The Will Smith Apology
Listen to "The Will Smith Apology: A Difference of Opinions" on Spreaker.
Watch Will Smith’s apology here.
Read Chris Rock’s indirect response to that apology here.
Note: The text below represents the transcripts for this episode.
This is not the normal kind of podcast that I do. For those new to the show, I normally focus on small town crime, but I was so heated after I saw Will Smith’s indignant ass roll up on stage and assault Chris Rock that I decided to break ranks. I had a conversation with a friend of mine the day after Smith slapped Rock at the Oscars. I never published it in full - just snippets. And I used it to spark some responsible debates about whether men should be expected to defend their women in today’s society and so on. So, I’m gonna go ahead and publish that conversation along with this news that Smith apologized yesterday, because I think it’s relevant now even more than when I first recorded it.
So, obviously today’s talk is going to be about Will Smith’s public apology. If you haven’t seen this, I’ll publish a snippet of the audio, and let you go find the full thing for yourself on his Instagram account.
Now, this is pretty personal to me, because I've been publicly verbally accosted by a friend of mine in the past. I know that’s not the same as being slapped by a guy who thought I was attacking his wife. But I think principally the example is still on par with what’s expected of men these days.
So the situation was this…
He slandered me in public, and I gave no response. In fact, after he'd gotten the attention of the entire bar, I announced I was going to take a piss and left him standing there in a hushed room with all the eyes on him.
What I should have done, and what I would have done if I'd had the opportunity to relive that moment, would have been to point out that he was a grown man screaming at another man in a bar and making a fool of himself. I would have said that the minute we can no longer just talk about things and resort to shouting matches, we are limiting how other people can approach us. And there should be no subject out of bounds for discussion. Because when discussion stops, battles begin. And if discussion never picks back up, those battles turn into wars.
Later, when I saw Charles the next morning, he apologized. I thanked him for his apology in the same breath that I acknowledged that it takes a certain kind of man to afront someone in public and apologize in private. He was not pleased. But deep down, he knew that was because I was right.
But this is probably what I like about the Will Smith apology to Chris Rock. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that I believe Will Smith to have been sincere in his apology. He was not acting. And I think the world got a real visage into the private thoughts and mannerisms he uses in his private world, with his family and friends.
I think he went a little overboard a couple times, when he apologized to Jada and his family members. Because, surely they've been given an apology already. If he's sitting there on a national broadcast prepared to answer for his actions, he's likely also had that conversation by that time. But that's just speculation on my part, so that, too, could have possibly also been genuine.
I'll say that I was not on Will Smith's side at the beginning. And technically, I'm not on his side now. Because even in the wake of an apology, it doesn't change what he did. In the end, however, he did something that even my friend Charles, couldn't and didn't do. He publicly apologized. And it seemed to me that he was being honest.
Now, whether or not that honesty was generated as a result of losing millions of dollars on lost movie deals and generally living like a hermit for fear of the public backlash he would have received for going out, remains to be seen.
I don't know. I don't know what his motivating factors are. I can say that it took him a helluva long time to own his shit. And frankly, he did not look too apologetic that very same night when he was dancing and singing, waving his award around at the Academy Awards. And, I guess in that case, I have to give him credit for owning his shit at all, since, if that backlash had never come, we might never have seen him appear to do this.
But I'll play that clip now, and then move on to the conversation my friend and I had about the original incident.
Now, here’s the chat I had with my friend about the original incident.
AR-15 Used in Neighborhood Shooting
In Clayton County, Georgia, the legal owner of an AR-style rifle fired more than a dozen rounds at three local thugs who were attempting to break into his BMW, after successfully stealing another gun out of his truck.
The reason this story is so important in today’s media frenzy over AR-15s and AR-style semi-automatic rifles, is that they’re effective at killing a lot of people. And it’s for that reason that crazy people, people in crisis and criminals, choose this weapon to fire into crowds and do horrible things.
The Woke media, and of course, the Left says there’s no need for a rifle that shoots 30 rounds. That’s the trouble when you have three thugs with 10 rounds each in their guns. When you run out, and you’re hiding behind your car, they know it. And they’ll come assassinate you, rape your wife, probably kill all your children - because, who needs witnesses), and burglarize your house before burning it to the ground on their way out.
These three thugs came armed, they were coordinated, they fired at Smith without provocation, and they certainly meant to stick around had he not fired back. And if he had been armed the way Democrats wanted him to be, which is without an AR-15 that has the capacity, the accuracy, the reliability and the portability to get him out of that situation safely, there’s no telling what would have happened. Instead, no law-abiding citizens were injured, and the day was won by the way of the gun. And that’s what we are in this country. Like it or not, this country was not founded on god or empires. It was founded on guns.
Before I get too far into this story, I want to first say that this is what I call a real man. He’s a veteran of the Afghanistan war, he’s a law-abiding gun owner, he was prepared and combat ready to take out the thugs that were trying to violate his rights and steal his property. He protected his home, his family and his property. And the unlawful abusers of gun laws making it hard for everyone else, will be thinking twice before making their way through his neighborhood again.
Witfield Smith saw the assailants approaching his car sometime in the evening of June 5, one armed with a pistol. What he couldn’t see on his cameras were the other criminals, dressed in hoodies and breaking into his other vehicle - a truck - and stealing a gun that he had stored inside.
If you hear this story on CNN or NPR, I will give you a crisp $100 bill. Why? Because this is how AR-15s are used in America thousands of times more often than they’re used by psychotic criminals to shoot up 4th of July parades. This man is alive, his family is alive, and frankly his neighbors are now safer because Fox 5 News broke this story of a small town hero.
They’re safer because AR-15s and combat style semi-automatic weapons don’t run out of bullets when three pieces of shit are stealing your property and shooting at you with 8-15 rounds in each of their guns. This, if anyone from the left is listening, is why you need a weapon that shoots more rounds than theirs do.
It appears by the security camera footage that several black males, who were also wearing hoodies, congregated in the street as a car drove by, and then broke off into the lawns along the street.
The crooks must have seen Smith approaching, and opened fire on him, firing dozens of rounds at him, many hitting his car. As he fired back, he ran backward toward his house, where he grabbed more ammunition, and then returned to the yard to see if they were still in the area. Thankfully, he was not injured in the event. There’s no word yet on whether or not the thugs were shot. Hopefully they bled out on the way home.
After the shootout, it appears that the criminals went to other houses and attempted to go inside to escape what they found out was absolutely the wrong house to rob, but were unsuccessful. It may be that the assailants were on foot, or that their getaway driver actually had a brain, ditched his friends and drove off.
The funny part about the surveillance video is that, when Smith first emerged he was in his PJ bottoms and flip-flops. But he was cocked and locked. He actually lost his shoes as he was backpedaling to his house. But when he re-emerged he was fully dressed, with a fresh clip.
This means that Smith went into his house after being fired at with a volley of pistol rounds, dropped his clip, reloaded, threw on pants and a shirt, and headed back into battle for more. That, if nothing else, is what makes this man a total hero.
I gotta say, I love that intro by the reporter on the scene. Eric Perry said, they flat out picked the wrong home to burglarize.
Okay, so a few of those shots in his car were actually from his own shots as he more or less panic-fired without really aiming.
His truck was hit as well. On the video, where he represented where the thugs were using his truck as cover.
So, I wanted to give a warm and hearty thanks to Whitfield Smith for his service, and for being a total badass who refused to let these idiots take advantage of him.
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Two Hero Women Save Lives, Take Out Attacker
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Note: This article contains the research, the audio transcripts, and the recording notes for the podcast of this article.
In another story I'm insanely happy to report on, two women gun owners have not once this week, but twice saved lives by shooting and killing deranged assailants who clearly intended to unveil carnage. You probably won't hear about those stories on the anti-2nd Amendment media channels, however, but you will hear it here, where we actually have the balls to defy the woke zombie hoards.
Two women made waves this week with their heroism in the face of violent threats. I’ll break these two stories down individually.
In a case that's just as important to those hoping for more gun control as those who support deregulating gun sales in America, a hero is likely to go unsung in headlines around the country.
This particular hero was a woman who chose to go unnamed in the news covering the incident where she saved countless lives before a shooter could even injure a single bystander.
It all happened at a graduation party in Charleston, West Virginia, when a man named Dennis Butler reportedly appeared with an AR-15 style and started firing into the crowd, which included students and their families. The unnamed woman who was lawfully carrying her pistol, fired on Butler before he was able to injure anyone at the event.
According to police who responded to the scene, Butler had not only been stopped in the area for speeding and given a warning that children lived in the apartment complex. He also reportedly had "an extensive criminal history."
Just looking at the list of news publications that covered this story, all that can be found on my initial search were Fox News, Breitbart, Yahoo, USA News, The Blaze, USA Today, and The Police Tribune. Everything else included local stations and independent pubs like blogs and syndicated digital rags. And of those major media outlets, all of them happen to be right-leaning publications that support and report on lawful gun ownership.
Nowhere to be found, however, were any reports of this story from NPR, CNN, Grist, The Intercept, FiveThirtyEight, Vox, Novara, HuffPost, The NYT - not even the AP. There were so many publications that refused to cover this story on the left side of the mass media divide that I will suffice it to say that the pattern is clear.
What is that pattern? Well, it's the same as the message: Lawful gun owners in this country stop deaths and violent crime.
Want another example? Awesome, because that's exactly where this story is going.
In a second story this week of a woman refusing to become either a statistic of violent crime, or another victim left behind the leftist agenda to keep America ignorant to instances of guns saving lives, ABC Action News reported that a home invader has been shot and killed.
A Clearwater, Florida woman woke up to find her 26-year-old neighbor, Justin Wright, in her bedroom. She claims that Write had broken into her house and began attacking her by the time she retrieved a legally-owned firearm and shot him
[Q&A audio]
For the full audio from the Q&A session with the police chief investigating the shooting, stay on after my outro and I'll include that on the podcast.
Obviously the emotional state of the victim in this case was of concern. It was asked about several times both by reporters at the Q&A with the chief presiding over the case, as well as on the scene when nearby residents were interviewed.
I don't recall ever hearing news reporters asking about the emotional state of men who shoot their intruders in their homes, but I'm sure that's just a simple flop on the media's part. I'm sure it has nothing whatsoever to do with the social expectations that men be emotionless soldiers in times like these.
Not to take this too far on a tangent, but I'm curious if women are finding that they're slightly offended at the notion that they are expected to be frail and soft, and it's a complete shock when they kill a home invader. Or if they're at all shocked that the reverse expectation is true of men who undergo the exact same scenario.
Just food for thought. But I think we should be applauding all the efforts of all those who defend themselves and their neighbors and loved ones, and caring for the stability of everyone in the aftermath of such situations equally.
Call me crazy, I guess. It's just something I noticed. I hope you did too, since I'd like to think that you're all very critical media consumers that think for yourselves, rather than letting mass media at large do your thinking for you.
Also, you may find another thing interesting about that Q&A with the chief that I’m stitching onto the end of this podcast: I never heard the chief mention the race of the suspect.
And what’s even more surprising, no one from the reporter’s pool asked that question either. In fact, there were no questions about the man’s description at all - how tall he was, if he was a small man who wasn’t able to handle himself in the scuffle; whether or not he was a large man, and therefore more questions might have surfaced about any serious injury to the woman.
Even though the perpetrator has a criminal history in other states, as confirmed by the police chief, there are also no mugshots of that man on the news report.
One thing you’ll benefit from knowing about the video taken from the neighborhood where this took place, is that every resident in the area recorded for the report happened to have been black.
There were also several questions that might have eluded to the man’s motivations in the breakin - say, a sexual motivation, or perhaps a burglary. And yet, still, no mention of race.
Those of you who have heard my reports in the past, know that I’m not trying to spark an anti-race sentiment in these stories, but rather an ethical journalism debate. Ask yourselves the following question,
When the public is forced to do their own research, including filing public records requests, to find out all the details of the news that affects them in their areas, history has proven that the vast majority of people simply won’t make the effort. But that’s the job of the media in the first place. So, why have we started reporting stories that only report the facts that support a woke narrative?
Okay, that’s my soapbox for the ethical journalism debate. But let it be known that I’m extremely proud of this mystery woman who stood up and shot this man to protect herself, while exercising her Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. She should be applauded, no matter her race, and technically also no matter her gender. But I’d still like to see more cases where women like her show the country why private gun ownership is still important.
Additional Win in Women Saving Lives This Week
And since I’m celebrating great women doing good things in the world, why not celebrate the valiant efforts of another?
[Drowning audio here]
This time, a Latina swimming coach from Team USA, dove in to rescue a female artistic swimmer by the name of Anita Alvarez, who fainted in the last half of her performance, and sank to the bottom of the pool in front of a live, viewing audience.
According to a statement by her coach, this was not the first time that the two-time Olympian had to be rescued from fainting in the water. The last time took place at the Olympic qualifying event in Spain.
Probably the most compelling part of this story, however, were the photos that emerged. Just looking at them, they are both heartbreaking and sobering at the same time. You’re basically looking at a woman who looks like she’s died, but in the stillness and buoyancy of the water, the true, lifeless form of the human body can be seen in its full glory.
There are several links in the article to this podcast where you can find those photos, as well as to an interview with the man who took them. Very interesting story there.
Also, just an FYI, this story was plastered all over NPR and HuffPost, whose coverage of female heroes, and even trans-swimmers, is quite present on the web.
Ahh, balanced journalism at work.
That's it for This Week in Guns. Be sure to let me know what you think about this new segment by finding my contact details in the show notes. And also be sure to keep listening after the outro to hear Police Chief Slaughter's Q&A with the reporters about the harrowing story of a female gun owner who ridded the world of another scumbag who had no business breathing your air.
UPDATE: There's been a development in the story of the Butler killing - Even though it was finally covered days late by a handful of left-leaning news publishers, Butler's photo was never posted with the story. LIN learned just this morning that there is only one source for Butler's photo, which was only available via the Twitter Original Post. When his race was revealed to be black, it drew some questions into why WBRZ refused to report on that aspect of the story.
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Chicago PD's New Policy to Help Curb Police Shootings
In an NBC News report that came out the day after the conference that revealed the new rule, "Officers won’t be allowed to chase people on foot if they're suspected of minor offenses such as parking violations, driving on suspended licenses or drinking alcohol in public."
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The jury's still out on whether or not this means that people stopped for these offenses will now take it upon themselves to sprint in the other direction to avoid being charged for a crime. But for now, I think this has been enacted to avoid travesties that are already taking place.
Let's face it, just like any other rule that has gaping potential for loopholes, these loopholes will be exploited. It comes back, however, to what's better for public good in terms of citizens dying as a result of outmoded police policies regarding the use of force.
I'm not sure where I land on the city's decision to enact this policy. But I can say that Chicago has routinely made bleeps on my radar when I've looked into violent crimes over recent years. Specifically, Chicago has extremely tight gun laws that might prohibit normal citizen's ability to defend themselves in a city where homicides are among the highest in the nation.
In fact, in just the first month of 2016, 316 homicides were reported, many of which were the result of gun violence. But New York City, which is three times its size, had 244 homicides for the first six months of the same year.
Whatever the case happens to be, I'm sure we'll see a lot more statistics coming out of the Midwest's largest city as this policy is put to the test.
The policy was apparently long-awaited, by the way, and has been the subject of some hot debate in recent months by Chicagoans demanding a change to police activities that have allowed so many police involved killings. In fact, it’s both inspired from, and very closely aligned with, an earlier draft of the measure, which the AP reports, “Among its rules, the new policy prohibits foot pursuits for minor traffic violations, bars officers from separating from partners if they can’t see the suspect they’re chasing, or if the officer or the suspect is injured. Under the new policy, the chase must end if the officer has lost track of their location or their surroundings, if there is too great a distance or too many obstacles between the officer and the suspect they are chasing, and if they will not be able to control the subject of the chase in a confrontation.”
Stick around after the break, where I’ll be talking about a Texas gun store robbed at knifepoint, which is just as funny as it sounds, and what has turned out to be a huge week for women in the world of gun rights.
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Heard's Birds are Flying the Coop of #MeToo
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Once again, social media has proven that people care more about trash like Johnny Depp and Amber Heard than political chaos, eroding currency, and the state of the nation.
And even that set of catastrophic topics still takes a backseat to the melodrama unfolding in the wake of the Depp v. Heard trial in Virginia, where we're seeing an overwhelming pattern emerge. And, no, I'm not talking about Amber's near constant reputational beatings on social media (though, that's an undeniable pattern, too). I'm talking about the women who have come out and distanced themselves from the toxic #MeToo movement.
In two recent New York Post articles (here and here), Ben Kesslen cites the most biting of social feeds that include the likes of Meghan McCain and other once-leaders in the movement, saying things like “#MeToo is dead, and “Helluva Job @ACLU.”
This last quote was an obvious stab at the liberal leaning civil rights institution that helped craft the op-ed in the Washington Post that got Heard Sued in the first place.
Both the ACLU and Amber Heard have become relatively hated sources of deflated gusto in the wake of the decision by seven Virginia jurors to find Heard culpable in the case that awarded Depp $15M in damages.
And who can blame them? Why would anyone want to go down with the sinking ship?
But here’s the thing: If you Sh*t in your partner’s bed and then get caught falsely claiming to be the victim, disappear. Just stop showing your face on TV. Close your social media accounts. Just go hide in your mother’s basement until the storm blows over. Who knows - we may just see a few more Harvey Weinsteins emerge and reinvigorate the movement.
Until then, I have to ask, ‘Why is Amber Heard still doing interviews?’
While the Depp v. Heard trial has trained the eyes of everyday viewers on the shit-show we call mob rule, the #MeToo movement has solidified its failed attempt to be anything other than a soapbox demonstration to bash men.
But if there’s any good news for one demographic of the world, it's that it’s taught famous people something very different.
That’s right. While most of us poor people are sitting jaw-dropped at the feces-flinging circus that has become our court system, the elites of the world are sitting jaw-dropped for a very different reason. And that reason has them piling through their memories, their social media and probably even their background checks in a frenzied scramble to pluck any evidence of horrible things they’ve done to their past partners.
It's also rightly scaring the shit out of anyone in Hollywood that's ever had a drunken night they don't remember. Because there were always people around who do. And if ever there's a divorce, or defamation suit, or custody battle, all their ugly, bed-shitting, bottle-chucking, abuse-fallacies will be revealed.
And if this trial has proven anything outside of the fact that Amber Heard and Johnny Depp are both alcoholic scumbags, it’s that the world will show no mercy, no sympathy, and no quarter to famous people who lie and cheat, and claim to be the victim.
In yet another movement on the continuing saga, the former couples’ Hollywood friends are backpedaling in the wake of the hearings, going from their automatic acceptance that Heard’s accusations were true of Depp, and jumping on the MeToo bandwagon.
[Heard trial audio]
That was Depp’s former attorney in closing statements to the jury, pointing out somewhat prophetically that Heard was giving the performance of a lifetime on the stand. I say prophetic here because only just last week she appeared on an interview with NBC’s Savannah Gutherie, in a very unconvincing presentation renewing her claims of abuse.
I just picture Heard standing in front of the mirror, as actors do, and does the whole “deep breath centering technique to clear the mental cache of distractions,” and asks herself, “Okay, what’s my motivation? My motivation is to get $100M from Johnny Depp - the biggest score of any acting gig I’ll ever get.”
But the jury didn’t buy her particular brand of acting on the bench throughout the trial, and, as we all know, is now being forced to pay Depp $15M, which, even after her appearances on major recent blockbusters, she has since said she does not have to give.
In an almost equally unconvincing display of bad acting, Drew Barrymore was seen on Instagram apologizing for criticizing Depp in a former statement that she made.
[Barrymore audio]
But she’s not alone. In the midst of the trial, feminists rallied behind Heard, fomenting the statement, “Believe all women,” eluding to the notion that all women should be believed, regardless of any outcome in court, and no matter what it does to the credibility of the men they accuse.
Referencing this statement on his Ego Death world comedy tour, Chris Rock chanted as if joining the anti-male protesters, “Believe all women. Believe all women. Believe all women. Except Amber Heard.”
The list of celebrities that have jumped ship from Heard’s expectation of solidarity in her claims, is both long and extensive, and includes Ireland Baldwin, who condemned Amber Heard as a “terrible person” during the recent trial, Joe Rogan, who spent a huge chunk of a recent podcast discussing how America is “seeing all the crazy come out” in Heard’s performance, and Bill Burr, who, before the trial was over, said he hopes people will apologize to Depp after he’s cleared his name.
Other stars that chimed in on Depp's defense include Eva Green, Jennifer Anniston, Kate Moss, Howard Stern, and Rob Schneider. And still others, like Ellen Barkin and Julia Fox, are now catching massive amounts of shit for their support of Amber Heard.
But I suppose now they share Depp’s intimate knowledge of what Amber Heard’s shit actually smells like.
I’m so glad that the trial is over, so it will stop dominating the headlines. I know that this is a big loss for the neo-feminist agenda, which is good, and that it’s a big win for men’s rights when it comes to false accusation. But I actually lost a lot of respect for Johnny Depp during the trial. What little of it I could stomach in the weeks that it stole America’s attention away from things that actually matter in the world, I learned so much more about Depp than I ever wanted to know.
Namely, I learned that Depp is just a junkie. Or maybe just one step above a junkie. His alleged use of cocaine and constantly being high, their constant drinking - the only difference between Johnny Depp and my alcoholic, junkie neighbor down the street, is that my neighbor gets up every morning and goes to a job.
If Depp didn't have hundreds of millions of dollars in the bank, he’d have long since run out of money by now keeping himself tanked on foreign substances. And I’m not actually even blaming Depp. The man is free to do, in his private life, whatever the hell he wants. My greater concern is that people around the world idolize him and his lifestyle.
When there are hero scientists scientists out there curing diseases, and brilliant physicists plotting the future inhibition of Mars, and would-be leaders out there pioneering new, green sources of energy that promise to clean up our air and our oceans, and yet we swoon these junkies - we give more of our attention to these two idiots who get paid to lie in front of cameras for an extraordinary amount of money.
There are so many more important things that America exports other than pants-off-the-ass, hip hop culture, and drunk millionaires in the throes of a grudge match. If we celebrated people making real and positive changes in the world, rather than just people making money, we’d be experiencing such a better quality of life.
We’d see Space-X and NASA with all the funding it needed to find other worlds and connect with other civilizations. We’d see an effort to contain and exploit fission-fusion energy that would solve everything from transportation impasses to energy crises. We’d see focus diverted to people working to end world hunger, and create a world education fund, and criminalize global corruption, and hold corrupt leaders to account, and on and on and on.
And I realize that I just got done writing an article and making a podcast about the very thing that I’m claiming we shouldn’t be paying any attention to. But there’s more to this trial than two Hollywood elites flinging shit at one another.
There is a men’s rights issue at play here that’s gone sorely unnoticed in the courts. Women automatically get custody of kids, women consistently get lighter sentences for the same crimes as men, courts rule in favor of women in the vast majority of criminal cases and on and on and on.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t plenty of men out there that need to be thrown in jail for being exactly what neo-feminists say they are. But this doesn’t mean that there aren’t plenty of women out there falsely accusing men, and abusing the court system to enact spite and vengeance. And the minute we stop accepting the narratives that woke virtue hounds engender and pipe into the cultural narrative, is the minute we start waking up and just treating people as the individual cases that they are.
When we see a victory for Johnny Depp, who’s had to live under a false narrative on the world stage for several years, and it’s still being hailed as a total miscarriage of justice by the woke feminists of the world, this is what it’s like for men who speak out for men’s rights, and for men who dare defend themselves against false accusations in the courts.
And that’s because when people speak out about men’s rights, they’re simply beaten down as wife-abusing, Cromagnon machismo assholes. We’re lumped together as neanderthals without the conscious ability to NOT rape and sexually assault every woman who crosses our path.
It’s an uphill battle for men to get justice in the first place. And when a dozen jury members announce that they unanimously found that Depp was the victim of abuse at both the hands and verbal assaults of Amber Heard who’s been enjoying the benefits of that narrative in her career, we should realize a lot more about this trial than two rich assholes having temper tantrums.
We should clue in on the notion that woke ideologies are not doing anyone any good.
The Killing of Michael Trappett
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In an incident of clear mental illness, where Police should never have been called to the scene, a Lewiston, Idaho man has become another in a long line of victims to meet his maker at the business end of a service weapon.
Before I get too far into this story, I am not alone in my opinion that police are ill equipped to respond to calls of mental patients in crisis. Major networks like USA Today, The Atlantic, the Baltimore Sun, The Hill, and groups like the Social Welfare Action Alliance, the Steinberg Institute, the Sheriff’s collective at Sheriff's.org, and even the ACLU, have all come out asserting that law enforcement should not be the first response to mental health crises.
The research is so overwhelming that many dispatch departments in cop shops around the country are even starting to ask about mental health in the initial emergency calls. If you learn nothing else from today’s talk, please come away with this: never call the police as a first response to someone you know experiencing a mental health crisis.
The Treatment Advocacy Center and the journal, Medical Daily, both did a study on police shootings, and found that sufferers of mental illness are 16 times more likely to be shot by law enforcement. Just let that sink in as we talk more about this tragic case.
That study was used in an article in Time Magazine that did a great job of bringing forth a lot of alarming statistics. If you have a mentally ill family member, I strongly suggest reading the article. It’s linked in the Masculist.net article of the same name as this podcast.
So, let’s get into the story.
According to NBC News, the family of Michael Trappett called 911 for assistance in dealing with a mental health crisis unfolding at their residence in Clearwater County.
A Bodycam video was released of the incident. And at the very beginning of that video, Trappett can be heard telling the officers to just shoot him.
[just shoot me]
Deputy Randall Carruth can then be heard making no attempts at de-escalating the matter, while pointing his gun at Trappett.
He admits that he and his partner did not want to shoot Trappet, but then very loudly and aggressively orders Trappet to stay away from windows and to put the knife down.
Mental health professionals like those suggested at the National Alliance on Mental Illness, who are more equipped than police to handle mental health patients, know that the last thing that's effective in confrontations with mentally ill patients in crisis is to point weapons at them while screaming at them.
[shooting]
After what sounded like nine shots fired at the suspect while he was attempting to run away from the deputies, Trappett can be heard crying just before dying at the scene.
[crying]
With an unfortunately coincidental name in relation to the matter, Deputy Brokop, who was the female law enforcement officer that apparently fired her weapon first, was also the first to admit that she'd be losing her weapon.
A woman related to the victim then could be heard pleading with police to let her out, before asking police why they shot her family member.
[why did you do that]
Then, for the remainder of the time they're standing over the gunshot victim, deputies Brokop and Carruth can be heard lamenting the possibility that they will lose their service weapons, also indicating that this was not the first time.
[I'll lose my service weapon again]
Then, for at least two more minutes, instead of enacting life-saving efforts for Trappett, the two deputies can be heard talking about the process that follows a shooting.
[shooting process]
What you don't hear these officers talking about is their several weeks of training to deal with mental illness calls. You don't hear that because most police are not trained in how to deal with mental illness, let alone differentiate between a legitimate threat versus a manic depressive who just wants to commit suicide by cop.
In the video from Caruth's bodycam, just before the shooting, Brokop can be seen approaching the victim quite fast after he took several steps back from the deputies.
It's hard to imagine that Brokop, who also shot another man in 2020, had any ability to fire with any consistent aiming, given the quick succession of bullets. It should also be noted that the incident took place in what appears to be a tightly packed neighborhood full of nearby homes.
[Bullets being fired]
According to Justin Nix, a professor of criminology at the University of Nebraska Omaha, this was the absolute wrong move for the law enforcement officer to make, stating “It happens enough — officers rush in and make poor tactical choices... They have to shoot their way out to protect themselves.”
Based on the short time frame it all went down, the relatively tight space of the location between the house and the garage, the very few attempts made by the police to de-escalate the conflict, and the very few seconds between the time the video starts and Trappet is seen dying in his driveway, I might agree with that statement.
But this is not just a story of officers being overzealous in stressful situations. Almost all officers are overzealous in stressful situations. I think most people would be very apt to shoot first and ask questions later if they assumed they could die in incidents like these? And that’s the problem. They don’t know what the threat level is, because they have no training in mental health crises.
It's a situation where police officers should have simply never been called. In addition to their lack of training, police are even less equipped to make judgment calls in situations where their duty is to protect themselves first.
While there was no previous footage from their body cams available on news sources I searched, their mere presence at the scene likely did much more harm than a mental health professional that may have been familiar with Trappett and his particular condition.
We've been drip-fed the compulsion to call the police in every single instance where we don't like what's happening. And Trappett's death may have been avoided if the approach of our families and communities was not to first think to call the police.
My advice in nearly all situations involving people experiencing mental health crises is never to call the police as a first line action. In fact, the only time anyone should ever call the police when dealing with a mentally ill suspect, is when that suspect is actually endangering someone's life and safety.
In this instance, yes, Trappett was carrying a knife. But he only brought out the knife after the police arrived on the scene, and after they had already been pointing their guns at him. It cannot just be assumed that he was threatening anyone in the home unless they specifically state that to police before they arrive.
Depending on the community, there should be resources available that do not involve bringing armed people trained in increasingly militant procedures to a scene where no armed conflict currently exists.
If you have someone in your family who's mentally ill to the point that they have the history or potential of becoming threatening to the safety of others, you need to find your local resources who can respond to incidents like the one that ended in Trappet's death.
We should care enough about our loved ones to create a plan in the event of a crisis. This should include leaving the scene if possible, and taking any young children and other vulnerable people away from the suspect.
Calling the police should be our absolute last resort in most cases - and most especially in cases involving the mentally ill.
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Two Big Gun Changes, One Fateful Day
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Note: this article contains the research links, audio transcripts and editing script for the corresponding podcast.
There's a brand new gun bill to have passed the senate floor, and as of this morning, was signed into law by President Biden. This bill comes in the wake of the Uvalde protests, which have more or less their own story behind them, considering the conspiracy-laden claims on how the police handled the matter.
[gun bill audio]
A good number of the voting Republicans have joined their Democratic neighbors across the aisle in Congress to pass a gun bill that is said to be the biggest in DC in more than three decades.
[gun bill audio]
The first reports coming out of DC are that the gun bill addresses what Texas Senator John Cornin calls, “common sense issues.”
[Gun_Bill_Signed_Biden - Cornin]
But what’s common sense to most people these days is largely what’s being fed to them as common sense by the media. So I’ll be taking a look at the bill itself and seeing if I can make any sense of it.
My first reaction, however, from the initial reports coming out are that the Red Flag laws are actually being supported. These are troubling laws that basically translate to someone being able to call in the name of any gun owner to police, who then have the right to come to your home and take your guns away without a warrant, without any adjudication in the courts, and therefore, of course, without due process. This is an unconstitutional law if I’ve ever heard one. But let’s move on to the other items it brings up.
The next is heightened background checks for mental illness, which I am in firm support of. It will be difficult to know right off the bat what the state defines as a mental illness that might prohibit gun ownership. As someone with a learning disorder, this is a little troubling that I could be lumped into a pile with people who have mental disorders. But I’m hopeful that this doesn’t include me.
The initiative also cites funding approvals for communities and schools. So long as this doesn’t mean a militant presence of militarized police forces in these areas, I’d say that’s a good idea as well. In fact, I’m in favor of armed neighborhood watch organizations, and even having community members do armed volunteer watches in their children’s schools with body armor, and radio dispatches to law enforcement and school administration.
While I’m certain funding is not appropriated in the bill for that kind of thing, I am more sure that it likely translates to just stationing more armed, uniformed people at these locations.
Then, of course, there is the increase in scrutiny for purchasing guns by age. The various researching agencies on gun violence have apparently found out that younger citizens are more likely to be involved in active shooter scenarios. And that part of the bill will hopefully address that concern.
I suppose this all remains to be seen, and I’ll be keeping an eye on that story as it evolves.
Perhaps the most contentious part of the bill that nearly shut it down was the language it included about a "boyfriend loophole."
[boyfriend loophole audio]
Leaving aside for the moment that calling it a boyfriend loophole, which assumes that men are the only abusers in domestic relationships, earlier attempts to to thwart this so-called loophole were all shot down because they bypassed another right that sets the American system of governance apart from other countries where basically anyone can make a claim about anyone else without a shred of evidence, and see that person thrown in jail or, in the case that democrats wanted to see happen, have someone's guns taken away - permanently.
[ALL DV'S HAVE GUNS TAKEN AWAY]
See how they're saying a "spouse or a boyfriend?" They want to permanently ban anyone's rights to possess a firearm. And in this case, since it's not called the "girlfriend loophole,” or the "domestic partner loophole," but rather the "boyfriend loophole," they're specifically targeting men.
The research is clear that both wives and girlfriends kill their significant others in huge numbers across the US. And in fact, according to the Office of Justice Programs within the DOJ, for every 100 men who killed their wives in the United States, about 75 women killed their husbands. A staggering statistic, when you consider that the left would have you believe that men kill women at a rate of 9:1. By the way most left media outlets are citing a very popular 2017 article in The Atlantic.
In fact, HuffPost tried to sneak one by its readers in their September 21, 2016 article that skewed data from a study by the Violence Policy Center, stating:
“The report found that in 2014, over 1,600 women were killed by men. The most common weapon used was a gun. During that same time period, there were only 15 instances of women using firearms to kill a man in self-defense. Let that sink in. Fifteen.”
In case you missed it there, they plucked one fact: that men killed women with guns. Then they plucked another fact: women used guns to defend themselves. Then they put these facts together, in a sentence that would have you believe that there were only 15 instances in the entire year of 2014 where women used guns the same way men did. I’ll read that again. This time, pay attention to the language.
“The report found that in 2014, over 1,600 women were killed by men. The most common weapon used was a gun. During that same time period, there were only 15 instances of women using firearms to kill a man in self-defense. Let that sink in. Fifteen.”
They’re not comparing two equal datasets. If they were, they’d be citing the number of times that both women and men used a gun to defend themselves. Instead, they’re citing the number of times women defended themselves against any attacker, with the number of times that any man used a gun to kill a woman.
They left out that finicky detail about how often women kill men outside of self defense. That number was quite different. In fact, I’m willing to be that it was not what HuffPost wanted to say, so they just conveniently left that detail out. But I’ll be happy to share that with you.
According to a study that I could not find on the free internet, but which I found on my paid subscription to LexisNexis, and which I will cite in the article for this podcast, the DOJ’s Office of Justice Programs report NCJ175688, from 1999, found that between 1976 and 1997 - a 20-year period - women killed more than 60,000 men. That's 3,000 men per year, and a little over eight per day on average.
Perhaps even worse than that was an FBI investigation that studied 10,000 familial murders - in other words, murders within the family. That study found that 41% of those charged were women. And that’s just charged with murder.
Now, I can cite statistics all day long that confound the leftist agenda on gun rights. I’m a journalism professor. I teach aspiring researchers all over the world how to read into the agenda of news, and find the right information from the most reliable sources. So, that’s what I decided to do for the podcast you’re listening to right now.
Suffice it to say, you’re being lied to by a woke media monster with a very limited scope of understanding for the ability of its audience to think critically, and for themselves. But that’s a podcast for another day.
To bring it back to the discussion at hand, obviously there was enough pushback from republicans that the various powers that be, agreed that the previous versions of the “boyfriend loophole” violated a number of rights, including the right to due process. That and the red flag gun laws, which are simply “boyfriend loopholes” that extend to non-domestic partners, will be an item many second Amendment supporters will want to watch for.
With all of that said, however, on the very same day that the gun bill was pushed forward, a longstanding unconstitutional gun law that's kept New York citizens unarmed in the face of steadily rising crime in recent years, has been dashed.
It’s a pretty big win for gun rights advocates in New York and all over New England states as well.
The law that's allowed many criminals to get away with carrying handguns and making ghost guns in New York, but which has also kept law abiding citizens to live in fear of those lawbreakers, has finally been shot down in a supreme court ruling last Tuesday.
Biden shot back pretty quickly, enforcing his stance on the Second Amendment, but he made no comment on the longstanding affects it’s had on citizens living and traveling in the American Northeast.
Even for anyone driving through New York with guns in their vehicles, criminal charges could be filed against them, and their property seized. And since New York covers the entire land-locked access from every state in New England to every other part of the country, that means every single driver who hopes to transport their guns between the two regions of the country are hindered under these laws.
According to Hudson Valley Criminal Law, it is illegal for anyone without a valid [New York gun permit] to transport a handgun, whether loaded or unloaded. And of course, according to New York’s lofty restrictions placed on those who apply for guns, you’re not only required to be a resident of New York, you’re also required to have or plan to open a business for which the gun permit application is being submitted.
So, it's not just New Yorkers that have suffered through that era of staunch anti-constitutional, anti-gun legislation.
The long outmoded law that the state government in New York has been relying on for violating the constitution's view of gun ownership for more than 100 years, was a 1913 ruling that required New York citizens to show "proper cause" in order to get a license to carry a gun in public spaces.
Since then, the requirements have steadily grown more robust as the years have past. At this point, according to ny.gov’s permit requirements, the list is as follows:
Must be a New York State resident, you must be 21 years old, you must have no prior felony or serious offense convictions (which can and has been opined in many ways to avoid approving permit requests). You must be of good moral character, which is also a matter of opinion. You must have a legally recognized reason for wanting to possess or carry a firearm, and you must [have, or] be ready to open the business for which the license is being applied.
Nevertheless, these requirements are about to change, since the Supreme Court’s decision was a 5-4 vote in the state legislature that the right to bear arms applied to New York under the 14th Amendment.
And for those of you wondering, the very first section of the 14th Amendment states, “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.” And it is for this exact language that I think that the New York Supreme Court’s decision will be used as precedent in other states.
But reeling it in for the purposes of the gun bill discussion, this new revelation for New York, which will almost assuredly have an impact on other states, is almost as momentous as the newest gun bill to be approved this morning. It's the first major Second Amendment decision from SCOTUS in more than a decade.
Even so, the New York Post reports that the Supreme Court’s decision on the matter is “disappointing,” quoting Mayor Eric Adams, who’s already fretting about how to ensure the city won’t become, as he put it, “the Wild Wild West” and promising to work “to limit the risk this decision will create.”
Perhaps the changes in the outdated New York law have come in light of surging gun violence throughout the state, and centering in the capital city. I’m thinking that because law abiding citizens have, for the last century, been abiding the law and even with that being the case crime has only increased, it may be time for another experiment: To actually abide by the constitution, and instead of gambling on the US government to protect us, we be trusted to protect ourselves.
This, after all was the entire point of ceding from the British Empire, which was clearly going to continue pinning us down under tyrannical rule. So, I say let the games of citizen ownership begin. Be careful, though, folks! There will be a lot of statistics coming out of this next era for New York. The left will undoubtedly be doing everything they can to skew the facts and scare the bejesus out of society so they can say, “we told you so,” and repeal this new, landmark decision.
And as this new flurry of news comes out, keep in mind that they also swept a glaring hate crime under the rug by a deranged man who clearly was not legally in possession of his guns when, just three months ago, he enacted carnage.
Don’t remember that? I’ll jog your memory. A 62-year-old black Pennsylvania resident named Frank James, boarded a subway and fired more than 30 rounds into the crowd, making contact with ten of those victims. And yet, instead of allowing the subway goers to arm themselves, New York’s antique laws made them sitting ducks.
James spent years posting racist material on social media linked to black identity extremist ideologies, including the Nation of Islam, Black Panthers, Black Liberation Army, BLM and an image of black nationalist cop-killer Micah Johnson. And instead of calling this what it was, which was a clearly racially motivated hate crime, New York insisted that it be called an act of terrorism.
[attack audio]
But Frank's attack was just one of nearly 10,000 violent crimes committed just so far this year in a crime wave that's being hailed as historical in New York State's lineage. The crime wave has drawn so much attention that it's the inspiration for a new plan rolled out just this week in an attempt to focus on the homelessness and violence in the subways and other areas of high crime.
ABC News did an in depth article on the suspected motivations for why more guns are being carried by citizens, and the relationship that has to do with an increase in gang violence and a decrease in police involvement. Much of this was policy-driven, since, in the wake of a spike in killings at the hands of police, people have gone from voicing concerns to all out rioting in the streets. Check the article for links to that and all other research I’ve done for this story.
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Update: News Slanders Father on Unfounded Rape Claim
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Note: this article contains the research links, audio transcripts and editing script for the corresponding podcast.
Today, we’re returning to a story that’s quickly developing and even more quickly grabbing headlines, as the melodrama created by Crystal Abelseth continues.
In a revelation of items on a renewed timeline of events that's surfaced after Abelseth sought news coverage, which caused the contentious story to go viral amid as-yet unsubstantiated claims of rape, Abelseth has emerged as a co-parent hosting what Barnes claims as a "revolving door" of gentlemen callers.
While sharing custody with Abelseth, Barnes claimed, "Men were coming in and out of my child’s life. She had three husbands in three years and it wasn’t healthy." He also claims that the courts have ruled that it violates a custody agreement that Abelseth has men over while the daughter is staying at her house.
This morning, Fox reported that it had received court records revealing that Abelseth not only kept the child’s identity a secret from Barnes for more than half-a-decade, she also pinned the illegitimate pregnancy on another man, a convicted felon named James Threeton. These records are reported to show that the child even bore Threeton’s last name and, at least for a time, referred to him as “daddy.”
While details are unclear as to the full length of their relationship experts at the BabyCenter say that babies are able to speak and understand one-word phrases at or after one year of age. So, it would appear that the Threeton was at least with Abelseth for that long.
But after several years in a contentious legal battle, during which time Abelseth allegedly muddied the waters by training their daughter that Threeeton was the child’s first father, and that Barnes was only the girl’s second, Barnes was understandably upset.
Rather than filing false charges against Abelseth, however, Barnes petitioned the court for a resolution to the matter - specifically requesting that Abelseth stop bringing his daughter to Threeton’s prison for visitation. The court sided with Barnes yet again, barring the child from having any contact with Threeton.
Though very few news agencies actually reported Barnes' side, the timeline of court rulings also reveals quite a bit more than was originally claimed by Abelseth, bringing questions into her very convenient and timely claims in the wake of losing those cases.
In 2012 Abelseth sued for child support and Barnes was ordered to pay her $450 per month. After this alleged series of custody violations by Abelseth that apparently spanned three years, Barnes successfully counter-sued Abelseth for sole custody of the child, citing Abelseth's then-affirmatively adjudicated court violations.
He also requested a financial assessment of Abelseth’s income, which Barnes alleged she was withholding to justify a lighter financial burden to Barnes and even avoid paying altogether. Barnes said Abelseth worked in cash industries to avoid taxable filings. In response, the courts ruled that Abelseth should be earning $80,000 with the master’s degree she’s apparently not making very good use of as a waitress.
The court also ruled that Abelseth be required to not only pay more to Barnes monthly, but also pay retroactive child-support.
Less than one month after that decision is when Abelseth's infamous rape accusation was filed. In the affidavit, Abelseth allegedly admitted to blacking out and waking up naked on Barnes' bathroom floor.
Abelseth appeared in an obviously edited and pre-recorded video released to Fox News, in which she pauses and stumbles over presumably coached language that unconvincingly avoids topics and phrases that might explain the questionable claims that she made in her initial report.
I reported on these questionable items in my last article on this story, so it’s worth noting that, since then, she’s decided to maintain the shadowy mystery concerning those questions.
Just watching Abelseth sitting next to her female advocate who's probably coached Abelseth on what to say in the video, you really get a better impression of Abelseth’s objectives. Here’s a woman who has so many felonious sexual partners that the court has had to intervene. She’s been caught in a year’s long lie that would have seen her daughter completely unaware of her father. And she’s lost case after case for her behavior.
Yet, here she sits, dressed very nicely, with very conservative, church-worthy clothing, with her hair and make-up flawless. And she thinks that because she’s landed the first few jabs on a man-bashing strategy to win a custody battle, that she’s going to come across as angelic and innocent. But the facts don’t tell that same story.
I think I should also point out, here, that she’s been wrapped up in this bitter feud with Barnes since 2005, and she’s consistently lost that battle primarily because of her own lifestyle. There’s no mention that Barnes does drugs or engages in a dangerous lifestyle, he was well over the drinking age when these two met at the bar, there are no reports coming out from any news sources that they’ve done a background check on Barnes and found out that he’s got some dangerous past.
They’ve apparently also been able to find out that he makes more than six figures annually, and that he’s been continuously employed for the entire time his daughter was alive. And the complete opposite is true of Abelseth.
And here’s the other thing: she’s only got two more years until the battle is over, because the child is now 16-years-old. When their daughter turns 18, there will be no more items to quibble over. So, my opinion is that Abelseth is trying to start a process that will see her child’s father in jail before the window closes on her opportunity to land the final blows.
Why else would she be so worried about it? Outside of the back-child support, she only owes Barnes $117 a month per her latest court ruling. So, if she really can’t financially hang on for just two more years, and if all the time that the courts have spent on the matter hasn’t proven to her that she’s not got the statistical probability of winning by now, the only reasonable victory that she can expect to take home from this experience is to destroy Barnes’ credibility and reputation in the court of public opinion. Because every woman knows that once a man is labeled a rapist, his reputation will never recover. It’s been proven time after time after time after (35) time(s).
And for those of you listening to this podcast, I implore you to read the article for this episode, where I cite these tragic cases.
But back to Abelseth’s video: Her advocate then jumps in and claims Barnes has engaged in an anti-American campaign in congress with the court system, to steal his daughter and literally get away with rape. It’s not enough that no one believes the decades-long series of lies that Abelseth has been spouting. Now they’re trying to wrangle in the conservatives on the claim that you’re unAmerican if you don’t believe her.
It should be noted that Barnes has apparently navigated the courts, cleared the sheriff's department, survived rape allegations to the police department, been given custody after Child Protective Services got involved, been cleared by medical examiners against rape allegations, successfully fought to keep his daughter away from the imprisoned felon that Abelseth kept bringing her to, and who knows what else he's had to do just to keep his daughter.
But I think he sums up the story best in his own words:
"All I have been trying to do is protect my daughter," Barnes told Fox News Digital. "There is no way in hell I have influenced seven very high-level organizations that are geared toward protecting children’s rights and safety into sweeping her claims of rape and child abuse under the rug."
He also told Fox News Monday in a separate interview and article, "It's a Lie. She was in a bar with a fake ID, telling everyone she was a college student. I had no idea she was 16, and I didn’t rape her. That is absolutely, unequivocally false.”
But even after all this, Abelseth is now claiming that Barnes has drugged and raped their teenaged daughter.
That’s right, the coninuing saga now includes yet another rape allegation against Barnes - this time Abelseth claims that the alleged rape occured between Barnes and his own daughter.
The allegations were filed in a February 21 affidavit signed by Abelseth, stating that Barnes had "drugged and sexually assaulted [their child] two nights in a row.”
She also cited her own alleged rape, stating, "I suspect drugs were used by him to sedate me as I was unable to move while he raped me. Now, it is alleged that he has committed the same heinous crime on our 15 year old daughter."
I can't find any reports prior to this February 2022 account where Abelseth had claimed he used drugs on her in their encounter 16 years prior. But in two pivotal actions since she filed her claims against Barnes in February, the courts have twice sided with Barnes.
The first of these actions was a restraining order Abelseth filed with the courts, which awarded her emergency custody of the child. Abelseth apparently dismissed the restraining order through her attorney, claiming to be home sick with the flu at the time of the hearing that would decide whether or not to continue the injunction.
On March 18, the second of these actions came in the form of a ruling that outright refused all criminal charges against Barnes, citing that "medical evidence does not support [the] allegations in [the] petition."
We'll be keeping an eye on this story as it unfolds. I really hope that the courts don't fold under the growing pressure from the liberal media that clearly wants blood for little more than accusations from a woman with a clear pattern of lies, court violations and very conveniently timed claims against Barnes that now span decades.
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News Slanders Father on Unproven Rape Claim
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Note: this article contains the research links, audio transcripts and editing script for the corresponding podcast.
In a very slanted and presumptuous story first reported by WBRZ news in Baton Rouge, LA, the news agency broadcasted statements which, even in the same broadcast, were proven to be slanderous against a father who's been cleared by the courts to have full custody of his child.
The story goes that a teenager named Crystal Abelseth, who lied to get into a bar when she was five years under the legal drinking age, met her child's soon-to-be father at the bar, became pregnant that night, and then hid the child from the father for more than a decade before the father found out. And when he did find out, he filed for custody and won.
In an apparent attempt to smear the father and reverse the court’s ruling, Abelseth has since claimed that the illigitimate child was the result of rape.
The headline of their story reads, "Secret documents ordered unsealed in RAPE case that saw victim pay child support to her ABUSER."
That headline is misleading on two counts. Firstly, the man they’re describing has only been alleged as a rapist. It’s not up to the public or the media to convict a man on charges of rape. That’s up to the courts, and this article proves precisely why.
Secondly, they call him an “abuser,” which also therefore claims physical assault. Even if he could be found guilty twice for the same crime, which he can’t, Abelseth never actually told any reporter from WBRZ that Barnes assaulted her. In fact, it’s just the opposite. She claimed what happened was simple rape, which was based on a statue of age restrictions for sexual consent.
[SIMPLE RAPE]
Instead of asserting that the father, John Barnes, was unaware of Abelseth’s age at the time they had sex, as well as his initiative to do the right thing, be a responsible father, and gain custody once he found out he had a child, they instead, without even a shred of physical or forensic or court evidence, automatically took Abelseth’s side, in a story they called…
[twisted story]
The reporter then says - again, without any evidence whatsoever other than the testimony of an admitted liar - a woman is raped (not alegedly rapted, but “raped”) and is now embroiled in a custody battle.
[woman raped]
Their only basis for allegedly slandering Barnes in this quote is Abelseth’s statement…
[He was 30]
Never in the entire coverage of the story does anyone from the newsroom or the scene of the interview, state that Barnes was never actually convicted of rape, and they also make no inference whatsoever that he even knew that Abelseth was underaged at the time.
This is clearly just another case where the news hears that a white male has raped a poor, helpless female, and conveniently forgotten about it’s ethical obligations to use words like “alleged” when things have never gone before the court; or to include statements like “it has not been proven,” and “this is all based on one woman’s claim.”
Instead, they hang a man out to dry on accusation alone, even going so far as to affirmatively state that the child was born of rape.
[child born of rape]
The report also failed to get the child’s opinion on the matter, which would undoubtedly shed the most light on the situation, since she lived with Abelseth and her various boyfriends for ten years, and was kept away from the father for the better half of her life.
As a result of WBRZ’s failure to report all the facts of the case, as well as to both broadcast and print unadjudicated claims without even so much as a legal assessment of the facts, the news agency is allegedly guilty of both slandering the man in their broadcast of the story, and libeling him in their headline.
The station took their failure even further when they refrained from later correcting the story to include that the claims have never been brought before the court. The closest they came to doing so was reporting that a new custody hearing was scheduled for some time in the future.
[new custody hearing]
One of the most important factors that a journalist is expected to report on is the timeline of events. WBRZ failed in every way to disclose Barnes’ placement along that timeline. They also completely glazed over the fact that by Abelseth’s own statements, she’s an admitted liar, that she’s kept the child from its father, and that it wasn’t until after she lost the child that she took any action against Barnes in the first place. Nothing says ulterior motives like a scorned woman who uses the courts to exact retribution.
These facts, if WBRZ upheld any notion of ethical journalism, would have all but cleared Barnes of any wrongdoing.
We can only hope that by the time his custody hearing goes to court, the judge will refuse to allow any media-influenced bias against Barnes, and he’s given a fair adjudication before the bench. I’m not holding out much hope, however, since public pressure against males in recent years has increased to the point that we basically have no voice in society anymore.
Let’s get into the facts a little deeper.
The first and biggest problem, as I just stated, is the giant, glaring detail that Abelseth is clearly a liar. She fully admits being in a bar at 16 years of age, which means she would have had to lie to get into the bar in the first place. She would have had to lie to the bartender to get drinks. And she would have had to maintain that lie while she was in the bar to not get kicked out. And if she was willing to lie to that extent, why would she then tell Barnes the truth that she was 16-years-old?
Let’s put this into a personal perspective. What would you do if you got into a bar at 16? Would you immediately start telling people the truth? I don’t think so. Not if you had any hope of getting away with it a second time.
Then, there’s this other very curious statement that she makes about her friend wanting to leave, but she wanted to stay.
[FRIEND WANTED TO LEAVE]
That statement by itself doesn’t necessarily conflict with the matter as a whole. But when you pair that with her other statement that when she did leave with Barnes she wanted to go home then.
In other words, her friend asked to leave, but on her own free will, and by her own admission, she wanted to stay with Barnes. The last time I was at a bar talking with two women and one chose me over going home with their friend, I naturally got the distinct impression that there was some chemistry. So she stayed there, she continued talking to Barnes, and she continued drinking.
If this doesn’t create an impression of wanting to have sex, I’m not sure what else does. I mean, in the dating world, that’s the literal lead-up of events that leads to getting lucky. But lucky was unfortunately the last thing that Barnes would end up being.
Nevertheless, this series of events also clears Barnes of forcing her to stay with him at the bar.
If that was the only part of her statement that conflicted, I’d say it would already be a hard case to prove in court. But that’s not the only conflict.
The second conflict is that she states, instead of bringing her home, he brought her to his house, where he raped her on the couch.
[INSTEAD OF BRINGING ME HOME}
Think about that situation for a second. If her statement is true, Barnes would have had to ask this girl directions to her house, correct? She doesn’t say he knew where she lived. So there would presumably have been some discussion that would’ve led Barnes to her house. That would have to mean that she was giving Barnes directions, and Barnes was physically driving away from that direction.
So, if her statement is true, and Barnes really did deviate from those directions, when Abelseth realized that he was driving to his house instead, why didn’t she say that she put up a fight? Where is her story of how that went down? Why is she not mentioning the bruises she had from fighting back from driving to his house?
In fact, Barnes would have presumably had to carry her kicking and screaming from his car to his house, where he would then have had to perform this alleged rape that she claims. Where is her statement about the cuts she received from clinging to the handrail and fighting against crossing the threshold of his front door? Where are the neighbors that must have heard the scuffle and came to her aid?
Then, when it was all done, Barnes still had to drive her home. And to be guilty of rape, he would have had to knowingly drop off a 16-year-old girl at her parent’s house that he just finished raping. This teenager would have been a mess. Her clothes would have been torn. Her hair would have been a mess. She might be missing a fake fingernail or two. How would he ever think it was possible to get away with that level of a crime if an actual rape did occur.
If he is this horrible monster that she’s claiming he is, why didn’t he just strangle her in his apartment, carry her body back through the neighborhood that apparently didn’t give a shit about the girl that had just gone into his house kicking and screaming moments before, and toss her off a bridge? At least then he wouldn’t have to worry about a pregnancy or going to jail for statutory rape.
I think the obvious answer is that he’s not a monster, that she deceived him like she did everyone else for years, and that they had consentual sex. After which point, Barnes did a nice thing of dropping her off at her house.
There are only two possible explanations for why WBRZ didn’t announce these conflicts in Abelseth’s statements. Either they purposefully refrained from reporting the conflicts, or they overlooked them, and are therefore no good at their job. And in neither of those cases does it look for WBRZ.
I’m betting that they knew very well that these conflicts existed, because, instead of calling Abelseth out on the fact that she’s a lying slut to begin with, they depict her decade of lies as a period of overcoming adversity.
[OVERCAME ADVERSITY]
But let’s get back to that fateful ride home.
if she didn’t put up a fight when he was driving away from the directions she was giving him, and she didn’t put up a fight when she somehow wound up in his house, and she didn’t put up a fight during sex, then how is it that she’s making any claims of rape in the first place.
Well, that’s just it. There was no time when she’s claiming she put up a fight. In fact, the only claim that she’s making that she was raped was that she was due to the fact that she was underaged.
[He was 30]
That’s it. She’s simply stating that he is statutorially guilty of raping her. And WBRZ just ate that right up.
[PROBLEM IS…]
Actually, the problem is that Barnes might not have even known!
This, of course, boils the entire situation down to a case between his word and hers. And I’ll be interested to see how that plays out in court, if it’s even accepted before the courts throw it out.
Logistically, the whole situation where Barnes supposedly dropped her off at her parent’s house makes no sense. There are too many gaps. And it also says nothing about Abelseth’s parents’ responsibilities.
In fact, where are they in all of this? Why are they not sitting alongside Abelseth as she makes these unadjudicated claims about Barnes from 16 years ago. That’s more than a decade-and-a-half ago, so her parents are sure to know quite a bit about this case. Are they not there because Abelseth spent two decades lying to them as well?
Are they not there because they don’t believe her? They are the child’s grandparents. Why were they not interviewed? They clearly share a family member with Barnes. Do they have a relationship with Barnes? Why did WBRZ refuse to even consider the idea that other witnesses close to the affair may have something to say on the matter.
But we’ll probably never know, so I’ll move on. After that, she admits that she lied about the pregnancy - a lie that she maintained for more than a decade before Barnes found out. The child was born in 2005, and yet…
[2011]
Instead of admitting that she’s a conniving, promiscuous reprobate that kept up this lie for so long, she says that everyone “thought it was just from a boyfriend,” and that she “just let them think that.”
[SHE LIED ABOUT THE FATHER]
Gee, another way to say this might be that she flat out lied to everyone she knew about an illegitimate child. I love that she paused before saying that she “just let them think that.”
[SHE LIED ABOUT THE FATHER]
You hear the pause there? That’s probably her cogitating on how to twist her lie into making people think that she’s an innocent victim of this monster who forced a baby into her.
Or perhaps she was coached by the other female in the interview, who also slandered Barnes without even a modicum of evidence.
[THE FRIEND]
The reporter also very unprofessionally slants the conversation by saying that everything was fine until Barnes found out.
[everything was fine until Barnes found out…]
The reporter for WBRZ neglects to put any emphasis whatsoever on the fact that the only time the matter has been to court, the judge knew that Barnes had empregnated an underaged girl, and adjudicated in his favor anyway.
[COURTS SIDE WITH BARNES]
They make him out to be a horrible person who was lying in wait to spring some trap on Abelseth. But the problem with this narrative is that he’s the one who gets trapped by outing himself as the father, and then signing himself up for even more responsibilities if he loses the custody case. And what did WBRZ’s detective work turn up to answer this question of why he would do this?
[GUMBO DIGITAL]
That’s right. Apparently, if you design the police department’s website, they love you so much that you can literally get away with rape.
With police officers, themselves, going to jail all across the nation for doing a helluva lot less than raping someone, I seriously doubt that an entire police department, the court system, the judges presideing over his case and everyone else along the way, would simply turn a blind eye to a child rape at the hands of a computer nerd.
But here we are, living under the web of lies that Abelseth wove to keep the child ignorant to the fact that it was not really fatherless. This lie also kept the child’s gainfully employed father ignorant of his daughter. And the basis for this is that he edits PD’s website, and so he obviously has immunity from sexual assault.
Then they go on to talk about DNA as if Barnes was trying to hide the fact that he was the child’s father…
[BARNES ADMITS DNA]
Let’s forget that WBRZ completely stepped over the fact that Barnes fought and won custody, during which time he would have had to admit being the child’s father, which further destroys the argument they’re making to influence the public to believe he was hiding. As soon as Barnes found out he was the child’s father, he actually stepped up and did the right thing.
Instead of reporting an unproven rape case, the news outlet could have reported on the guy that didn’t run from his fatherly responsibilities the moment he found out. They could have reported that this nation is full of single mothers and this guy steps up to the plate.
If Barnes was guilty, why would he voluntarily take a DNA test? Why would he seek out the attention of the courts to gain custody? Why has all of this been played above board? Why would he not simply pack up his life and move to a new state and avoid responsibilities and childcare costs and all the challenges that accompany fatherhood?
But WBRZ made no mention of any of these very contradictory items in the story. Nope. They did the very safe, the very common, and the very unoriginal thing by jumping on the rape-culture bandwagon, tied this man’s credibility to the stake and burned it in a public show of unbalanced journalism.
Why? Because that’s the narrative that the mass media wants America to think of white males in society today. Where we once lived in society as regular citizens, we’ve now apparently decided in the last few years that we should collectively just start raping and committing violent crimes in huge numbers that then overshadow all the other reports across mass media.
This, of course, flies in the face of the fact that she also never actually admits that she even told Barnes about the child. She specifically says, “when he found out…” Not, “when I told him.”
[When he found out]
This probably means that he investigated a rumor he heard through the grapevine. And in that case, Barnes is actually lucky that she didn’t wait until the child was 18 and hit him with two decades worth of back-child support all at once.
I think Barnes is lucky that he ever found out. Clearly there’s a pattern there that Abelseth was perfectly willing to maintain a huge lie for multiple years. Both he and the child could have gone their entire lives without knowing that the other even existed.
And where are the charges filed against her for this miscarriage of justice? When did the state step in and protect Barnes from a woman like this? She should be made to pay him back-child support, or at least throw out her cases with prejudice so she can’t keep dragging him into court.
And that brings up another point. Let's forget for the moment that John Barnes, the child's real father, was lied to, and that this lie was perpetrated over multiple years. This also means that Barnes spent that entire time not knowing his daughter.
Could you imagine that? Think of your closest sibling. Maybe a parent. Think about the wonderful times you’ve had together, all the memories you’ve shared. Now imagine that someone just takes a half-decade of those times away from you. Just one day, you lose an entire chunk of time with that loved one.
Just because there isn’t a crime of memory theft, doesn’t mean that there isn’t a victim. That’s theft. It just doesn’t have a monetary value attached to it.
Presumably as a result of Abelseth having maintained her heartbreaking lie for the first five years of the child's life, Barnes was able to successfully argue in court that the child was better off with him.
Nevertheless, once WBRZ announced the story, it found itself in a huge echochamber that was of course picked up by all the major networks, and social media streams. I even found this story on Facebook.
Why? Again, all because it’s a nice, safe story in a culture that’s being trained to see white males as automatic perpetrators in the courts. This man has been slandered openly and widely all as a result of one woman’s desire to seek retribution for losing a child she hid from its father for five years.
Abelseth never filed a single case against Barnes until after she'd been ordered to pay child support. So, the data points to a greater likelihood that Abelseth simply wants out of her new debt to Barnes. And by the way, this is all after she’s been dating other men, who she’s probably also relied on to help her with the child.
Another interesting thing that I noticed about the broadcast, was that WBRZ set up a full production to get Abelseth's side of the story, with multiple cameras, multiple chairs, her “female advocate” sitting next to her, and everyone was wired up with individual mics.
And yet somehow, even with all those resources for mobile reporting, they didn't do anything more than call Barnes on the phone. And even in that, they somehow forgot to record the phone call with Barnes so that they could play that audio revealing side of the story.
In fact, he only got a one-sentence mention right at the very end of the broadcast.
[SPOKE TO BARNES]
And even in that mention, they were still fixated on the idea that he was admitting the child was his. Like, why would he argue for custody over a child that’s not his.
This sort of “harping on facts” that the media loves to do is another way that they drum up outcry for supporting their agenda. It’s ridiculous when you actually understand what the journalists are doing. But most of the viewing public never thinks that deeply about these tactics.
And frankly, that’s what you should be offended about - the fact that mass media news networks are playing on your ignorance to rile you up and get you angry. Because an angry public is a public that keeps watching the news. And as long as you’re watching the news, their Nielson ratings go up for length of time watched. And when their watch-length goes up, they can charge more ad revenue from advertisements on the commercial breaks.
They are playing on your emotions in order to make more money. Congratulations. You’ve all been made whores by the media that you watch.
Thankfully, my ad revenue comes directly from you, my readers and my listeners. So, you are my number one priority.
I’m going to make a prediction right now: This will probably end with Barnes losing custody of the child under public pressure, or he’ll end up owing Abelseth money. The child will go back to a lying slut. And even if Barnes doesn’t go to jail for the horrible crime of having a fun, drunken night 16 years ago, his decades of faithful work with the sheriff’s department is over. But because rape allegations are basically career kryptonite, he will undoubtedly never work as a designer again.
And people all over the Reddit-sphere are starting to notice that this is the power given to women in society today - there are examples all over the country of imbalances in the courts which are biased against men. And as a result, men are given harsher sentences for the same crimes (a new study says), charge reduction disparities exist over men in felony cases, and they’re less likely to win in a custody battle even though they’re equally qualified and financially stable. And if you think I’m being a blanket misogynist here, head over to the article from this podcast and check the research in the text.
Abelseth lied for half-a-decade, and she probably would have continued lying had Barnes not investigated a rumor, and then stepped up to the plate to own his fatherly responsibilities. But when he did, he won. And we know what happens to men who win against women in court. The woman comes back with a vengeance, filing appeals, filing paperwork to overturn verdicts. And when those don’t work, they change their story to make it seem as though they were the victim.
This trend is especially prevalent in cases where there’s never been any allegations of assault until after a custody hearing does not favor the female. There are even advice articles on strategies for how women can keep their kids, by abusing the courts.
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Bumper: Find the original story HERE, with other references below:
- https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id+2144002
- https://www.huffpost.com/entry/men-women-prison-sentence-length-gender-gap_n_1874742
- https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/f8nhc4/women_have_more_power_in_society_than_men_while/
- https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180503085049.htm
- https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/gender-differences-felony-court-processing-three-hypotheses
- https://www.complex.com/life/woman-says-shes-been-ordered-to-pay-alleged-rapist-child-support
- https://goodmenproject.com/ethics-values/women-abuse-men-often-called-abuse-fiff/
- https://goldbergjones-or.com/child-custody/criminal-charges-impact-child-custody/
- https://cordellcordell.com/2022/custody-battle-10-things-that-can-sabotage-your-case/
Homeless Man Brings Knife to Gunfight, Dies
In one of the funnier, though also no less sad stories that you’ll hear on This Week in Guns, a homeless man robbed a gun store with a knife or “a sharp object,” and was killed at the scene.
Listen to "Homeless Man Dies After Robbing a Gun Store with a Knife" on Spreaker.
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Last Tuesday, an as-yet unidentified man had apparently gone from store to store stealing items in a strip mall to which Carter's Country gun store was attached.
He attempted to steal a pair of jeans at one store, before being ejected from the Suit Mart for a minor attempted theft. The suspect then went into the gun shop where he walked behind the counter, opened the register, and began stealing the money from the drawer.
It was at this point that an employee walked from the back of the store and was allegedly confronted by the suspect. The employee who is also unnamed in the story, and who later indicated that he was in fear of his life, shot the suspect once out of two reported shots fired in the incident.
The suspect then stumbled out of the store and collapsed in the parking lot. He was transported to a nearby emergency medical facility where he later died from his wounds.
The Houston gun store is no stranger to attacks, however. In 2016, Carter’s Country was the object of a concerted burglary when a Ford F-250 pickup truck backed up to the entryway doors when men hopped out to chain the doors to the truck. At that point the truck drove forward to rip the doors from its hinges.
Security footage of the event shows masked burglars smashing display cases and ransacking shelves. The suspects got away with more than 50 weapons in the heist.
But they didn't get far. Within days of the incident, police arrested all known suspects to the crime.
The current case in Houston regarding the knife-wielding suspect is not yet finished, however. Lieutenant Larry Crowson of the Houston Police Department said the case has yet to be presented to a grand jury, where they will decide on whether or not the employee truly acted in self defense, or if the very lenient stand-your-ground laws in Texas will find that they acted in malice.
On a personal note, anyone wielding a weapon of any kind who has a clear intention of doing harm, absolutely deserves to be shot. Arm yourselves, people. These are strange times.
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