This editorial is brought to you by a staff writer for Law Enforcement Today.  And this situation shows a perfect example of why “gun control” doesn’t work any better.  🙂

—

LOS ANGELES, CA – Since Governor Gavin Newsom and his cronies shut down fireworks and 4th of July festivities because of a “surge in Coronavirus cases”, one should have expected a quiet evening in the western state. 

There wasn’t much to do given the Gubernatorial order which also closed most restaurants, bars and beaches, leaving open the purportedly “safe” Plumpjack Winery (coincidentally owned by Newsom).  

But quiet quarantine certainly wasn’t the case in Los Angeles as evidenced in a Tweet sent out by Turning Point USA’s Benny Johnson.  Aerial footage is a sight to behold has the unquarantined masses take to the streets and the skies to celebrate their freedom and the birth of the United States of America.

It was a beautiful, if illegal site.

#illegalfireworks pic.twitter.com/CFuNA3Gr7j

— Tim Conway Jr Show (@ConwayShow) July 5, 2020

This is the typical playbook for Democrats and typical results. 

Compare this to the sweeping calls for gun reform (AKA 2nd Amendment violations, gun confiscations, etc…). 

Democrats want to take the constitutional right to own firearms away from law abiding citizens. 

In April of 2020, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam signed several gun control bills into law, including one allowing localities to override constitutional authority and ban the carrying of legal firearms and even just ammunition from public buildings and property.  

New Hampshire’s democratic controlled legislature passed a “red flag” bill for the second time – Governor Chris Sununu (R) vetoed a similar bill just a year ago. 

This bill would allow for the court to remove weapons from a law abiding citizen because a family member, friend, officer or enemy thinks the person might, the operative word here is might, be a danger to themselves or others. 

No due process needed.  Even a police officer is allowed to make this judgement.  Without due process.

Yesterday, the @NHSenateDems passed Bloomberg's Red Flag bill, despite a MAJORITY of Granite Staters being against it. Interesting they voted to give police MORE POWER over the people during a time when police reforms are being DEMANDED by everyone #NHPolitics #HB687 pic.twitter.com/ASGjfDyShH

— WDL of New Hampshire (@WDLNH) June 30, 2020

Of course, Governor Northam will not be giving up his security detail, much like Governor Newsom didn’t close down his winery. 

And law breakers aren’t going to obey the law.  That may be a new concept for some, given all of the confusion as of late between what’s legal and illegal (looting, entering the United States without permission, blocking the interstate et. al). 

Criminals are not going to obey the law.  Startling.

As the disarmament of law-abiding American Citizens continues we appear to be heading down a path that will have the sky lighting up with a lot more than illegal Los Angeles Fireworks. 

The do as I say, not as I do mantra has worked well for the leftists of the past.

Unless those on the side of right stand up and refuse to give in this time, Bernie Sanders is going to be lounging on the deck of his Lake Champlain mansion surrounded by armed security, while we, who can’t afford it and aren’t given it are using kitchen cutlery to try and beat away home invaders because there is no one home at 911.

The fireworks in Los Angeles should truly be a lesson to these leftists who seek to control the people and deny personal freedoms to everyone except themselves.  Newsom’s winery, like Northam’s security detail and Bernie’s mansion are the very luxuries that leftists decry in upper middle class America, and yet reserve for their socialist leaning comrades with glee.  

So, on this Independence day, it the “What’s next year of 2020”, let’s all cheer and say:

Kudos to the “criminals” who celebrated Independence day with traditional fireworks and kudos to the people on the front lines working to keep us safe. 

Kudos to the responsible law abiding gun owners who will refuse to allow their rights to be taken away. 

And let’s save the biggest kudos of them all for those who realize that the huge surge in corona virus cases, might, just might have something to do with the close contact riots and looting taking place over the past month. (Even if CNN refuses to report it).

Now they’re demanding we change the National Anthem.  And the “silent majority” in America is about to absolutely snap.

After we originally launched the editorial below by Law Enforcement Today’s National Spokesman Kyle Reyes, we were told we were exaggerating and that nobody really wants to change the National Anthem.

But it appears the call to do so is accelerating.

The New York Post is now reporting on others echoing the call for change.

Per The Post: 

Amid a national reckoning over racial tropes in culture, historian Daniel E. Walker, author Kevin Powell and others are calling to “rethink [‘The Star-Spangled Banner’] as the national anthem, because this is about the deep-seated legacy of slavery and white supremacy in America,” Walker told Yahoo Entertainment.

The song would join a long line of cultural mainstays that are rebranding after the Black Lives Matter protests — foods such as Eskimo Pies and Aunt Jemima syrup among them.

Here’s some background on the song, which was originally written as a poem in September of 1814.

Francis Scott Key penned it during the Battle of Baltimore, and it was eventually set to music and in 1931 became the country’s official anthem.

Shortly after, President Herbert Hoover authorized the song, leaving out the third verse, which references “the hireling and slave.”

According to Powell, the song is still a problem.

“Scott Key … was literally born into a wealthy, slave-holding family in Maryland,” Powell says. He also brings up Key’s unsavory ties to President Andrew Jackson and Roger Taney, a Supreme Court justice who opposed abolition. Why not, argues Powell, replace the tune with John Lennon’s “Imagine”?

If you were to ask Reyes, he’d tell you the bigger problem is the powder keg that we’re sitting on in America right now.  Here are his thoughts.

—

“Leave us alone.”

I think that’s the consensus among the overwhelming majority of Americans.

We are sick of the riots.  We are sick of the quarantine.  We are sick of being controlled and attacked like we’ve never before seen in our lifetimes.

“Leave us alone.”

We are sick of being told we are racist because we don’t embrace the extremism of Black Lives Matter… yet still believe that, like all lives, black lives do matter.

We’re sick of having our jobs, homes, families and lives threatened because we support law enforcement.

“Leave us alone.”

We’re sick of scrolling through social media and seeing the latest news that lawmakers are destroying the Second Amendment.  That politicians are telling us we can’t go to church.  That celebrities want us to be shamed for wanting to see family and friends.

“Leave us alone.”

We’re sick of being told that if we don’t wear a mask in public, we’ll have to pay a huge fine that we can’t afford because the government putting so many companies out of business with their draconian measures.  We’re sick of then seeing thousands of people riot in the streets without masks.

“Leave us alone.”

We’re sick of seeing indoctrination in our schools that literally LIES to our little children and teaches them that police hate black people.

We’re sick of watching books be burned.  Statues be destroyed.  History be erased.

“Leave us alone.”

We’re sick of living this new life of anxiety.  We’re sick of restless nights because we hear a sound and think “is someone there?” or “is it finally happening in my neighborhood?”

“Leave us alone.”

We’re sick and tired of watching the America that we love destroyed right before our eyes.  And the sleeping giant is about to awaken.

We’ve sat here quietly.  We’ve watched the tension build up.  It’s like an earthquake, right?  Sometimes those tremblors are simply a preview of a massive quake that’s about to come.  We ain’t seen nothin’ yet, folks.

“Leave us alone.”

You couldn’t do it, could you?  You just had to push and push and push.  And now you want The Star-Spangled Banner?

We are approaching a breaking point.

Here’s the deal.

The editor-in-chief of Yahoo Music wrote an article asking if it’s time to replace “The Star-Spangled Banner” with a different anthem.  He says it’s because racism accusations against the man who wrote its words, Francis Scott Key, who is of course dead and can’t defend himself.

Just last weekend, protestors pulled down Key’s statue in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park for that reason.

They also destroyed with one of former Union General and U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant.

Then on Wednesday, the Tulsa Athletic — a National Premier Soccer League squad in Oklahoma — said it no longer would play “The Star-Spangled Banner” at home matches.

They’ll now play “This Land Is Your Land” by Woody Guthrie instead, which the team called “a new song of patriotism.”

Black activist and journalist Kevin Powell was interviewed for the article.  He had plenty to say about Key:

“He was a very well-to-do lawyer in Washington, D.C., and eventually became very close to President Andrew Jackson, who was the Donald Trump of his time, which means that there was a lot of hate and violence and division.

At that time, there were attacks on Native Americans and Black folks — both free Black folks and folks who were slaves — and Francis Scott Key was very much a part of that. He was also the brother-in-law of someone who became a Supreme Court justice, Roger Taney, who also had a very hardcore policy around slavery.

And so, all of that is problematic. And the fact that Key, when he was a lawyer, also prosecuted abolitionists, both white and Black folks who wanted slavery to end, says that this is someone who really did not believe in freedom for all people. And yet, we celebrate him with this national anthem, every time we sing it.”

In George Orwell’s “1984” he wrote:

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. History has stopped.”

That’s where we are today.

Let me tell you what I want for America.  Because not that you know who I am or particularly care, but in many ways – I am YOU.  Regardless of what you look like.

I have three little girls and a wife.  I love them dearly.

I don’t want to fight people.  I don’t want to be bothered.  I want to sit by the little blue kiddie pool and dangle my toes in the freezing cold water with them.

I want to sit outside in our little backyard at night with my wife, drinking cheap American beer and listening to Hall and Oates. 

I want to go to church – not under threat of arrest – and thank God for the blessings He has bestowed upon us.

I want to run with my family playing Tag in the park.  I want to cook burgers and dogs.  I want to hang out with our friends – our gay ones, our black ones, our Hispanic ones, our straight ones, our Christian ones, our Jewish ones, our Muslim ones – ALL OF THEM – and do what we always do.  Break each others’ balls and laugh and joke and not talk about politics.

I want a world like we had where I was growing up – where you could pray how you wanted, vote how you wanted, live like you wanted without garnering the hate of your family and neighbors because they stalk you on social media and have decided they hate you.

Is it silly to think that changing The Star-Spangled Banner might be the breaking point for many Americans?  Perhaps.  But every night, as we tuck our girls into bed, we pray with them.  And we sing that song.  Because to our family, it’s bigger than us.  It’s bigger than ALL of us.

It reminds us that there’s hope we can still be one nation, under God, indivisible.

Now I wonder if perhaps we’re indivisible after all.

Just understand this – if you eliminate The Star-Spangled Banner as our national anthem… it might very well become the battle hymn of countless Americans who asked you to do just one simple thing that you couldn’t seem to do…

“Leave us alone.”

—

We hope you’ll consider getting in the fight with us.  Here’s what Law Enforcement Today – the largest police-owned media outlet in America – is doing.

We at Law Enforcement Today want to make our stance very clear. 

We strongly and firmly stand behind the Second Amendment, companies that keep civilians and law enforcement officers safe through products and innovation, and the men and women who serve and protect our communities and our country.

We are launching a new series of options to help our partners and other patriotic businesses to be able to connect with consumers. While we can’t replace Google, Bing or Facebook – we sure can provide options to ensure that these companies and our brothers and sisters have a voice.

We welcome with open arms companies that openly support law enforcement, and we are proud to offer them options to get their products to market. 

We started noticing the problems a couple of years ago.  Social media was scaling back the reach of content that it didn’t believe people should see.

Not that there was anything offensive about it.  We’re talking about pro-police videos, stories about patriotic Americans and more. 

And from our perspective, that created a huge problem.  We have some of the greatest warriors in the world.  Yet their voices and their stories were being buried.

The mainstream media, on the rare occasion that it would tell some of these stories, would give you only a piece of them.  They’d cram as much as they could into a 90 second segment, slap their bias on it and that was it.

We needed to fix it. And so we are.

Law Enforcement Today (LET) is proud to announce the launch of LET Unity – a new home focused on bridging the gap between civilians and civil servants.  We’ve merged with The Whiskey Patriots to massively expand content, rolling out hundreds of videos to members.

Many of those in our focus groups dubbed it the “Netflix of the law enforcement community”.  But the truth is, it’s so much more.

The first officer in the door at the Pulse nightclub shooting. 

Emergency responders from the Parkland shooting. 

The bomb squad that responded to the Aurora movie theater massacre. 

Survivors of the Dallas five killings.

The first Marine Guard hostage in the Iran crisis. 

The CIA agent who started a counter human trafficking company. 

SWAT teams. 

Sniper schools. 

World War II veterans.

And so, so much more.

The membership is less than the cost of two coffees a month, and those who sign up for an annual membership will get some surprise bonuses in the mail.  We decided to charge a nominal fee so we could take all of the proceeds and reinvest them into capturing more of these stories.  The majority of our content producers for Law Enforcement Today are active, retired or wounded law enforcement officers.  The revenue we make helps provide for their families and helps bring a TRUE voice about what’s happening in America.

On top of that, we’re opening up the platform to some well-known podcasters who are going to be joining the team with some incredible content soon.

We have a problem in society.  Censorship has created an existential threat to democracy.  But even worse is the risk we run that some of these incredible stories of patriotism, hope, faith and our Sheepdogs would be lost.

We’ve launched a series of content with Concerns of Police Survivors (C.O.P.S.) to share the stories of survivors.  We will also be dropping a weekly law enforcement focused newscast that addresses some of the most important topics in the country… and helps bridge the gap between those who serve and those whom they serve.

On top of that, we’ll soon be rolling out a series of private discounts and special promotions to members only as a “thank you” for being a part of the family.

You can also download the app to watch the content right from your iPhone.

We hope you’ll join us in this journey, knowing that your membership is going to give a voice to those who have been silenced for so long.

Click here to sign up. 

If you are one of the many companies out there that’s being censored – or you’re worried about what’s to come – don’t hesitate to reach out today.  I can be reached at [email protected]

We will not be silenced.  You shouldn’t be either.

God bless you all, and God bless America.

—

Want to make sure you never miss a story from Law Enforcement Today?  With so much “stuff” happening in the world on social media, it’s easy for things to get lost.