The Arizona Senate candidate has a unique theory about why there’s a gun violence problem in the United States.
Roger Sollenberger
Political Reporter
Gage Skidmore/The Star News Network/Wikimedia Commons
Tech investor and Arizona Republican Senate hopeful Blake Masters acknowledges that the United States has a gun violence problem. But he also has a theory about why there’s a problem—it’s “Black people, frankly.”
Masters boiled the issue down in an April 11 interview on the Jeff Oravits Show podcast, telling the host that “we do have a gun violence problem in this country, and it’s gang violence.”
“It’s people in Chicago, St. Louis shooting each other. Very often, you know, Black people, frankly,” Masters clarified. “And the Democrats don’t want to do anything about that.”
It’s unclear why Masters—who has pushed the baseless “great replacement” conspiracy theory narrative—felt compelled to single out Black people. Moments earlier in the interview, during a discussion about Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation hearings, Masters told Oravits that “most Americans just, you know, just want to stop obsessing about race all the time,” adding that “the left’s biggest tool in their toolkit is just to divide people on the basis of race, and that’s really messed up.”
Republicans frequently cite urban gang violence, most often in Chicago, in attempts to tap out of the gun control debate. While their redirections are often as misleading as they are cliche, those officials aren’t always as forthright as Masters about the racial undertones.
But Masters, whom the white nationalist website VDARE fêted last year as an “immigration patriot,” was quite clear about his vision of two Americas.
After pinning gun violence on gangs and Black people—and saying, falsely, that Democratic administrations “don’t want to do anything” about gang shootings—the Stanford-educated libertarian went on to complain to Oravits that gun control efforts target “law-abiding people like you and me.”
“When they ban ‘ghost guns’ and pistol braces, that’s all about disarming law-abiding people, like you and me, that’s what it’s about,” Masters said, referencing government efforts to crack down on the surge in privately made, untraceable firearms. “They care that we can’t have guns to defend ourselves.”
Masters—a Bitcoin evangelist who routinely hawks automated surveillance technology developed by his benefactor, billionaire tech mogul Peter Thiel—claimed that “it’s pretty rare” for homemade firearms to show up in criminal activity. But his information might be outdated.
Ghost guns aren’t just built and owned by technocrats, to be appreciated as physical instantiations of political theory. They’re also on the rise among criminals, including in gang activity, according to officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, as well as fresh police data VICE published this week, which documents a 90 percent increase in seizures last year.
The day of the Oravits interview, President Joe Biden announced a rule change to address the ghost gun problem. In response, Masters tweeted a photo of his own “ghost” gun kit, claiming that he would be a “felon” under the new rule if he made “another one just like it today.”
That’s not accurate.The Biden administration has not banned those weapons, which don’t have serial numbers and can be 3D-printed at home. The new rule doesn’t make it illegal to build your own gun; it applies to people who sell gun kits. Those sellers are now required to become licensed firearms dealers, run background checks on buyers, and include serial numbers on their kits.
The rule also targets violence in urban areas—a sore point for Masters—where ghost guns are multiplying.
Last year, police seized more than 225 of the weapons in New York City, along with 300 seizures in Baltimore and 455 in Chicago, CBS News reported. And government data shows that law enforcement agencies reported recovering 20,000 suspected ghost guns in criminal investigations last year alone—nearly as many seized over the previous four years combined.
A Masters campaign spokesperson did not reply to a request for comment.
Back in the interview, Masters—who has likened federal campaign disclosure laws to Kristallnacht—veered into conspiratorial territory.
Democrats “don’t like the Second Amendment,” he said, because “it frankly blocks a lot of their plans for us”—an unhinged, fact-free statement that liberal officials have cooked up a plot to physically force conservatives to comply with some unarticulated maleficent regime, but have been bayed by fears that a constitutionally endowed populace will shoot them if they try.
Masters also tossed out misleading red meat gripes about crime in West Coast cities Los Angeles and San Francisco, where Masters lived much of his adult life before relocating to Arizona ahead of his Senate bid.
Those cities, he told Oravits, have “legalized crime,” claiming that “you can’t get arrested if you smash someone’s window and take a purse or an iPhone.”
It’s not immediately clear what Masters was referring to, but the riff appears to be a nod at Prop 47, which California voters passed at the state (not city) level nearly eight years ago. The Prop 47 coalition included Democrats along with libertarians like Masters, who wanted to roll back felony punishment for lesser offenses, including property crimes like shoplifting.
Prop 47 didn’t “legalize crime,” but reclassified certain felonies as misdemeanors. But after the recent rise in property crimes such as “smash and grab” robberies, most Californians support tougher sentencing laws, including overhauling parts of Prop 47.
“They talk about crime but I find it crocodile tears,” Masters said, an apparent reference to Democratic outrage over an unending drumroll of domestic massacres. “Because if they were actually tough on crime they would get serious about gang violence.” (Masters himself did not put forward a solution to gang violence in the interview.)
Masters, 35, is a fairly new name in GOP politics, but he has benefited from powerful friends—including his mentor, Thiel, who threw $10 million into a super PAC backing his primary bid.
Thiel’s support went a long way to landing a recent endorsement from former President Donald Trump, who officially blessed Masters on Thursday. It wasn’t a surprise—Trump has a score to settle with Masters’ top opponent, Arizona attorney general Mark Brnovich, who resisted Trump’s pressure to invalidate his state’s 2020 election results.
Masters is fiercely anti-tech while being fiercely pro-tech, backs a national abortion ban, claims Democrats want to “import a million people every year to replace Americans who were born here,” has said that the media and big tech “conspired to manipulate the 2020 election”—which he claims “Trump won”—and calls the gender pay gap a “left-wing narrative.”
(The “new right” crowd also counts another Trump-endorsed Thiel protege: Ohio Senate candidate JD Vance.)
Masters won Trump’s endorsement on Thursday, nine days after an 18-year-old used a legally purchased semiautomatic rifle to slaughter 19 elementary school students and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas.
“Blake will fight for our totally under-siege Second Amendment, and WIN!” Trump wrote in his announcement. An hour later, Biden called on the country to support an array of gun control measures in a primetime national address.
Rarely are Republicans so explicit about their bullshit counterarguments. But please read this whole report, because there’s more to this guy. What Masters says is false and deranged, frankly
— Roger Sollenberger (@SollenbergerRC) June 6, 2022
Explosions shook the city of Kyiv on Sunday morning after Russia launched its first attack in the capital in over a month. CBS News foreign correspondent Chris Livesay joins CBS News’ Ali Bauman with more on the attack.
This is how much the rabid right gun fetishists will go to prove their love of both racism and guns. Pudgy boy child who took an illegal gun to a BLM protest with the idea of play a enforcement officer ordering people around until he ended up shooting three people, is their idea man? This man has no other accomplishments in his life other than arrogantly trying to push people around and then shooting three people, killing two of them. He is not famous for anything else but that. Yet that alone makes him the alpha male in the rabid right wing gun circles. Put the idea of rabid right wing Republican base members carrying guns at polling places in an all new light doesn’t it? Hugs
“I just wanna introduce Kyle by saying this, we talk a lot about the kind of man you should want be attracted to. Men, your number one goal is to protect your family and to stand strong in the face of opposition from culture and evil. And Kyle Rittenhouse is a man who does that. God bless Kyle Rittenhouse.”
That’s how Rittenhouse was introduced this weekend at Charlie Kirk’s Young Women’s Leadership Summit. Rittenhouse then thanked the audience for being “strong women.”
Later at the event Rittenhouse claimed to be inspired by Johnny Depp to sue his online detractors and journalists for defamation.
Kyle Rittenhouse is introduced at the Young Women’s Leadership Summit as the ideal catch for a husband: “I want to talk a lot about what kind of man you should be attracted to .. Men’s #1 goal is to protect your family .. and Kyle Rittenhouse is a man who does that.” pic.twitter.com/WLjIdQhc6d
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) June 5, 2022
Kayleigh’s sister Ryann introduces her new “conservative dating app” at the Young Women’s Summit called, ‘The Right Stuff’ launching this summer. “It will give you a chance to meet a conservative guy that you could potentially get married to.” pic.twitter.com/lWBSaRVoTE
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) June 5, 2022
Kayleigh McEnany says when she was supposed to be at the podium for her first press briefing, she was crying in her office. They then put her parents on speaker phone and they prayed with her. She then got on her knees in the bathroom and prayed, then she felt ok to do it. pic.twitter.com/wdDsKHVXaN
— Ron Filipkowski 🇺🇦 (@RonFilipkowski) June 5, 2022
Performative trollery is all they’ve got and their new murder-mascot has no fucking clue he’ll likely end up dead of an OD someday in a seedy motel room, after they’ve discarded him.
This state cannot adequately fund their schools now and just wasted billions on a border stunt that failed. But they will do anything other than talk about how easy it is to get a gun in their state to shoot school kids. Hugs
Patrick said he wants police in as many Texas schools as possible to have bulletproof shields before the fall. He’s asked other state leaders to move around money in the state budget to make it happen.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, center, has asked state officials to move $50 million in the state budget to provide bulletproof shields for school police officers before the start of classes in the fall. Credit: Sergio Flores for The Texas Tribune
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Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick called on state leaders Friday to move around $50 million in the state budget to buy bulletproof shields for school police officers following a mass shooting last month at an elementary school in Uvalde where a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers.
“I am asking the Speaker of the House to join the Senate members of the Legislative Budget Board and me next week in a budget execution letter to move $50 million to either the Governor’s Office or Department of Public Safety (DPS) to begin buying these bulletproof shields as soon as possible so every member of school law enforcement has one,” Patrick said in a statement Friday afternoon. “This will begin the funding necessary to eventually provide bulletproof shields to all law enforcement.”
Patrick’s request would require the approval of House Speaker Dade Phelan and other House members of the state’s Legislative Budget Board. But because lawmakers have already appropriated the money for the two-year budget cycle, it would also require letters from the agencies where the money would be taken certifying that the transfer would not negatively impact their functions.
Patrick said he would send a draft letter Monday and asked Phelan to act quickly. Phelan’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
State Republican leaders have already signed off on twosimilar transfers worth about $1 billion this year to send money to Gov. Greg Abbott’s costly border security initiative, Operation Lone Star, which was running out of funds. Patrick, who approved those transfers, said the same should be done to provide bulletproof shields to school police officers.
“We have used transfer authority this year to spend billions on the border. We can surely find this amount of money to better protect our kids,” Patrick said, adding that there are “several sources in the current budget that can be tapped to provide this funding.”
Patrick did not name those sources.
During the last of these budget transfers in April, DPS, one of the agencies that Patrick is suggesting should be given money to pay for the bulletproof shields, was forced to relinquish $160 million of its approved budget to keep Operation Lone Star going. Without that transfer, leaders for the Texas Military Department, which has assigned 10,000 service members to the mission, would have been unable to continue the operation.
Patrick said the state should start by providing bulletproof shields to all school police officers and then expand to all law enforcement officers. The state could experience supply-chain issues in obtaining the shields, but it should push to get “every quality shield we can find.”
“This straightforward solution can begin right away,” Patrick said. “If all responding law enforcement had bulletproof shields last week, lives may have been saved.”
Patrick’s plan continues the trend in the state’s Republican leadership of responding to mass shootings by pushing for more teachers to be allowed to use firearms in schools and funding school police. But the law enforcement response to the shooting has been roundly criticized after state and law enforcement officials gave inaccurate information in the initial aftermath of the shooting that has since been debunked.
Police responding to the shooting took more than an hour to engage the gunman who was inside a classroom shooting at children and teachers. The police chief for the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, Pete Arredondo, determined police were dealing with a “barricaded suspect” and that the children were no longer in danger, state officials said. The leader of DPS later said it was the “wrong decision, period.”
Patrick said that if every police officer in the state had a bulletproof shield, “their ability to respond to an active shooter situation would be greatly enhanced.”
Texas lawmakers have responded in a similar manner in the past. After a gunman with a high-powered rifle ambushed and killed five Dallas police officers in July 2016, state lawmakers responded by allocating $25 million in the state budget for police agencies across the state to buy bullet-resistant vests that could withstand rifle ammunition.
Last session, after two DPS troopers were fatally shot through a windshield in their patrol car, lawmakers agreed to foot the bill to bulletproof windshields in DPS patrol cars, Patrick said.
While a huge crowd was gathering in Fair Park for the first day of Dallas Pride weekend and the Miller Lite Music Festival, a handful of right-wingers hit The Strip on Cedar Springs today (Saturday, June 4) to protest …. well, something.
The protesters reportedly gathered first in front of Mr. Misster, at the corner of Cedar Springs Road and Reagan Street before Dallas police officers forced them to move across Reagan to the sidewalk in front of the fire station.
Activist Cannon Brown, who was at the scene, said the protesters were there to rally against a drag queen story hour happening at Mr. Misster. “They were there to scream at kids,” Brown said on Facebook, noting that some were Roman Catholics who were “actually behaved and just chanting the rosary. It’s the Infowars/fascist crowd that is problematic.”
The group, described by Brown in a Facebook post as “christofascists,” carried signs vaguely resembling the Texas flag and the U.S. flag along with a large white flag with some sort of X symbol in red, and a gold-and-white flag with some symbol in the center. The size of the group has changed over the course of their protest, but Brown said it averaged about 20.
Photos show one protester carrying a sign declaring “confuse a child, abuse a child,” and another had a sign shouting “stop groomers.” Yet another demands, “Stop exploiting our kids.” And, in what is apparently a swipe at the rainbow power of Pride Month, one woman wore a black T-shirt with a block of rainbow colors saying “rainbow revival.”
— Tammye Nash, photos by Chad Mantooth
From Joe My God the right wing religious bigots couldn’t resist lying.
A spokesperson for the extremists claimed to Dallas’s ABC News affiliate that police removed children from show. That didn’t happen. The bar reports having gotten hundreds of threatening emails. Some of the tweets below are from far-right extremists.
I want to respond to the religious asshole in the above video. He starts out making a claim about doing something to between boys legs, then he makes a comment about letting children near men in dresses. Has this pious asshole threatening parents with children which is traumatizing the kids ever looked at the pictures in his church? What does he think Jesus and the disciples wore, three piece suits?
So I do not want to hear anything more about men in dresses talking with or reading to kids.
Kelly Neidert is the ignorant trumpist that is causing trouble in Dallas Texas. Shes the one you will see protesting here in our gayborhood because she has HATE in her heart. Remember God is watching you. pic.twitter.com/zGB1qUH5Ei
If they didn’t blame us they would have to face the fact that they have been enabling child predators in the name of their worthless non-existent god. Introspection isn’t their strong suit.
Hell, if these folks didn’t have external targets to focus their hate and measure their “moral superiority” against, they would be tearing each other apart. (I’ve seen it first hand.)
Lol, what was your first hint. Maybe the fact that 75% of rethuglicunts actually believe that the election was stolen! Proof positive that if you say a lie enough times it is believed regardless of facts. This is the same ploy they are using to paint the LGBTQ community as those grooming children to become gay. As if it were a fucking choice in the first place! All the while they hand over their kids to the real groomers, the churches, where they are indoctrinated and scarred mentally for life by the daily harrowing experiences they are forced to endure by the church community. What is worse is that the people they most should be able to rely on for protection, their family, are the very ones that force them into it! Seriously hating what this country is becoming.
This is a wonderful grand explanation of conservatism. Regressive. Well worth the read. After watching it then argue with me about it if you disagree. Hugs
Michael Kosta heads to the world’s largest annual shooting festival to find out how Switzerland can love guns so much yet have such a low rate of gun-related crimes.
The way to have guns and still be responsible adults. Hugs
Why do we have to accept this? If people cannot go out safely there will be no more economy and no more USA. I watched a Republican in Congress use his time at the gun hearing to show a bunch of guns he claims to won and that restricting the magazine sizes would make the guns illegal. That is wrong because the gun manufacturers would design small magazines that will fit those guns. But he went on about his rights, the rules would take his rights, he would lose his freedom. What the hell did the kids shot in their schools lose? Did they have a right to live or the right to freedom? What did the shoppers in Buffalo lose, did they lose their freedoms when they were shot to death? What do the rest of us in the US lose when we are afraid to leave our homes because we may be shot? What does every school kid lose that has nightmares and is afraid that this school day will be their last? I am tired of a small minority that believes their right is to make the rest of us live in fear or face death and harm. That is not a civil society. Also notice another time police were right there, and people were still shot. Plus even though relatively close the officer still missed. Think of untrained armed bystanders all yanking their pistols out and starting firing? Hugs
An officer saw several gunmen firing into a crowd of people on South Street in Philadelphia shortly before midnight, police said. That officer then fired his gun at one of the shooters
At least 14 people were shot, three of them killed, when gunmen fired into a crowd on a popular stretch of South Street in Philadelphia late Saturday night.
It happened on South Street between 2nd and 3rd streets shortly before midnight. Hundreds of people were out enjoying the night when officers said they heard multiple gunshots, then saw several gunmen firing into a crowd.
An officer fired his gun at one of the shooters, Philadelphia Police Inspector D. F. Pace said. It is not known if the suspect was struck; however, they did drop their gun and flee.
The officer was “within 10 to 15 yards of the shooter, watching this person shoot into the crowd” when he decided to engage, Pace said.
At least 14 people were struck by the barrage of gunfire, police said. Three of them, two men and a woman, were shot multiple times and died at the hospital.
“Once again, we see lives senselessly lost and those injured in yet another horrendous, brazen and despicable act of gun violence,” Mayor Jim Kenney said in a written statement Sunday morning. “My heart is with the family, friends, loved ones of those lost or injured, and with everyone impacted by this terrible tragedy.
South Street is a popular area in Philadelphia lined with restaurants, shops and bars. It is highly trafficked among both locals and tourists.
“There were hundreds of individuals just enjoying South Street, as they do every weekend, when this shooting broke out,” Pace said.
Pace said two guns were found at the scene, one of them with an extended magazine.
The search for the gunmen continued Sunday morning, police said. One of the shooters was last seen running south on American Street between 2nd and 3rd streets.
Police are hoping businesses along South Street captured the shooting on surveillance video.
“I want to emphasize that South Street is manned by numerous police officers,” Pace said. “This is standard deployment for Friday and Saturday night – weekends – and especially during the summer months.”
Philadelphia police said a separate shooting incident happened nearby around 11 p.m. Officers found 13 bullet casings at 4th and Bainbridge, a couple blocks away. Pace said investigators are looking into whether there’s a connection in the two shootings.
Last Tuesday, video captured the moments a woman and other gunmen opened fire on the 400 block of South Street – less than two blocks away from Saturday night’s shooting. One man was injured.
“Furious. I am furious, not just for my neighborhood, for the whole country. If I hear one more time ‘thoughts and prayers’ – bull—,” neighbor Maureen Long said through tears. “We cannot disagree about this. We have to do something. I don’t care what your political leanings are. We can’t continue to let people kill people.”
The Saturday shooting in Philadelphia is just the latest in a spate of mass shootings across the country.
Data from the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive show that gun violence deaths more than doubled nationwide from 2018 to 2019, when such deaths totaled 39,572.
In the years since, gun violence deaths have only increased. There were 43,658 such deaths in 2020 and 44,957 in 2021, according to the GVA. Thus far in 2022, there have been at least 18,564 deaths related to gun violence across the United States, according to the group.
In Philadelphia, the toll of gun violence is not reserved to isolated mass shootings, however.
A gun violence tracker from the city controller’s office tallied 743 nonfatal and 188 fatal shooting victims as of June 2. Several shootings have occurred in the days since, with the number of fatal and nonfatal victims both sure to rise.
The recent high-profile shootings, though, have renewed calls for stricter gun control amid rising gun violence across the country.
President Joe Biden on Thursday acknowledged there is little left for him to do through executive action and called on Congress to pass legislation to tighten gun laws. While the Uvalde shooting renewed bipartisan talks about modest gun reforms, such talks have broken down in the past.
Meanwhile, legislators in Philadelphia are barred by Pennsylvania’s preemption law from enacting gun control statutes that are stricter than state laws.
“We cannot accept continued violence as a way of life in our country. Until we address the availability and ease of access to firearms, we will always be fighting an uphill battle,” Kenney said in his statement. “As Mayor, I will continue to fight to protect our communities and urge others to advocate for stronger laws that keep guns out of the hands of violent individuals.”
Three people were killed and 11 others wounded in a mass shooting late Saturday night on South Street amid chaos that erupted on legendary blocks that have long been among the Philadelphia region’s most popular gathering places. https://t.co/1ca965cNdU
— The Philadelphia Inquirer (@PhillyInquirer) June 5, 2022
The first ten minutes of this show are incredible. Chris Hayes details the threats VP Pence was under and how his people suspected tRump would turn on Pence including trying to have him taken out / removed from the capital. I understood why Pence and his wife never went home after they left Washington and they moved constantly staying with friends and supporters. Many people are not aware or are forgetful of trump’s connections to organized crime figures. Pence was clearly worried that tRump or his supporters would still try to kill him. But with him removed from the capital the plan was to have Grassley or another senior Republican simply give the election to trump in the way the Eastland memo details. In fact Grassley did say he would be presiding over the certification then he managed to not even show up himself. Think he was warned of the insurrection ahead of time? The whole show is worth watching but the first ten minutes are very informative. Hugs
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Scottie's Playtime 