Tag: self defense

Bondi Beach Shows Why Self-Defense Is a Vital Right

At Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, a father-son team of ISIS-inspired terrorists murdered attendees at a celebration of the first day of Hanukkah. One of the attackers was disarmed by a heroic civilian who was shot in the process, while others lost their lives trying to help.

Contrasting Responses to Threats

Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responded to the shooting with promises to further tighten gun laws in the already restrictive country—a measure more likely to disarm potential victims than to inconvenience those planning a homicidal attack. In the U.S., by contrast, Jews stepped up security by themselves and alongside police. At the request of my wife’s rabbi, I recruited a friend who served as a Force Recon Marine. We strapped on armor and pistols to patrol the crowd at the menorah lighting in Sedona, Arizona. Members of the congregation carried concealed weapons of their own.

Nothing happened, but we were there to deter problems and respond if necessary. There’s a big difference between doubling down on failed state policies and taking responsibility for your own safety.

According to Prime Minister Albanese’s office, after the attack, “leaders agreed that strong, decisive and focused action was needed on gun law reform as an immediate action” and promised “to strengthen gun laws” with further restrictions. Of course, that’s what Australia did in 1996 after the Port Arthur mass shooting. The government banned a variety of firearms, with compensation for their surrender. Compliance was limited and the effort spawned a significant black market for guns.

But Australia’s millions of guns didn’t kill 15 people at Bondi Beach. Two men with known Islamist ties who traveled last month to the Philippines for training at terrorist summer camp committed the murders. They chose guns as their tools, but they could just as easily have used explosives, vehicles, incendiaries, or something else to cause mayhem.

“The issue is not gun laws. It’s hatred of Jews,” Rabbi Daniel Greyber of Durham, North Carolina commented after the Bondi Beach attack.

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Byrna Files Lawsuit Against CA for Blocking Ammunition Sales of Less-Lethal Weapons

Bryan Ganz is the founder of Byrna, the less-lethal self-defense weapons, which looks like handguns but shoot powerful chemical irritants rather than lethal bullets, designed to immobilize an attacker air intruder. The weapons are legal in all 50 states. But, in California, Ganz told the Globe that the state blocked sales of Byrna’s ammunition and launchers.

Why? We thought a less-lethal weapon (some say it’s non-lethal) would be a wildly popular option, and hailed by California’s Attorney General and law enforcement. The Byrna uses a pepper-gel projectile, like a pepper spray, rather than bullets.

But it’s complicated, the Gun Zone explains, thanks to California’s highly regulated gun control laws. “Because it doesn’t discharge a projectile ‘by means of an explosive,’ as defined by California Penal Code section 16520, it technically falls outside the strict definition of a firearm. However, this doesn’t automatically grant free rein. California law, particularly when dealing with weapons designed for defense, is highly regulated.”

And it’s further complicated by brazen gun control and anti-police politics.

In 2021, California passed Assembly Bill 48 by then-Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, which outlawed “the use of kinetic energy projectiles or chemical agents by any law enforcement agency to disperse any assembly, protest, or demonstration, except in compliance with specified standards set by the bill, and would prohibit their use solely due to a violation of an imposed curfew, verbal threat, or noncompliance with a law enforcement directive.”

In 2021, with the well-funded George Floyd protests across the country, police  were confronted with violent riots and protesters, and forced to use crowd control measures. Assemblywoman Gonzalez claimed that her bill was in response to the unwarranted force used by law enforcement against protestors, journalists and others in the George Floyd protests. She objected to the injuries caused by rubber bullets, beanbag rounds, foam rounds, and other projectiles, the Globe reported in 2021.

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Senior citizen who saved himself from would-be mugger is heading to prison because of NYC’s ‘draconian’ laws

A Queens senior citizen who shot dead a man who tried to rob him will spend four years in prison after admitting to toting an unlicensed revolver — as his lawyer ripped the city’s “draconian” gun laws.

Charles Foehner, 67, pleaded guilty to one count of criminal weapons possession Thursday in a deal to end his case more than two years after he fatally shot would-be thief Cody Gonzalez, who charged at him near his Kew Gardens home.

The Queens District Attorney’s Office chose not to prosecute Foehner, a retired doorman, for Gonzalez’s killing after he told cops that he’d defended himself from a mugger who lunged at him late at night holding what looked like a knife — but which turned out to be a pen.

But prosecutors slapped Foehner with a slew of weapons raps for the unlicensed handgun and for an arsenal of illicit handguns, revolvers and rifles inside his home in the quiet neighborhood.

Foehner took the plea deal to avoid a trial, where he faced 25 years in prison on gun charges that are not hard to prove, said his attorney Thomas Kenniff after Thursday’s hearing in Queens Supreme Court.

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Michigan Man Guns Down Teen Who Broke into His Garage – Is Charged With Multiple Crimes Including Manslaughter Despite State’s “Stand Your Ground” Law

A Michigan man is facing a lengthy prison sentence after killing a youth who broke into his garage, sparking a debate regarding the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law.

As The New York Post reported on Sunday, 17-year-old Sivan Wilson and six other “mainly teenagers” broke into 24-year-old Dayton Knapton’s garage in White Lake just after 1 a.m. on July 8.

Knapton received an alert from his home security system, grabbed his 9mm semiautomatic handgun, and subsequently took fatal action to resolve the situation.

The Oakland County Prosecutor’s office alleges that Knapton left this house and fired two shots through a windowless locked door, which sent the burglars fleeing. Then he continued to fire as they tried to race away to safety.

Knapton then supposedly went back inside his house to reload his gun and returned to the scene.

Wilson fled the scene with his cronies but was struck by one of the bullets. Unfortunately for him, he did not receive medical care for 30 minutes and later died.

Investigators later determined that one of the bullets fired by Knapton through the locked door struck Wilson. Another teenager in the group was also shot in the leg but survived.

On November 7, Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald announced that she would be charging Knapton with multiple crimes, including Manslaughter, Assault With Intent To Do Great Bodily Harm, and two counts of Felony Firearm.

McDonald released the following statement explaining why she decided to pursue charges:

The rights to own firearms and protect one’s family and home are fundamental. Those important rights also come with profound responsibility. Our office worked closely with law enforcement to review the evidence, including the obvious mitigating factors, which led us to these charges.

We believe the evidence demonstrates this defendant crossed the line by firing outside his home at fleeing persons. His actions not only took a life but potentially endangered the surrounding community by firing his weapon into the night.

Knapton faces up to 15 years behind bars for Manslaughter, 10 years for Assault With Intent To Do Great Bodily Harm, and 4 years for the two counts of Felony Firearm. This means he could spend almost 30 YEARS in prison.

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Giffords: Increase in Defensive Gun Uses ‘Must Be Stopped’

When I covered the WSJ’s hit piece on Stand Your Ground laws on Wednesday, I wondered if the reporters had any behind-the-scenes help from gun control activists. 

It’s not proof of anything, but since the story appeared online only one gun control group has promoted the story on X or Bluesk

The premise of the WSJ story is that Stand Your Ground laws have led to a 59% increase in the number of justifiable homicides in some states between 2019 and 2024, and that the law is allowing some folks to literally get away with murder. 

As we discussed yesterday, though, none of the anecdotal cases cited by WSJ in support of that premise are slam dunk examples of murders that were deemed justified as a result of SYG laws. The data set used by the paper is also suspect, since it did not include the significant number of states where Stand Your Ground exists in common law but not specifically in statute. 

There are only 11 states that impose a general duty to retreat before acting in self-defense. The vast majority of states don’t require you to present your back as a target to your attacker while you try to run away; instead, they allow you to act in self-defense so long as you have a reasonable belief of imminent death or great bodily harm. 

Stand Your Ground laws also aren’t really a new thing. Florida’s statute, for instance, has been in place for two decades. If the law automatically led to more unjustified shootings being deemed justifiable homicides by the courts, we would have expected to see that phenomenon occur long before 2020, but there’s no evidence that’s the case. 

We saw a huge spike in violent crime in 2020, along with a big spike in new gun owners. That’s the most likely reason for an increase in justifiable homicides since then; with more crimes being committed and more people carrying for self-defense, there are more occasions when legally armed citizens will use a firearm to defend themselves. That doesn’t mean, however, that people are getting away with murder just because they tell police that they were in fear for their lives. Every time a life is taken a police investigation is going to take place, and charges may very well be filed even when there’s evidence of self-defense. 

Even using the WSJ’s own flawed dataset, the percentage of homicides deemed justified in SYG states has climbed from about 2.8% in 2019 to 3.8% in 2024. We don’t know how many self-defense claims were raised in the 96.2% of homicides that were deemed murder, but we know the number isn’t “zero.” Stand Your Ground laws aren’t a “get-out-of-jail free” card for armed citizens, despite the slanted reporting from the WSJ and Gifffords’ wild suggestion that many or all of these justifiable homicides are actually murder.

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Jay Jones Demanded Cop’s Badge Over Rittenhouse Donation

The Virginia Democrat mired in scandal over text messages — in which he called for the assassination of a political opponent — once called for a police lieutenant to lose his job over a $25 donation to Kyle Rittenhouse’s legal defense fund.

Jay Jones, currently a candidate for state attorney general in Virginia, has not responded to calls for him to drop out of the race over 2022 texts advocating political violence against then-state House Speaker Todd Gilbert, a Republican. But in 2021, claiming to be in pursuit of “true accountability in policing,” Jones demanded that Norfolk Police Lt. William K. Kelly III lose his job after he donated $25 to the legal defense fund for Kyle Rittenhouse — the teenager who fatally shot two protesters and injured another in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during a 2020 riot. A jury determined that Rittenhouse acted in self-defense.

At the time, The Guardian reported on the sources of some of the donations for Rittenhouse’s defense, identifying Kelly as one of the donors.

“God bless. Thank you for your courage. Keep your head up. You’ve done nothing wrong,” the message with the donation read. “Every rank and file police officer supports you. Don’t be discouraged by actions of the political class of law enforcement leadership.”

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The Moral Problem With Most Gun Free Zones

Let’s start with a thought experiment. Suppose I push you into deep water as part of a swimming lesson. Because you do not know how to swim, you start desperately trying to keep yourself afloat, but to no avail. Now suppose further that I do nothing to rescue you, and as a result, you drown. My actions in this scenario are tantamount to murder. I intentionally placed you in a situation of great vulnerability and then refused to provide for you. Your rights were egregiously violated by my refusal to do anything.

The moral principle behind this thought experiment is the following: if I knowingly cause you to exist in a state of great need or vulnerability, then I am responsible for providing for you. If I do not, then I am negligent. If my negligence leads to your death, then I am guilty of murder.

This principle is enshrined in the legal system as part of the state-created danger doctrine. If the government does something that puts someone into a position of danger, it bears a special responsibility to provide for that individual’s safety. If it fails to do this, then it may be held liable for any harms that result.

What’s This Got to Do with Gun-Free Zones?

This principle has direct relevance for so-called “gun-free zones.” These are locations in which the government has declared, using the threat of punishment to force compliance, that carrying firearms is prohibited. In coercively requiring us to disarm, the government intentionally handicaps our ability to effectively and reasonably protect ourselves.

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Wisconsin Democrats Fight to End Campus Carry for Self-Defense

Wisconsin Democrats, led by state Sen. Kelda Roys (D), are pushing a ban that would end licensed concealed carriers’ ability to be armed for self-defense on college campuses.

On September 4, 2025, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Daily Cardinal reported on Roys’ proposed ban, noting that it would “make it illegal for anyone — including those who have concealed carry licenses — to possess a firearm anywhere on university or college property.”

Roys commented on the ban, saying, “When people have unfettered access to firearms, we can’t live free from the fear of gun violence.”

She did not point to any gun crime committed on campus by a licensed concealed carrier.

It is worth noting that the ban would exempt police officers, although police have historically been convicted of gun crimes at a higher rate than concealed carry permit holders.

On May 27, 2017, Breitbart News pointed to data John Lott drew from concealed carry permit revocations and quoted him: “Permits have been revoked for firearms-related violations at rates of thousandths of one percentage point. Civilian permit holders are less likely than police officers to be convicted of a firearms violation.”

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Scottish Girl Arrested For Using Knife And Axe To Ward Off Migrant Stalker

The systematic and engineered destruction of Europe through “multicultural” invasion is heartbreaking to watch.  It is clear, beyond any doubt, that this program spearheaded by progressive politicians (and fake conservative politicians) is designed to crush the spirits of predominantly white, native born citizens still retaining a sense of national pride and cultural heritage.  That is to say, they have become the targets of a government funded terror campaign to subjugate the west.

Starting around 2014, millions of third world migrants have been allowed to flood into Europe’s borders, often encouraged by globalist NGOs, the UN and leftist political leaders within the host countries.  The effects of this decade long campaign have been devastating. 

Violent crime has skyrocketed and migrant “grooming gangs” have spread, targeting underage girls for sexual exploitation.  Rape has become a common problem, which local governments have chosen to ignore.

Just this week an American man visiting Dresden, Germany was stabbed in the face while bravely preventing two migrants from assaulting a pair of women on a tram.  One of the man’s attackers, a Syrian refugee, was arrested by police and then immediately released by prosecutors back onto the streets.

And so the story is repeated, over and over again.  European elites invite third world migrants, largely military age men, into their borders in the name of progressive multiculturalism.  The migrants then attack the native population because their culture tells them Europeans are cattle to be farmed.  Whenever a European dares to speak up or defend themselves, they are slapped down by officials or arrested.  The population slowly becomes apathetic, passive and easier to control because they have no recourse but silence.

At bottom, the migrants are merely an ugly symptom of a bigger disease; the source of the problem is the political oligarchy that is facilitating the multicultural agenda.

Yet another example occurred in Scotland this week with the arrest of a 14-year-old girl who went viral on social media after defending another girl from a migrant man stalking them on video.  The teen can be seen pulling out a kitchen knife and a hatchet and screaming at the man to leave them alone. 

She warns the migrant man “Don’t touch my sister, she’s fucking 12…” 

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Canadian man ARRESTED for assaulting intruder during home invasion

A confrontation inside a Lindsay apartment early Monday left one man in hospital with life-threatening injuries and another facing assault charges, according to police.

The Kawartha Lakes Police Service said the incident took place at an apartment on Kent Street shortly after 3 a.m. Officers were called after a resident reported confronting an intruder inside his home, reports CTV News.

Investigators allege the resident, a 44-year-old Lindsay man, attacked the 41-year-old intruder, leading to what police described as an “altercation.” The intruder was later airlifted to a Toronto hospital with serious injuries.

Following an investigation, police charged the resident with aggravated assault and assault with a weapon.

The owner of the house, whose name is Jeremy, according to journalist Ezra Levant, has “launched a petition to strengthen the ‘castle doctrine’ in law.” The man’s lawyer will also be crowdfunded.

The man accused of breaking into the apartment is also facing charges. Police say he was already wanted on unrelated matters at the time of his arrest. He has now been charged with break and enter, possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose, and two additional offences.

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