Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga is a gun-free zone, and so it had a terrorism practice Wednesday in which the only defense for participants was flight, locked doors and barricades. (Photo wdeftv.com)
Tommy Wiggonton of Memorial Hospital says had a drill Wednesday been a real “active shooter” event, 30 people would have been killed. The day of Memorial’s exercise, faithful Muslims taking personal initiative in jihad slaughtered 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif. (Photo Wdef.com)
By David Tulis
The slaughter of 14 state workers and the wounding of 21 during a Christmas party in San Bernardino, Calif., by two devout Muslims highlights the problem of centralization in the lethal force.
California is a state in which bearing arms is severely restricted, despite protections in the 2nd amendment of the federal constitution. No one in the room with Riswan Farook or his bride Tashfeen Malik was armed and able to fire back. The state has sucked dry most resources for lethal self-defense.
The professionalization of peace keeping started in the 1830s with the official deputization of townspeople, according to legal historian Roger Roots. Later rose the modern state with its wars of adventure, industrial national economy and centralization in state and federal capitals. Because of these developments Chattanoogans are like millions of people elsewhere in the country: Helpless by the loss of common access to lethal force and dependent on the state for personal safety.
We have effectively delegated the use of lethal force to police and sheriff’s departments. A man’s personal safety is barely in his hands in the event of a mass murderer, mass shooter or terrorist. He must rely on the eventual arrival of officers who rush to the scene.
Local economy surprise
In Hamilton County 24,500 people carry concealed firearms, and across Tennessee nearly 525,000 people have concealed carry permits.
Chattanooga’s police department has 486 sworn officers and 103 support staff. The sheriff’s department employs 425 people of all kinds. East Ridge, Red Bank and other towns in the county also have police departments.
If we assume 911 people in these agencies are protecting the public, we calculate that concealed carry permit holders in the county outnumber cops 27 to 1.
You are more likely to be saved in a shootout by an armed citizen on the scene than by an officer responding to an emergency call.
In other words, local economy and free market is more likely to provide a quick solution to the mad gunman than the centralized systems of either sheriff or police department.
Apoplexy at the center
The insight of Lamennais about centralization is remarkable, that centralization brings apoplexy at the center and paralysis at the extremities.
The national government is apoplectic, if we judge by how it is handling its role as ostensible protectors of the people. And in the extremities, paralysis.
➤ The establishment is following President Obama’s lead in making the causes of Muslim jihad enigmatic, mysterious. Only with gingerness are the FBI and investigative agencies allowing themselves to call the San Bernardino attacks terrorism. But even that definition seems misdirected. Terrorism appears a wrong label. Jihad is a more accurate and helpful label, but seems outside the government’s category. Terrorism is the category because it allows for the U.S. to apply similar muscle against Arabs and domestic critics. The U.S., to defend Mr. Obama’s categories, is being obscurantist and obfuscatory; the Muslim killers’ motives are perplexing, inscrutable, abstruse. President Obama’s hemming and hawing this week about San Bernardino are nothing less than astounding. Seizure at the center.
➤ Chattanooga’s firsthand experience with Muslim jihad remains a mystery six months after the July 16 killing of five federal military people by a devout follower of Mohammad, Mohammad Abdulazeez, son of a city engineer. Mr.
Abdulazeez called Muslims who waged jihad in earlier generations “the best human beings that ever lived” other than the prophets. He downloaded recordings of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-Yemeni cleric who recruited for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula until he was killed in a 2011 airstrike, according the Washington Post’s military blog, Checkpoint. Since Mr. Abdulazeez’ motives were unknown and he had no known link to a Mideast terror cell, the slain military people aren’t in line for Purple Heart honors. Apoplexy in central nervous system.
➤ Not only does the U.S. refuse to see jihad in the U.S. and shift focus to the villainy of gun ownership, it wants to criminalize free speech directed against Mohammadanism. Attorney General Loretta Lynch says she will take tough action against the “incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric” and on Thursday told a Muslim group that “we stand with you.” She promises the Justice Department will protect Muslims from “violence” and discrimination. “When we talk about the First Amendment we [must] make it clear that actions predicated on violent talk are not American. *** They are not who we are, they are not what we do, and they will be prosecuted.” Nervous tic at the center.
➤ On Friday the U.S. announced it is opening all front-line military positions to women. This follows the egalitarian and Marxist attack on the family, on the distinction in creation between man and woman, and is another way that the U.S. seeks to impose, by policy and policy backtrack, a reversal of Christendom. Defense secretary Ash Carter’s decision will prompt debate now over whether the selective service system now should require women to register for the draft. Self-destruction at the center, paralysis at the extremities.
The U.S. will take every opportunity to confuse the real safety and security picture. Its definition of the Muslim threat varies depending on its given theater of operation. Overseas it negotiates with terrorist groups and funds them. It pretends to want to overthrow Syria’s moderate Muslim boss, Assad, to defend the Syrian people, many of whom are fleeing U.S. terrorist allies. Domestically, the Muslim terrorist threat justifies the police state. Yet nasty comments on Facebook against Muslims prompt warnings of persecution against red-blooded Americans whose resentment against Washington deepens every month.
We may be unhappy to be witnessing a progressive national suicide. But the demise of the American national framework, though it promises to be bloody and disastrous for millions of dependents, bodes well for those people here and elsewhere who are working toward local economy, free markets and a more godly and humane mode of existence. If you want to learn more about the shape of this future from an important writer, Charles Hugh Smith, get the book Resistance, Revolution, Liberation[;] A Model for Positive Change (2012).
— David Tulis hosts a talk show weekdays in Chattanooga from 9 to 11 a.m. on 1240 AM Hot News Talk Radio, covering local economy and free markets in Chattanooga and beyond. Support this site and his radio station on the real airwaves in Chattanooga, on your smartphone via the TuneIn radio app or at Hotnewstalkradio.com. You back David by patronizing his advertisers with specific reference to him. Even better, encourage independent media by having David run commercials for your business. Also, “buy me a coffee at the tip jar.”
Sources: Dan Lamothe, “FBI still hasn’t determined if the Chattanooga attack was terrorism,” Washington Post, Dec. 4, 2015,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/12/04/fbi-still-hasnt-determined-if-the-chattanooga-attack-was-terrorism-and-its-costing-the-families-involved/
Chattanooga 2014 comprehensive annual financial report
2014 annual report, Hamilton County sheriff’s department
Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security
There is one word that describes the number one enemy of the American people. Enemy, enemy people. We have an enemy that is out to destroy us. Not only is it out to destroy us, we are making it extremely easy for it to accomplish our destruction.
That’s right we are destroying ourselves. The one-word enemy of the American people is APATHY. That is it. I’ll say it again, APATHY, APATHY, APATHY. You get it. That is it in a nutshell.
We have lost interest in self government (self-responsibility), the bedrock of freedom. Being a free human being is no longer important The material things of this world are more important. The rights that make us free human beings are priceless treasures. We have thrown them to the four winds.
DUE PROCESS OF LAW. There is no amount of money that can replace this treasure. It can’t be bought but it can be given away. Many bloody wars have been fought for this treasure. How many people have died in search of this treasure? How much suffering and hardship have people gone through to have this priceless treasure?
PROBABLE CAUSE, another priceless treasure. Who even knows what this is? The right to be secure in you home and personal life. PRICELESS.
Can’t be forced TO BE A WITNESS AGAINST YOURSELF. PRICELESS.
THE RIGHT TO FREEDOM OF RELIGION, PRICELESS.
These treasures are just part of what we own known as the BILL OF RIGHTS. The first ten amendments to the U.S. constitution. I believe they could be known as THE 10 COMMANDMENTS OF LIBERTY. These 10 amendments abolished tyranny.
The RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENSE. PRICELESS. The president of the U.S. is working night and to take this away from you. You have lost it all if you lose this one. The government is working to take your right to defend yourself by so-called gun control. If you can’t see what is going on here you are blind. You can’t be ignorant and free. Can man govern himself again in this country? TRY GOD’S LAW IT WORKS. Our government today is working night and day to remove God’s law and the morals of the people so the people can be easily controlled. MAN RULING OVER MAN.
A resent glaring example of this is when the godless reprobates on the USSCP ruled that same sex marriage was constitutional. They say it is constitutional because it is a FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT. This is a death blow to the moral foundation of America. An example of a real fundamental right is, THE RIGHT TO TRAVEL when it comes to driving your automobile as the most common mode of traveling the government treats this right to a privilege and becomes an easy mark for suspension or revocation by the administrative bureaucrats. Talk about being unconstitutional.
Our No. 2 enemy also has a name. It is Obama. I have looked back over my 72 years here searching for a more vile, corrupt, sorry excuse for a human being than Obama. He is the worst of the worst. People please let us send this man packing before he is able to destroy this country at its very foundation. We have no one to blame but ourselves when he does. Wake up, wake up.