punch, it’s normal. You can’t make a toy out of
the religions of others. These people provoke and then (something can
happen). In freedom of expression there are limits.”

So for the Pope, murdering people for violating Sharia blasphemy laws
is “normal,” and it isn’t terrorism for “Christian terrorism does not
exist, Jewish terrorism does not exist, and Muslim terrorism does not
exist. They do not exist,” he said in a speech.
“There are fundamentalist and violent individuals in all peoples and
religions—and with intolerant generalizations they become stronger
because they feed on hate and xenophobia.”

So there is no Islamic terrorism, but if you engage in “intolerant
generalizations,” you can “expect a punch.” The Pope, like the
Organization of Islamic Cooperation, apparently thinks that the problem
is not jihad terror, but non-Muslims talking about jihad terror; Muslims
would be peaceful if non-Muslims would simply censor themselves and
self-impose Sharia blasphemy restrictions regarding criticism of Islam.

For Pope Francis has no patience
with those who discuss such matters: “I don’t like to talk about
Islamic violence, because every day, when I read the newspaper, I see
violence.” He said, according to Crux,
that “when he reads the newspaper, he reads about an Italian who kills
his fiancé or his mother in law.” The pontiff added: “They are baptized
Catholics. They are violent Catholics.” He said that if he spoke about
“Islamic violence,” then he would have to speak about “Catholic
violence” as well.

That comparison made no sense, for Italian Catholics who killed their
fiancés or mothers in law were not acting in accord with the teachings
of their religion, while the Qur’an and Islamic teaching contain
numerous exhortations to violence.

But Pope Francis, defender of Islam, cannot concern himself with such
minutiae. Nor does he appear to be particularly concerned about the
fact that all his false statements about the motivating ideology behind
the massive Muslim persecution of Christians over the last few years
only enables and abets that persecution, for if that ideology is not
identified and confronted, it will continue to flourish.

“Leave them; they are blind guides. And if a blind man leads a blind man, both will fall into a pit.” (Matthew 15:14)

“ISIS in threat to assassinate POPE – ‘Don’t think you are safe from attack,’” by Alahna Kindred, Express, October 31, 2018:

AN ISIS-supporting media group has threatened to
assassinate the Pope – a warning which has sparked fears of violence
against the Vatican and Catholic Church.

Extremist media group Al-Abd Al-Faqir has twice issued threats within
the last week in a push for violence during the upcoming Christmas
holiday season.

The media group released online images threatening grenade attacks against the Pope.

In the most recent depiction, a photo of Pope Francis from his visit to Auschwitz in 2016 is used.

A gunman has his weapon pointed at the Pope with while wearing an ISIS wristband.

The text “Don’t think you are away from our attacks” in on the image.

Last year, another pro-ISIS group depicted a van full of weapons heading towards the Vatican and vowing “Christmas blood”.

Wafa Media foundation also released an image “beheading” Pope Francis
and another one of a lone jihadist with a backpack, grenade and rile at
St Peter’s Square.

The message on the image told jihadists that “the crusaders’ feast is approaching”.

It continued without punctuation: “Their convoys will crowd itself in
front of you prepare and plan for them show them the meaning of
terrorism kill them and do not hold back with your blood the reward is
paradise and let them know that you are from an ummah [Muslim community]
where mountains bow down to we will not forget our revenge for every
drop of blood that they have shed we will not exclude the young, elderly
or women you are all in the crosshairs of our arrows and what is about
to come is more even worse.”…

PROJECT VERITAS UNDERCOVER VIDEO: FLORIDA DEMOCRAT GOVERNOR CANDIDATE GILLUM STAFFER SAYS VOTERS “NOT FOR THEM TO KNOW” PROMISES WON’T HAPPEN

PROJECT VERITAS UNDERCOVER VIDEO: FLORIDA DEMOCRAT GOVERNOR CANDIDATE GILLUM STAFFER SAYS VOTERS “NOT FOR THEM TO KNOW” 
PROMISES WON’T HAPPEN

Published on Oct 31, 2018

“Modern day fairy tales begin with once I am elected.”

Project Veritas Action Fund has released undercover video from Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum’s campaign, revealing his election strategy includes making empty promises to voters.

• Empty Promises Exposed: “Fairy tales in the modern day begin with ‘once I am elected.'”
• Deceiving Voters: “None of the programs that people are hoping for would happen” but “That’s not for [voters] to know.”
• Candidate’s True Politics: “Gillum is a Progressive” and “He is a part of the crazy, crazy, crazies.”
• Election Strategy: “You whip ’em up. The poor, the middle income. You have to whip them up into a frenzy in order for them to vote.”
• Secret Gun Control Agenda Revealed: “three day waiting period for everybody,” “small steps” to ban assault rifles; “I don’t think he can say it [be]cause he’s trying to get the moderates”
• Florida is a “F***ed up,” “cracker state,” “you have to appeal to white guilt”

 O’Keefe Asks Gillum Staffer Why “it’s not for [voters] to know” “fairy tale” Policies Won’t Happen
 Andrew Gillum Has Jewish Journalist Laura Loomer Thrown Out Of Synagogue
 MUST WATCH: October 25th in Plantation, FL at Temple Kol Ami, Andrew
Gillum had Conservative Investigative Journalist Laura Loomer, A JEWISH
WOMAN forcibly removed from the SYNAGOGUE while she was peacefully
waiting for the event to begin.
Gillum Staffer Caught Saying FL is an “F***ed Up Cracker State”!!!
Report by Dr. Steve Turley
 
 Democrat Andrew Gillum has strong ties to several radical left-wing groups
 Florida’s Democrat gubernatorial candidate is once again coming under
fire for his past affiliations with left-wing activist groups. One
America’s Kara McKinney explains.
 
Gillum Accuses Ron DeSantis of Anti-Semitism Over David Horowitz


A shameless leftist liar and hack hits a new low. 

BY DANIEL GREENFIELD

SEE: https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271804/gillum-accuses-ron-desantis-anti-semitism-over-daniel-greenfield; 

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and 
research purposes:
 
Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the
Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on
the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

Andrew Gillum, the Bernie candidate aspiring to run Florida, has a compelling platform. Racism.
Gillum isn’t saying he’s a racist. Everyone else is a racist. And I do mean everyone.
If you call Andrew Gillum “Andrew” instead of Mayor Gillum (Andy
currently runs Tallahassee, a city with the highest crime rate in
Florida), you’re a racist.
“I’m a sitting mayor and he had the
nerve to address me only as Andrew,” Gillum had whined about former
Rep. Ron DeSantis, his Republican opponent, at a black college.
It was a debate and Gillum had actually been standing at the time.
Also Andrew had compared Ron to a dog and found two hundred different
ways to accuse Ron of racism.
“I wanted to correct him, y’all, but I didn’t want to be petty,” he told students.
Good thing, Andrew chose not to be petty about it. When you’re a
standing mayor of a city with a higher murder rate than Miami, you’ve
gotta think big, y’all.
Just wait until you see what happens
to those Floridians sent to the swamp gulags for failing to genuflect
before Governor Gillum when the gubernatorial limo swings by.
Also if you pay attention to Gillum’s lies about corruption in an FBI investigation, you’re a racist.
“They’ve wanted the people of this state to believe somehow,” Gillum
ranted. “I’m unethical, participated in illegal and illicit activity. I
mean, you name it. The goal is obviously to use my candidacy as a way to
reinforce, frankly, stereotypes about black men.”
Obviously.
The FBI was just using its investigation to reinforce stereotypes about black men. That explains the Hamilton tickets.
But Andrew Gillum, I’m sorry, Mayor Andrew Gillum, has only the
highest evidentiary standards when accusing his political opponents of
racism.
“I’m not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist,” Gillum once said. “I’m simply saying the racists believe he’s a racist.”
And the crooks allegedly believed that Andy was a crook. So by his own standards, he’s a criminal.
But whatever the FBI investigation finds, Mayor Andy continues
breaking new ground in racist shamelessness. After the mass shooting of
Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue, Gillum decided to shake up his game a
little bit by accusing Rep. Ron DeSantis of racism… and anti-Semitism.
On The Daily Show, Andrew accused his Republican opponent of giving “too much harbor to racists and xenophobes and anti-Semites.”
When you give too much harbor to racists, where is everyone else going to dock their yachts?
As evidence of the racist and anti-Semitic harbor crisis, Gillum
mentioned that Ron DeSantis had “spoken at conferences with them.”
The conferences in question would be the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s Restoration Weekend events. The Washington Post and other media outlets had tried and failed to slur DeSantis as a racist for attending Freedom Center events alongside African-American speakers.
But accusing DeSantis of anti-Semitism for appearing at a conference
organized by David Horowitz, a Jewish man, is ridiculous even by
Gillum’s ludicrous criteria for accusing other people of bigotry.

Then, because Andrew Gillum can only top ridiculous accusations of
racism with more ridiculous accusations of racism, he went on to falsely
claim that his opponent had, “authored a book justifying slavery”.
The book was, “Dreams From Our Founding Fathers: First Principles in the Age of Obama”, which in no way, shape or form justifies slavery. Instead it explained the difficult compromises that the Founders had to make at the early onset of the country.
“For anti-slavery delegates like Hamilton and Franklin, abolition of
slavery would be a moot point if a failure to erect a functioning
government snuffed out the ideals of the American Revolution in their
infancy; then, the future of all Americans, the free as well as the
slave, would eventually be as serfs to a despotic government,” DeSantis
wrote.
That’s not a justification of slavery. It explains why opponents of slavery decided not to break up the United States over it.
It’s a history book. A text which, like the dictionary, the duly
elected ruler of a place where 1 in 5 adults struggles with reading,
Hizzoner appears to be woefully unfamiliar with.
But,
according to Andrew, history is also racist, as is the corruption
investigation hanging over his head and referring to a standing mayor of
a hellhole by his first name, instead of by his full mayoral title.
Then, because shame and Gillum haven’t been on speaking terms since 1982, he went right back to the primal smear.
After winning the GOP primary, DeSantis had gone on FOX News and
warned voters that ,”The last thing we need to do is to monkey this up
by trying to embrace a socialist agenda with huge tax increases and
bankrupting the state.”
The media and Gillum claimed that
this was a covert way of accusing him of being a monkey, rather than a
commonplace figure of speech.
At the time, Gillium grumped,
“I’m not going to go down in the gutter.” Sitting in a restaurant
opposite Trevor Noah, the sitting mayor of Tallahassee decided that the
gutter looked pretty good after all.
“But I mean ‘monkey
around,’ right? ‘Monkey business.’ ‘Monkey it up.’ I mean this guy is
Harvard- and Yale-educated. He could come up with a better phrase,”
Gillum insinuated. “He said exactly what he meant to say. He
communicated exactly what he wanted to say to his voters, to his
constituents, and then, when he got called on it, he tried to run from
it.”
As usual Gillum is projecting. He’s the one who is
communicating exactly what he wants to say to the voters before running
away from it. He had originally claimed that DeSantis wasn’t a racist,
but that “the racists believe he’s a racist.”
Apparently one of those racists is Gillium.
If you believe Andrew Gillium, “monkey this up”, “monkey business” and
“monkey around” are all the signature phrases of racists. If you doubt
that Ronald Reagan was a bigot, just consider his starring role in
Bedtime for Bonzo (1951) opposite a chimp. And Clint Eastwood’s
conservative turn could have been read in his appearance in Every Which
Way but Loose (1978) opposite an orangutan.
Reading racism
into everything isn’t a sign of critical awareness. It means you’ve
failed the Rorschach test and have no career options except campus
agitator, as a field organizer for a leftist group fighting American “genocide”, or as the lying mayor of Tallahassee.
But Andrew Gillium wasn’t just satisfied with false accusations of
racism, he decided to appropriate the pain and grief of the Jewish
community in yet another false accusation, this time that of
anti-Semitism.
Accusing Ron DeSantis of being anti-Semitic
because he attended conferences organized by a Jewish man isn’t just a
lie; it shows how shameless and ignorant Andrew Gillium’s accusations of
bigotry are.
There is no depth to which he will not sink. No low that Andy will not descend to further his own career.
After using false accusations of racism to rally black voters, he’s
now trying to use false accusations of anti-Semitism in a state with a
large Jewish population. And it won’t matter to the media, which has
helped spread his lies with its fake news, that the man he’s accusing of
anti-Semitism is Jewish.
And yet, what does it say that about
a movement that the man some Democrats are preemptively touting as vice
presidential timber isn’t running on much except false accusations of
racism?
That, and accusing one of the conservative movement’s most prominent Jews of anti-Semitism.

“TRUMP AIN’T PLAYIN”: VIDEO SHOWS HUNDREDS OF MILITARY VEHICLES BEING SHIPPED TO BORDER

 'Trump ain't playin': Video Shows Hundreds of Military Vehicles Being Shipped to Border
 
“TRUMP AIN’T PLAYIN”: VIDEO SHOWS HUNDREDS OF MILITARY VEHICLES BEING SHIPPED TO BORDER 
 Footage of train heading southbound reportedly captured in Arizona
BY ADAN SALAZAR
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and 
research purposes:
 

A video posted to Twitter Tuesday showed a shipment of
hundreds of military vehicles reportedly being sent to the US border in
anticipation of a showdown with the migrant caravan currently headed to
the US.

“Train in Arizona recently heading southbound,” @RightWingLawMan wrote on Twitter. “Trump ain’t playin’.”
The footage comes as President Trump announced he would be sending 5,200 troops
to strengthen border security after reports that a caravan of about
14,000 migrants, made up of mostly Hondurans, has continued making its
way towards the US border.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/adan.salazar.735
Watch: Alex Jones breaks down Trump’s deployment of heavy tanks & APC’s to the Arizona border.

 


TECH TYRANNY: CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN SITE BLACKLISTED BY WEB HOST

TECH TYRANNY: CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIAN SITE BLACKLISTED BY WEB HOST 
BY SELWYN DUKE
republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
 

Is being Christian and robustly conservative now against tech
companies’ terms of service? It increasingly seems so. A good example is
the report that the pro-life, pro-family LifeSiteNews.com was recently
blacklisted by its hosting company and given only 12 hours to find a new
one — or risk being offline.


LifeSite is a Christian entity that covers a range of issues, with
special focus on life, family, and the sexual devolution. Frequent
readers also may recognize it as a site from which I sometimes quote. As
for its problems, LifeSite reported October 27:


This is extremely urgent. I need to
inform you that LifeSite just received an email at 8:30 p.m. EST from
our web-hosting company alerting us that they will be taking our website
down within 12 hours, if not sooner.


They wrote: “we are implementing our ‘SUSPENSION OF SERVICES’ clause…and giving you 12 hours notice to move your web site operations off of our servers…”


We received absolutely no forewarning whatsoever about this decision.

LifeSite doesn’t mention the hosting company’s name, but according to the former’s DNS record and an LGBT-activist blog (which I won’t publicize by linking to), it’s San Francisco-based Cloudflare.
While LifeSite covers many issues, it was, unsurprisingly, focus on
homosexuality that got it in trouble. In particular, the news organ
explains, “The [hosting] company told LifeSite it is acting in response
to a months-long campaign of complaints against us by Adam Flanders.
Flanders is a convicted sex abuser and homosexual activist who is
angered over our reports exposing him and his past.”

LifeSite continues, writing that Flanders “has already succeeded in
taking down other pro-family websites by targeting their server
companies.” For example, the site related in September that the “entire website for Americans For Truth About Homosexuality (AFTAH.org) was shut down for more than two weeks beginning August 24 after … Flanders … threatened a lawsuit against FirstLight Fiber,
the Internet Service Provider (ISP) for AFTAH’s web host company.
Flanders claimed his mugshot photo from a 2006 assault arrest against a
minor boy was ‘copyrighted’ material.”
According to AFTAH founder Peter LaBarbera, Flanders “pleaded guilty in 2008 to ‘Sexual Abuse of a Minor
involving a boy aged 14 or 15” and had sexual relations with a
14-year-old lad when he was 18. He’s in Maine’s and California’s
sex-offender registries, and his registry pages are found here and here, according to LifeSite.
In a Sunday morning update, LifeSite reported
that its web developer spent all night working and ensured that the
site would remain online. However, the news organ states that it’s only a
temporary solution and that it’s currently searching for another
hosting company.
Tech-company censorship/squelching of traditionalist dissent is
nothing new. Facebook’s cancelling/suppression of conservative pages,
Twitter’s “shadowbanning” and closing of conservatives’ accounts, and
Google’s leftist manipulation of search results are already well known.
Moreover, big tech appears to be intensifying its censorship efforts to
sway the midterm elections.
Yet there’s something even more ominous here. Consider: Drawing parallels with our time, LifeSite’s Jonathon van Maren pointed out
in a 2015 piece that, counterintuitively, Cold War-era Hungarian
communists didn’t outlaw Christianity. But they did enforce a certain
standard:
“You could either be a Christian — or you could be successful.”
(The same can increasingly be said of being conservative today.)
We’ve seen this already in North America. Examples include:
• Christian bakers and other businessmen punished — and sometimes
forced to shut down — because they refused to service so-called same-sex
weddings;
• efforts to force doctors to perform abortions and provide contraception;
• efforts to deny Christian colleges accreditation or prevent their law-school graduates from practicing law;
• laws mandating that adoption agencies — including Christian ones — must place children with same-sex couples;
• California’s erstwhile prohibition against judges participating in the Boy Scouts organization; and
• hate-speech laws in Canada (among other places) used to punish those expressing certain Christian moral positions.
Obviously, if it’s impossible for faithful Christians to enter certain fields or earn a living if they exercise (a word referencing action)
their religion — guaranteed under the First Amendment — they won’t
enter those fields or earn a living. This is how you disempower a class
of people.
As van Maren points out, this extends to politics in Canada where,
increasingly, the Christian view of life is a disqualifier from holding
office. He writes that this is “a clever tactic, and a dangerous one, as
it gives Christians less and less control over their own futures.”
To paraphrase what follows, “If fewer Christians enter politics, our
voice in government grows quieter. If fewer Christians enter the field
of medicine, the entire field suffers. And if organizations like Legal
Leaders for Diversity have their way, there will be far fewer Christian
lawyers — which means that as Christians increasingly need legal
assistance to defend their dwindling religious freedoms, they will have
fewer lawyers to rely on.”
And as Christian/conservative voices are banished from the public
square by big (and little) tech, we’ll have fewer opportunities to speak
out against the above.
By the way, illustrating tech-company manipulation, I searched for
van Maren’s article based on memory using certain terms. His piece was nowhere to be found
on Google’s first three pages (and few users go beyond the second
page). So I then pasted the same terms into search engine DuckDuckGo.com
— van Maren’s article was the very first result. This again underlines how, as I’ve explained, Google is no longer truly a search engine. It’s a propaganda engine.
As for this suppression of speech and beliefs, many will reflexively
say there should just be “freedom of expression” with all points of view
heard. Yet it’s not that simple.
Our First Amendment only protects against government trampling of
speech, and most of the entities effecting this censorship are private.
Yet the point almost universally missed is that while you may avoid government laws suppressing speech, social laws are a different matter: All civilizations censor the tongue in some way.
Years ago, for instance, there was a strong social prohibition
against using foul language around women and children, and we’ve long
had indecency laws. Moreover, espousing ideas considered heretical got
you in trouble not just in medieval Europe but in colonial America,
where you could be scorned and ostracized. In ancient Greece,
philosopher Socrates was convicted and later executed for corrupting the
young and “mocking the gods.” And in the 1950s United States, being an
avowed Marxist or Nazi meant you couldn’t be successful.
So it’s not a matter of whether we’ll have socially enforced speech
codes, but only of what they will be — and, most significantly, of what
is censored. Are lies shamed and banished?
Or is the Truth?
It’s clear what is increasingly being banished today. But seldom
understood is why: Conservatives fight for political power at election
time.
But they generally fail to fight for cultural power anytime.
As philosopher G.K. Chesterton put it,
“All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone
you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone
you leave it to a torrent of change.”
The rule, simply, is that if you don’t control the culture, the
culture controls you. To be tolerant of evil is to be visited with, and
vanquished by, the intolerable.

DOCTORS URGED TO ADVANCE GUN CONTROL AGENDA

DOCTORS URGED TO ADVANCE GUN CONTROL AGENDA
BY STEVE BYAS
SEE: https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/item/30505-doctors-urged-to-advance-gun-control-agenda?vsmaid=1774&vcid=3987republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

Recent shootings, such as in the Pittsburgh synagogue, are the
justification cited by Dr. Ana Maria Lopez, president of the American
College of Physicians (ACP), for doctors getting involved in the gun
debate. According to Dr. Lopez, such incidents illustrate “how important
and poignant it is for there to be policies that can be really
effective in keeping guns away from both those who are either a risk to
themselves or to others.”

Accordingly, the ACP released some recommendations this week on how
doctors can play a role in reducing “gun violence.” Specifically, the
ACP wants physicians to pry into whether their patients have guns in the
home, so they can offer them counsel on gun safety, and in some cases,
report them to the police.

“Firearm-related injuries and deaths really continue to be a part of what is harmful to patients and families,” Lopez said.

But the ACP wants more than just friendly advice from your family
doctor. The ACP has supported “appropriate regulation of the purchase of
legal firearms to reduce firearms-related injuries and death,” as well
as more child access prevention laws that would hold the owners of
firearms accountable for the safe storage of their guns.

In addition, ACP advocates for laws banning the manufacture, sale,
transfer, and even ownership of so-called rapid-killing semiautomatic
firearms for civilian use.

Along with asking patients about guns in the home, ACP favors new
laws (popularly known as “red flag laws”) that will allow families and
law enforcement to petition a court to “temporarily” remove firearms
from individuals who may be a risk to themselves and others. In other
words, if a doctor were so inclined, he could turn his patient in to the
cops, if he suspected that patient should be stripped of his right to
have a gun in the home. While some might argue that physicians could be
expected to only take such steps in extreme cases, the reality is that a
doctor motivated enough to ask such intrusive questions about guns is
much more likely to be an anti-gun rights crusader.

Dr. Lopez attempts to justify this war on the private ownership of
firearms arguing, “We speak with our patients about, ‘do you use a seat
belt?’ If they ride a bike or ride a motorbike, ‘do you use a helmet?’
So, these are public health issues, and it’s similar to ask patients if
there’s a gun in the home.”

Actually, I have never been asked such questions by my doctors, and
if I were I would probably find a different doctor. It would seem rather
strange to me to visit a physician for an upper-respiratory infection
and be asked if I use a seat belt.

Another physician, Dr. Garen Wintemute, an emergency-room physician
in California, agreed with the recommendations, noting, “I talk with
patients about firearms almost every shift I work as an emergency
physician.”

David Hemenway, professor of health policy at Harvard, also supported
the recommendations, arguing, “The evidence is overwhelming that
firearm violence in the United States — firearms killing people, scaring
people, injuring people — is an enormous public health problem.”

Another doctor, Timothy Wheeler, has a different take, however,
calling such political advocacy during the doctor-patient situation a
“boundary violation.” Dr. Wheeler offered the illustration of a person
visiting a doctor for back pain, and being asked if he has a gun in the
home. The doctor may even suggest that the patient would be better off
“if you had no guns at all in your house.”

Wheeler contends that while an anti-gun rights doctor may profess
concern for patient safety, “their ulterior motive is a political
prejudice against guns and gun owners.” A patient who seeks medical help
or psychiatric treatment “is often in a uniquely dependent, anxious,
vulnerable, and exploitable state.” Wheeler charges that this physician
is putting his own needs and political beliefs “before the needs of the
patient,” and has crossed the line form healer to political activist.

Besides that, the intrusive questions about guns in the home are
based on several fallacies. The often cited work of Dr. Arthur
Kellerman, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is
used to argue that persons who keep guns in the home are more likely to
be victims of homicide than those who do not. However, Dr. Edgar Suter,
chairman of Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research, refutes
Kellerman’s research, contending that gun-control researchers fail to
consider and underestimate the protective benefits of guns. Dr. Suter
wrote, “The true measure of the protective benefits of guns are the
lives and medical costs saved, the injuries prevented, and the property
protected.”

Kellerman’s work has also been debunked in that he used study
populations that have disproportionately higher rates of serious
psycho-social dysfunction. Fifty-three percent of the case subjects,
according to the website of the American Association of Physicians and
Surgeons (AAPS), had a history of a household member being arrested, and
32 percent had a household member hit or hurt in a family fight.

In the book Point Blank: Guns and Violence in America, Dr.
Gary Kleck found that the defensive uses of firearms by citizens amount
to a 2.5 million uses per year. Kleck argues that between 25-75 lives
are saved by a gun for every life lost to a gun.

The actual U.S. healthcare costs of treating gunshot wounds is only about 0.2 percent of annual healthcare expenditures.

Finally, many argue that a gun in the home makes suicide more likely,
but the evidence does not support that assertion. In Japan, Hungary,
and Scandinavia, countries that have very strict gun-control laws have
much higher rates of suicide — two or three times higher — than the
United States. With no gun available, they simply use other methods,
such as knives, drowning, suffocation, or hanging.

The usual liberal mantra is that it is all about the children, but
Professor John Lott’s studies have found that children 14-15 years of
age are 14.5 times more likely to die from automobile injuries and even
three times more likely to die from a bicycle accident than from a gun
accident.

Allowing that some of these anti-gun advocates sincerely believe that
they are protecting the population from itself, we must also consider
that for many, getting doctors to harangue patients about having a gun
in the home is just another way to reduce the number of law-abiding
Americans who own a firearm.

The ultimate goal for many of those who express concern about “gun
violence” is the elimination of the private ownership of firearms, but
that goal is counter to American history and law. As Supreme Court
Justice Joseph Story wrote in 1833, “The right of the citizens to keep
and bear arms has justly been considered the palladium of the liberties
of a republic; since it offers a strong moral check against usurpation
and arbitrary power of rulers; and will generally, even if these are
successful in the first instance, enable the people to resist and
triumph over them.”

If a doctor were to ask you if you have a gun in the home, ask him if
he has ever read this quotation from Justice Story or simply ask him to
keep his questions medically related.


VIDEO REVIEW OF ROBERT SPENCER’S “HISTORY OF JIHAD”: “MOST THOROUGHLY DOCUMENTED HISTORY OF MUSLIM VIOLENCE TO DATE”

VIDEO REVIEW OF ROBERT SPENCER’S “HISTORY OF JIHAD”: “MOST THOROUGHLY DOCUMENTED HISTORY OF MUSLIM VIOLENCE TO DATE” 
Here is an excellent video review by Dale Brown of my new book The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS, which you can order here now.
SEE ALSO:
 Muhammad’s Bloody Creed

Robert Spencer’s new magisterial work reveals Jihad as a holy war to convert the world. 

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271826/muhammads-bloody-creed-geoffrey-luck 

OTHER BOOKS BY SPENCER: