july fourth independence day fireworks
Fireworks light up the night sky behind the Gateway Arch and the Old Courthouse in St. Louis. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
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By NRA-ILA

In a July 3, 1776 letter to his wife Abigail, founding father John Adams wrote about how Independence Day should be celebrated. Adams explained,

I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

In the years since, Americans have done their best to live up to Adams’s expectations by celebrating the Fourth of July with fireworks. According to the American Pyrotechnics Association, Americans spent $1.3 billion on illuminations in 2018, with $945 million of the total spent on consumer fireworks. As for the volume of pyrotechnics, Americans consumed 277.5 million lbs. of fireworks in 2018. Simply put, celebrating with fireworks is an integral part of and ubiquitous on Independence Day.

Never a group to tolerate the traditions of others, or to celebrate American freedom, Michael Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety made clear this week that Americans have been commemorating Independence Day wrong.

On July 1, the gun control group tweeted out an image with the message “Consider gun violence survivors on the Fourth of July.”

The image was accompanied by a further message that stated,

Every day, an average of 100 Americans are fatally shot & hundreds more are shot and injured. If you’re planning to set off fireworks to celebrate the 4th, consider letting members of your community know so those who might be sensitive to loud noises can prepare themselves.

There are those with a sensitivity to loud noises, including some veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. No one should go out of their way to exacerbate these individuals’ condition.

However, Everytown’s blanket admonishment raises a serious question, which was identified by Stephen Gutowski of the Washington Free Beacon. Gutowski tweeted, “This confuses me. Are there people in America that are unaware we set off fireworks on the 4th of July?”

It doesn’t take a cynic to suspect that Everytown’s Independence Day lecture isn’t about helping those with sensitivity to loud noises. The group has routinely sought to pervert cherished holidays in order to push its gun control agenda.

In 2013, Everytown component Mayors Against Illegal Guns created a placemat that encouraged loved ones to argue about gun control during Thanksgiving dinner. The lame stunt was repeated the following year. Everytown supporters are encouraged to send anti-gun “holiday cards” to their members of congress.

Americans should strive to be safe and neighborly in their July 4th activities, but none should let a would-be oligarch and his political minions deter them from fun and legal celebrations. After all, Adams’s prescription for Independence Day observance was “from this Time forward forever more.”

 

This article was originally published at nraila.org and is reprinted here with permission. 

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102 COMMENTS

  1. Nanny Bloomy and his ilk give me PTSD. The way they twist illogical thought inside out makes my brain hurt. Maybe we POTG can get together on a class action to BAN Bloomy and his little puppet witch from MDA, Shannon (rhymes with cannon) hehehehe. Someone should mention that to her.

      • The only gun violence survivors I will consider this, or any other Fourth of July, are US combat veterans and their fellow troops who did not make it. For them, for their families, and for my family, I celebrate the Independence of These United States of America.

        • +1
          Bloomie & Co. DGAF about my PTSD or anyone else’s. He and his disciples are hell bent on controlling every aspect of the lives of others. The little guy is a control freak for those who may not have noticed.
          By his argument to not celebrate Independence Day with fireworks and other traditional displays you could equally argue that General Motors should not produce automobiles because survivors of crashes might be triggered. Maybe Hostess should stop using sugar to prevent diabetics from feeling badly about not getting their Twinkie on.
          Just another baseless, pointless attempt by this crew to decide for others…regardless of what we (the others) decide we want for ourselves.

          FUMB

    • Maybe they mean we should honor the survivors of the Revolutionary War…nah, the Bloomberg crowd would have confiscated their firearms as the left the battlefield.

      • The whole idea of a FREE nation was way ahead of it’s time. The problem exists that there are people who should NOT be free because they have no concept of how to use, enjoy, or respect that freedom. Those idiots do not have the mentality to understand the true meaning of freedom and show that by continually supporting anything that infringes on that freedom; they are perfectly satisfied with having a government that dictates everything as long as they also provide the minimum.

        If America truly wanted “freedom” we should have put mechanisms in place to remove those who hate freedom from our shores, whether immigrants or born here – it’s no different than weeding out the genetically inferior from the herd. Instead, we have spent the last 250 years taking in the inferior from around the world who bring with them their hatred of true freedom and it has destroyed us.

        • Indeed. I always keep in mind that most people today, even a considerable percentage of those nominally on my “side”, would have been loyalists had they been alive during the revolution. The number of people on the planet who are suited for, or actually desire, freedom is tiny.

    • the only one who gets upset with the fireworks on the fourth is my dog….feeding him a little beer beforehand helps…..

  2. So, Mayors Against Illegal Guns:

    1. Made it clear they are also against LEGAL gun ownership.
    2. Determined that encouraging family friction during our treasured holidays is somehow a path to less violence and increased understanding.

    Their priorities are clear: grabbing guns is more important that cohesive, loving families. I guess that is to be expected; weakening the family is how the state increases its power. “You have guns at home??? That is a risk to your child’s health and welfare. We are reporting you to CPS”.

  3. I think I remember the blooming onion and his stupid city of new safe york doing fireworks on the 4th I’m a 2 tour Vietnam veteran and have an aversion to loud noise but one day a year is good and yes I shoot!! Fuck blooming onion and all his shit

    • So Every Town is suggesting that anybody planning on lighting fireworks on the Fourth of July give warning to people in the area that may be sensitive to loud noises like fireworks. Come on, is did this story break in the Onion or what. What are we supposed to say? Today is the Fourth of July so if you hear loud noises, like fireworks, don’t worry, it is just fireworks?

  4. After Confederate statues, America’s culture war targets Betsy Ross and a founding father
    As the nation has celebrated its birthday with displays of its contemporary power and prestige this week, two of its cherished historic symbols came under fire — its first flag and its third president.

    Sportswear company Nike pulled sneakers depicting the 13-star banner known as the Betsy Ross flag after former NFL football player Colin Kaepernick, who has a sponsorship deal with Nike, reportedly objected: The flag, which dates to the era of 18th-century slavery, has occasionally been used by white supremacists and other far-right groups. And the city council in Charlottesville — where Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello plantation is located — voted this week to scrap the former president’s local holiday in favor of one that celebrates the emancipation of African American slaves.

    Subscribe to the Post Most newsletter: Today’s most popular stories on The Washington Post

    The twin moves opened new fronts in the culture war that President Trump foreshadowed two years ago, after white nationalists marched through Charlottesville to protest the proposed removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

    “Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,” Trump tweeted . “Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson — who’s next, Washington, Jefferson?”

    The nation’s growing diversity and polarization has prompted an outcry over the stain of slavery and a reckoning with some of America’s most identifiable historic symbols. The debate over which figures and moments are to be celebrated and which condemned has shifted from emblems of the fallen Confederacy to those that are foundational to the nation’s origin. The giants of U.S. history are being taken off their pedestals, both literally and figuratively, to be reexamined, warts and all.

    “Different groups have different perspectives on how their ancestors were treated,” historian Jarret Ruminski said. “When people say there is too much historical revisionism, they don’t realize that professional historians are revising history all the time. It doesn’t mean facts change. But it’s an ongoing process; it never stops.”

    The battle to reframe American history has targeted various mementos, including statues in public parks and the names of buildings at private universities. In 2017, Yale University renamed Calhoun College, which commemorated former vice president John Calhoun, a vigorous supporter of slavery. Later that year, Trump was widely criticized for moving into the Oval Office a portrait of President Andrew Jackson, who drove Native Americans from their ancestral lands in the forced exodus known as the Trail of Tears.

    Across the country, state Democratic organizations have been changing the name of the annual Jefferson-Jackson Day fundraising celebration, a move that South Bend mayor and Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg recently endorsed.

    “You develop and evolve on the things that you choose to honor,” he said earlier this year in an interview on The Hugh Hewitt Show.

    The shift has encountered pushback. After Nike pulled its Betsy Ross-flag shoe, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) called for state authorities to revoke financial incentives that they had offered the shoe company to open a factory there. And on Thursday, Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell (R) tweeted, “Happy Fourth of July” with a picture of the now-controversial flag.

    In Charlottesville, the decision to replace the April 13 observation of Thomas Jefferson’s birthday with Liberation and Freedom Day on March 3 faced little challenge. City manager Tarron Richardson said the decision was prompted by the Unite the Right Rally, which turned deadly when a white nationalist drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters.

    “The events of August 2017 have challenged Charlottesville to confront its history and to acknowledge that this community has not always embraced all of our citizens as equals,” wrote Richardson, who is black. “It has changed the priorities for our work serving the community on issues from affordable housing to a living wage for our employees. We want Charlottesville to be known as a community that has learned important lessons from our long and complex racial history.”

    a group of people posing for the camera: White supremacists stand in Emancipation Park, near a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, prior to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 12, 2017.
    © Evelyn Hockstein/For The Washington Post White supremacists stand in Emancipation Park, near a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, prior to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 12, 2017.
    Jefferson has long been a celebrated figure in Charlottesville, where he founded the University of Virginia. His birthday, which has been recognized as a city holiday since 1945, is celebrated at the university with an annual wreath laying at the Jefferson Memorial.

    On the five-member Charlottesville council, only Kathleen M. Galvin voted against eliminating the holiday. In a statement, Galvin, who is white, said the observance allowed the city to engage in “a national and regional dialogue on Jefferson’s complex legacy that embodies both the promise of equality and individual freedom and the reality of white supremacy and oppression, thereby reflecting the many deep-rooted contradictions embedded in American culture and society today.”

    But Mayor Nikuyah Walker said that the conversation around Jefferson hasn’t been that balanced. While the city has long acknowledged Jefferson, it hasn’t given the same recognition to the “people who did the work, who built the buildings that wouldn’t exist without them,” referring to the University of Virginia.

    “He enslaved more than 600 individuals, raped them and bred people for economic benefit,” said Walker, who is black. The conversation about Jefferson is “balanced out to make people in positions of power and people with white skin feel comfortable about stories being told.”

    The movement to reexamine America’s heroes hasn’t always won its battles. Last fall, a working group of Texas education officials recommended teachers stop defining the American soldiers who fought the Mexican military at the Alamo as “heroic,” calling the term “value charged.”

    The recommendation drew fierce backlash, including from Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who characterized it as “political correctness” run amok. The board kept the “heroic” language in the state curriculum.

    Some historians say it’s a mistake to apply the arguments used to dismantle Confederate symbolism to the nation’s Founding Fathers.

    “There is a difference between recognizing the people who founded the country and people who wanted to destroy the country,” said Annette Gordon-Reed, a Harvard history professor and the author of “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.”

    “You have to deal with the fact that the founding of the country was messy,” she said. Jefferson “embodies the country. All the problems and contradictions and good and bad parts.”

    Joseph J. Ellis, author of the Jefferson biography “American Sphinx,” noted that Jefferson’s words in the Declaration of Independence have remained central to the nation’s values, evolving with American society’s notion of equality. President Abraham Lincoln viewed the words as an avenue to end slavery, Ellis said, and Martin Luther King Jr. used them to argue that the “promissory note” of inalienable rights had not been granted to black Americans.

    “Jefferson is the most resonant figure in U.S. history” because of his words in the Declaration of Independence, though he was a “racist who believed black people were inferior,” Ellis said. “What those words meant to him and what they mean now aren’t the same.”

    a pair of red shoes: Nike pulled the Air Max 1 Quick Strike Fourth of July shoes after former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick complained to the shoemaker, according to the Wall Street Journal.
    © AP/AP Nike pulled the Air Max 1 Quick Strike Fourth of July shoes after former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick complained to the shoemaker, according to the Wall Street Journal.
    The Betsy Ross flag, which might not have been designed or sewn by the Philadelphia-based upholsterer, has been a largely uncontroversial symbol in American history, often displayed at presidential inaugurations. At President Barack Obama’s, it hung prominently from the Capitol building along with other historic U.S. flags.

    Like many symbols of America, the 13-star flag has on rare occasions been brandished by members of far-right movements, according to Mark Pitcavage, the Anti-Defamation League’s director of investigative research and a historian by training. But it has not been adopted or appropriated by the far right in the way that the Gadsden flag, with its “Don’t Tread On Me” message, is now associated with the tea party.

    “It’s not a hate symbol,” Pitcavage said.

    The Betsy Ross flag does not appear on the Anti-Defamation League’s list of 179 hate symbols, which includes some drawn from America’s own past, such as the Confederate flag, which the Charlottesville marchers brandished in 2017 as they shouted racist and anti-Semitic slogans.

    The online database includes an invitation to viewers to write in and suggest symbols.

    “No one has ever written in suggesting the Betsy Ross flag, to my recollection,” Pitcavage said.

    John Coski, a historian at the American Civil War Museum, warned against simplifying what historic symbols stand for. Over the years, the Confederate flag has been “a widely and carelessly used symbol of many things, including the South as a distinctive region, individual rebelliousness, a self-conscious ‘redneck’ culture, and segregation and racism,” Coski wrote in his 2005 book, “The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem.”

    The Gadsden flag, named after the 18th-century general and politician Christopher Gadsden, has also been used as a countercultural and anarchist emblem.

    Fitzhugh Brundage, a professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill — where student protesters last year tore down a Confederate statue known as Silent Sam — said that the meaning of symbols has always shifted. But today, he said, a historic symbol can be contaminated almost overnight.

    “In a universe in which memes come and go in a matter in weeks, what is the half-life of that contamination?” he asked. “When can the Betsy Ross flag go back to what is was before it was contaminated?”

    • What the hell is your point?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
      Or is it a meth high????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

    • Objects do not get contaminated by opinions and guns do not kill people. Seems like a silly point for me to argue, but when we put the focus on the objects, when we try to portray the objects as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ we end up banning statues, burning books, forbidding certain music, and painting over murals. We end up with censorship, suppression of speech, and mob rule. We expunge history rather than improving our understanding of it. We increase ignorance and impede our ability to engage in civil dialogue.
      I am all for re-examining history; the more we uncover, the better our understanding. But when that re-examination becomes re-writing to conform to cultural or political sensitivities, then it becomes propaganda and we will not have made progress at all.

      • Can we start with the word “liberal?” If anything has been ‘contaminated’ beyond recognition, that’s it.

    • “Gadsden flag” is the problem…?

      The Tea Party, assessing themselves under-represented in the political process, *banded together*, in a common voice. They promoted, organized, n voted.

      There never was one figurehead, inspiration, or paymaster: thus, hacks are reduced Alinskying a flag.

      They don’t get it…

      With millions of members with their own opinions, interest n history with guns, Wayne Lurch-Peter can be as feckless n self-dealing as any ward-heel machine politician (from Chicago, say – How’s that “gun” control working out for you, there?) , n it will be an inconvenience.

      NRA membership is a means, not meaning.

      Lurch getting slimed, slimes up “the movement” barely at all. We learn that independent people who mostly want to be left alone finally coming together to say “enough” aren’t as movement-y as people who studied “actiivism” their whole lives. Shocking.

      It is quite clever, duplicitous, n evil for the anti-people to go after their history n symbols, when tbe antis are losing in fact, n on the merits. I wonder who is pulling the strings on this, right now…?

    • The entire narrative around Charlottesville is a communist propaganda piece. The demonstrators against the removal of a statue were composed of a wide variety of groups and individuals. The vast majority were not white supremacists, or white nationalist. The city government ordered the police force to funnel them into the midst of the BLM and antifa real fascists, and then pulled back and abandoned the pro statue demonstrators to the communist mob. The entire city should be burned to the ground and all of it’s employees and elected officials shot for treason.

      James Fields car was under attack by bat wielding BLM and Antifa when he panicked and hit the gas trying to escape. The communist combatant was killed when hit by a vehicle which was hit by a vehicle which Fields hit trying to escape.

      • “””””””””””””””””””””””””””James Fields car was under attack by bat wielding BLM and Antifa when he panicked and hit the gas trying to escape. The communist combatant was killed when hit by a vehicle which was hit by a vehicle which Fields hit trying to escape.””””””””””””””””

        There is only one problem with your nonsensical and totally deranged rant, i.e. 300 million Americans saw on the news the Nazi mad man deliberately run his car over people in the street. There was no crowd behind his car and after he murdered the girl and injured people once again he backed up and escaped at least for awhile.

        At least you could be man enough to stand up for what you believe in and not try and hide what you are and what you believe in and make excuses for what that Nazi did. You condoned it, you praised it, and you believed he should have killed hundreds more.

        In Germany many German people hid Joseph Mengele knowing full well what he had done and they hid and helped him financially for decades to come and said publicly they were glad he killed the tens of thousands of people he murdered in cold blood. You are no different than he was only at least Mengele after he escaped bragged about his crimes and said he wished he could have killed more. Not any different than what your warped storm trooper at Charlottesville did. He sits now unrepentant in prison thinking like Mengele that he is a hero to “the cause”. Yes you and he would have worshiped and loved Mengele and hid him out for years if he had come knocking at your door for help, another “brother for the cause”. Its so chilling that when Trump took the man hole cover off of Americas sewers and made us all realize that “the people of the cause” are not extinct but have now come to America to carry on “the cause”.

        • As evil and vile Joseph Mengele was, his actions were paled by the Japanese Unit 731.

          However the Japanese were allowed to escape prosecution for their crimes in exchange for their research.

    • Vlad hates America for its place in the world and hates himself (or herself with gender fluidity) for experiencing white first-world privilege.

    • just when i thought, “it’s gonna take me a while to wade through the comments section here” i noticed your post and was instantly half way done.

    • Clearly you have nothing worthwhile to do on the 4th. Who’d want to spend a holiday with an asshat like Crisco?

    • What is with all of these long-winded morons? Hey Vlad, I think you forgot your meds!
      People like you who have no point to make, do nothing but ramble and bore!

    • If you enjoy hearing yourself talk as much as you enjoy reading your own writings, I seriously and truly have sympathy for your family.

      • They get long lectures on Marxian dialectic.

        The short version is: “We wish for it, therefore it will happen”.

    • the only reason to visit Charlottlesville is to see Monticello….wonder how many people realize it’s on a nickel….

    • Yup.
      I don’t deal with little firecrackers or other little pops.
      I make big explosions. Booms. The kind felt in the next county.
      Hello Tannerite!

      • buddy of mine was the pyrotechnics officer at an army base…always wanted to be at his place for the fourth…truly memorable!…

      • I say blow up marsupials hiding in their dens like the vermin that they are.

        *snicker* 😉

        (Awwww, we actually like our Possum. Beady eyes, rat-like tail and nasty yellow teeth and all…)

  5. Eff B-Loon-Berg and his Commiecrat minions and Happy Declaration of Independence Day to everyone else.

    • A billionaire socialist. Isn’t that a contradiction in terms? Bloomberg had better prove himself indespensible to the revolution or, most assured, he will be one of the victims.

  6. I’m FOR gun safety: 1. Every gun should be considered loaded until proven otherwise (twice). 2. Keep the gun pointed in a safe direction, don’t “cover” anybody, don’t point it at anything you don’t wish to destroy. 3. Know your target and what’s behind it. 4. Keep your finger off the f##king trigger!. 5. Don’t allow anybody that should not have a gun near your guns! That’s “gun safety”, right??
    I followed the above link to the “Everytown…” website … They have a really neat t-shirt, says “disarm hate”. It would nicely cover my CCL 1911, subcompact or G2C! But, they really do have some good ideas: Don’t EVER give Bloomberg or any of his followers a GUN! They hate us!
    Happy 4th of July!!! …if I remember my “far left” history correctly, we passed legislation outlawing guns on American soil, “bought-back” the tyrannical British guns at 1/3rd the retail price and sent them packing back to England without a single casualty on either side!
    Now, let’s all go shoot off some explosives to celebrate!

  7. STFU, pack up your “feelings”, and move to a country that doesnt celebrate independence, because they usually dont have it!

  8. Truth to be told, the breakaway created more problems than it solved. Slavery, gun violence, climate change is the price we are paying daily.

    • Feel free to move to the UK and resume your role as subservient subject. Rapidly being demoted back to serfdom.

    • Slavery was brought here by the British. Jefferson had a passage in the Declaration condemning it but it was edited by the Committee.

      The problems we experience are not the cause of our Independence, they are caused by Government declaring war on drugs, poverty and pulling more power than the Constitution relegated to it. Climate change is a variable and considering the overall changes the earth has had over a billion years, it is rather hard to blame it on the Independence of America.

    • Sorry, Great Britain abolished slavery well after the revolutionary war. They abolished trans Atlantic slave trade in 1807, the same time the US abolished it. Great Britain kept slavery legal until 1833.

  9. “Every day, an average of 100 Americans are fatally shot & hundreds more are shot and injured. ” This is a rounding error of those killed by government guns in countries where real gun control was implemented……Russia, Germany, China, Cambodia, Laos, Rwanda, Venezuela, Cuba,…. Yes, gun control is effective…..as endorsed by Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Chavez, Castro, Obummer, Ole Fire Two Blasts in the Air Sleazy Creepy Joe, Crazy Bernie, Diane Funkystein, et el.
    Celebrate the real freedom won at the barrels of America’s guns. Long live the Constitution, Bill of Rights as written by our Founding Fathers….not as interpreted by old activist people in black bath robes. Freedom is never won at the ballot box…only at the end of a gun.
    Hail the Second Amendment. Our Founding Fathers would already have been finished shooting a second time!!!!

  10. Nice quote from John Adams, from July 3, 1776. An interesting factoid is that he was referring to an annual celebration commemorating the 2nd of July.

    The reason for the letter to his wife is that on the day before, the 2nd, the congress had passed a law legally separating us from Great Britain. Adams felt that this was the momentous act. As history would have it, the eloquence and civil rights contained in the Declaration of Independence signed on the 4th of July, was later seen as the most important act.

  11. Addendum: Didn’t John Wilkes Boothe see the “No Guns” sign at the door of the theater? Everyone else apparently did!

  12. Consider reinstating the death penalty. Consider the meaning of the original constitution. Consider leaving our country if you don’t like it. Consider the fact that our military has fought wars in other countries to maintain freedom in our own while being betrayed by politicians in D C . District of Crooks.

  13. Of the 45 point Communist plan for the take over of United States without firing a shot, “Destroy history” and “pride in country” are live in action. …..today’s Democrat demonstrations against Trump’s Freedom Celebration Parade and all patriotic 4th of July celebrations and traditions.
    Points previously completed include:
    -Take over one or both of the major political parties.
    -Destroy the family unit.
    -Take over the media
    -Take over the entertainment industry

    15. Capture 1 or both of the political parties in the United States. Progressive Caucus (Marxist) within the Congress has 76 members. They are all Democrats or Independent (Marxist). Congressman Allen West, R-FL, publically referenced this fact in a Q&A session on 4/10/2012 at a town hall event in Jensen Beach, FL. Libero Della Piana, a vice-chairman of the national Communist Party-USA, denounced Rep. West the next day. The Blue Dog Coalition, commonly known as the Blue Dogs, is a group of United States Congressional Representatives from the Democratic Party who identify themselves as moderates. It was formed in 1995 during the 104th Congress to give more conservative members from the Democratic party a unified voice after the Democrats’ loss of Congress in the U.S. Congressional election of 1994. Blue Dog Coalition membership for the 112th Congress is 26 seats, down from 54 seats in the 111th Congress. The Democrat National Committee (DNC) is pursuing an aggressive internal campaign to usurp what Blue Dogs are left with leftist candidates. 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has kept the conservative base, especially the TEA Party movement, at arm’s length during his entire campaign.
    16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights. While not quite the same thing, the torturous reasoning of Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision in favor of ObamaCare in June 2012 can be seen as having weakend the SCOTUS and the nation.
    17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks. Over the last 30 years, we have seen the rise of the “diversity/multi-culturalism/political correctness” movement. It was imported from Europe. It has now taken root in the federal government, all levels of public education, and is increasingly penetrating the corporate world. Jonathan Kozol (born September 5, 1936 in Boston, Massachusetts) is a non-fiction writer, educator, and activist, best known for his books on public education in the United States. He has been working with children in inner-city schools for more than 40 years. He is the main activist who infected public education with this mindset.
    18. Gain control of all student newspapers. “Hate speech” rules on university campuses have effectively silenced dissent.
    19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack. The 2011-12 Occupy Wall Street movement is the successor to the 1960s Weather Underground and Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
    20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policy-making positions. Our local newspaper, The Birmingham News, is a classic example of this. The editorial pages are crammed with nationally syndicated leftists of all flavors. Only 4 conservative columns are offered – George Will, Tom Sowell, Charles Krauthammer, and Cal Thomas. All of the local editorialists are politically correct/ diversity disciples. Former Democratic National Committee Chair, Howard Dean, now chairs the Progressive (communist) Book Club.
    21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures. Conservatives still seem to have the edge on talk radio. FoxNews is the only conservative TV presence, though 70 year-old president Roger Ailes, seems to be diluting conservative voices, e.g. Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin. Hollywood is hopelessly in the grip of leftist money men, producers, studio owners, and writers. Though the recent success of Dinesh D’Souza’s “Obama 2016” may be an encouraging sign of resistance.
    22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms.”
    23. Control art critics and directors of art museums. “Our plan is to promote ugliness, repulsive, meaningless art.”
    24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.
    25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.
    26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.” All that remains is the repeal of the DoMA/Defense of Marriage Act by the SCOTUS. The U.S. military has been effectively undermined with the repeal of DADT/Don’t Ask – Don’t Tell. Many public school libraries, at all age levels, now have books which attempt to normalize homosexuality. Tolerance clubs are sprouting all over the country in high schools. The 4 mainline protestant churches – Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Presbyterian Church in the USA, Episcopal Church, and United Church of Christ – have all abandoned biblical teachings regarding homosexuality. Next up is the normalization of pedophilia. Below is an incomplete list of TV shows with homosexual characters/themes/actors/ writers.

    27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity, which does not need a “religious crutch.” The liberation theology movement within the Catholic Church and the “radical social justice” movements within various protestant denominations all advocate redistribution of wealth, i.e., socialism.
    28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of “separation of church and state.” SCOTUS did this in 1963. The traditional Sunday bachelorette service on public school campuses for graduating high school seniors has been virtually eliminated. The ACLU is aggressively forcing public schools to remove all wall pictures and plaques which contain Christian references. NYC mayor Bloomberg has ordered that public schools may no longer be used for church services outside of school hours.
    29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis. BHO has certainly done this over the last 3.7 years.
    30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the “common man.” BHO has certainly done this over the last 3.7 years. CNN, Wolf Blitzer and Michael Moore openly advocate this approach.
    31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the “big picture.” Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over. This has taken root in American academia at all levels under the guise of multiculturalism/political correctness/diversity/inclusiveness.
    32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture–education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc. Gee, where to start – 1965’s “Great Society” programs culminating in ObamaCare in 2010.
    33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.
    34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Done. 1945 – 1975.
    35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI. Could this be part of BHO’s plan to implement a civilian defense force?
    36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions. Let’s see, the big 5 would be SEIU, AFL-CIO, NEA, Teamsters, and UAW. … Progressive (Communist) Hilda Solis, BHO’s US Secretary of Labor, is Introducing 90 new regulations to give unions much more power.
    37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business. This 1 is harder to gauge. But if General Electric CEO Jeffrey Imelt is any example, then it may be later than we think.
    38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand [or treat].
    39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals. Mental health regulations are included in ObamaCare.
    40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce. Membership in all Christian churches in Europe and North America are declining. No fault divorce was established around 1970. Today, ~ 50% of U.S. marriages end in divorce. Marriage is on the wane in Europe, especially in the Scandinavian countries. White couples are having fewer children all over the globe. In the U.S. black community, 72% of all live births are by unwed/single mothers. For whites it is 30%.
    41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
    42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use “united force” to solve economic, political or social problems. Occupy Wall Street
    43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.
    44. Internationalize the Panama Canal. In 1977, POTUS #40 Jimmy Carter signed a treaty which agreed to return 60% of the Canal Zone to Panama in 1979. The canal and remaining territory, known as the Canal Area, was returned to Panama on December 31, 1999 during the Clinton administration. Red China has been active over the last 10 years in gaining influence in the properties around the Canal Zone.
    45. Repeal the Connally Reservation (so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction [over domestic problems. Give the World Court jurisdiction] over nations and individuals alike. Before ratifying the United Nations Charter in 1945, the Senate was wise enough to amend the section dealing with the World Court by barring the Court from jurisdiction over matters which were essentially domestic “AS DETERMINED BY THE UNITED STATES.” Those 6 words, authored by Senator Tom Connally (D-Tex), are known as the “Connally Reservation” and are the only thing which COULD prevent the World Court from interfering in American internal affairs on the pretext that our tariffs, immigration laws, school curriculums, etc. affect American relations with other countries and are therefore “foreign” and not “domestic.” Very powerful interests in Washington have been trying to get that “Connally Reservation” repealed ever since. Examples = UN Agenda 21, carbon tax, Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), International Arms Trade Treaty, and a world tax to aid 3rd world economies.

    ________________________________________

    The Ten Planks of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto
    (and How Statists Implement Them)
    1. Abolition of private property rights (via high property taxes, restrictive zoning laws, “fair housing” edicts, environmental and “wetlands” regulations, UN Agenda 21, etc.)
    2. Institution of a heavily graduated income tax (by calling it “taxing the rich”)
    3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance (through a confiscatory estate tax on “the rich”)
    4. Confiscation of the property of enemies of the state (through lawless application of asset forfeiture and eminent domain)
    5. Centralization of credit into the hands of the state (Federal Reserve, Federal Trade Commission, TARP, etc.)
    6. Centralization of the means of communication and transportation into the hands of the state (FCC, DOT, FEMA, etc.).
    7. Consolidation and subjugation of all major industries to central government control (FDA, EPA, OSHA, ICC, NLRB, EEOC, etc.)
    8. Mandatory labor union membership (public-sector unions, unionization of 21-million Obamacare health care workers, automatic withholding of forced union dues, “card check,” etc.)
    9. Equitable redistribution of all wealth (TANF, SSI, EITC, SNAP, etc.)
    10. Free public education (and food and health care and cell phones and Internet access, etc.)

    -Destroy the sense of morality
    -Destroy the sense of beauty

      • Jim Bullock….

        The list of 45 communist goals contained in the ~1958 book “Naked Communist” was read into the Congressional Record (Appendix, pp. A34-A35) by U.S. Congressman Albert S. Herlong, Jr. of Florida, on January 10, 1963. This is the plan to overtake America without firing a shot. As Russian Premier Nitka Khrushchev once said, “……America will fall into our hands like over ripe fruit.”

        The Ten Planks of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.

        • Thanks, man.

          I’ll track down a copy of that many-point plan.

          Every time I try to read the manifesto I get de railed by the presentation. Apparently so badly it drives everything I did read out of my brain.

          I am hopeful that Lenin’s prescriptions for revolution will be more readable.

    • to stlpro2a

      You missed the most important point as Nikita Khrushchev once said (metaphorically) “We Will Bury You” has historically become quite accurate. He was deliberately misinterpreted as he meant that Socialism would become the dominate form of Government in the years ahead and so it has come to pass. Europe was won over, Canada, and many Asian and South America Countries as well. Yes the U.S. has been a tougher nut to crack because of all the ignorant hillbillies but we Socialists have already won over the majority of the younger generations and they are just waiting for the bulk of the “old guard” to die off and those few that are left put into rest homes that have become senile even if they are not, then we can finally civilize the U.S. and live like the rest of the civilized industrial world where health care is a human right and not reserved only for the upper 1 per cent. We Socialists grow more numerous and more powerful with each passing year and we of course are well aware of the fact that “History is on our side not yours”.

  14. On your birthday America….WAKE UP!!!…..or you will soon have your last birthday as iur Founding Fathers created you.

    “The GOAL of Socialism IS Communism.” – Vladimir Lenin

    Norman Thomas, the six-time Socialist Party candidate for U.S. President, said the following in a 1944 speech: “The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of ‘liberalism,’ they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened…. I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democratic Party has adopted our platform.” And, today, the Republican Party RINOs have adopted it as well. It is no longer a situation of “enemy in the wire”. Today….and for several decades….the enemy sits in the Command Post. America has been overrun.
    As Nikita Krushshev said in 1954, “First, we will take Eastern Europe, then the masses of Asia, then we will encircle the United States which will be the last bastion of capitalism. We will not have to attack. It will fall like an overripe fruit into our hands.” In 1960, Krushchev stated, “We cannot expect Americans to jump from capitalism to Communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving Americans small doses of socialism until they suddenly awake to find they have Communism.”
    The old Soviet Union may have fallen; but, Krushchev’s statements are ringing true as we look at the changes that have taken place and are taking place in the US today. No longer does Socialism or Communism hold a stigma to be hidden away. Politicians are now openly campaigning on that oppressive platform and winning in some areas.

    “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
    ― Taylor Caldwell, A Pillar of Iron

    • Future historians will likely record that the Second American Civil War began on June 14, 2017, with the attempted assassination of Congressman Steve Scalise. The crazed leftist gunman intended to kill as many Republican congressmen as he could, but failed to kill any, but not for lack of trying.

      It’s hard to dispute that we are already in a new civil war if you record the attacks by the left and the countless threats that issue from their mouths. And they are escalating their attacks every day.

      Though we didn’t ask for this we are in it whether we want to be or not. Have a happy Independence Day, and keep your powder and fireworks dry!

  15. Yes, let’s run around the entire surrounding neighborhood and inform these people that ONE THE FOURTH OF JULY I plan to shoot fireworks. If you’re too stupid to understand that fireworks are going to happen, please, promptly kill yourself.

  16. ” It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells…”

    Wait a minute – If the Leftists are correct and guns were never meant to be freely owned by the ‘little people’, why did Mr. Adams write what he did?

    Could it be ‘Everytown’ is fucking lying to us?

  17. Holy Shit,,. Some of you guys are something else. Have you ever had one single day of not bitching?

    • Are you chosing to not fight for your rights and live in denial?
      Statements like yours is part of the problem.

    • Hahahaha. Good Observation Mr Marsupial. FB I don’t see how bitching to an echo chamber is “fighting for our rights”?

      Personally I’ve been taking as many new shooters to the range as possible.

      • Looks like you and i have the same idea, been introducing people to the 2A world for a long time now. Happy to say most have stuck to it and are responsible firearms owners today, some turned out to be damn fine marksmen/women. The more in our corner the better, Happy 4th Everyone! Play safe

        • Oddly I work in a field that’s very left leaning. I work with lots of libertarians that just don’t know they’re libertarians yet. Getting firearms into they’re hands have been good experiences. Right now I’ve converted 3 people into “gun nuts” who are collecting on their own, several people who said they had a great time and 2 people from anti into maybe they’ll “think about a CPL” in the future. In my book those are all wins.

        • Roger that, surprising how when you convince most people to try it one time, the reaction is overwhelmingly positive. Very few people say they’ll never try it again, unless some idiot handed them the biggest, baddest piece in the safe.

  18. The Fourth of July, 1776 was made possible by a well-armed militia, in particular those at Lexington and Concord. A well-armed militia, er, well, having GUNS. Lots and Lots of GUNS.

    Everytown has no self-awareness.

  19. I lived thru an Industrial plant explosion in 2009 that killed people and injured many more. I survived with no physical harm, but I do not like unexpected loud noises. But I know the Fourth of July and New Years brings celebration and fireworks, with which I can tolerate because they are special occasions for people to celebrate!.FUCK,FUCK,FUCK, Michael Bloomberg and all his ignorant followers. If they were so concerned about any of our 40,000 plus homeless veterans suffering from PTSD living on the streets of the US, He could put his fortune to good use. That is not this little tyrant piece of shits agenda.The US government should classify Bloomberg as a Terrorist. He is not an American Patriot. He is an Oligarch with a plan of his own as to what this country should be, and it is not freedom for you and me. AGAIN, LET ME REITERATE FUCK MICHAEL BLOOMBERG UP THE ASS

  20. The progressives can not stand seeing millions and millions of patriots that love America having fun celebrating 4TH of July. They are always being so upset being a victim of something or another they no longer know how to have fun. Really pathetic lives. But as for the rest of us – let the festivities continue as the day has plenty of time left and the best part with the fireworks is not far off.

  21. Happy 243rd birthday to the United States of America… and Happy Independence Day to all of us!

    Currently I’m at work in a windowless data center across the street from a park on Lake Michigan… but at least I’m only 30 minutes from home (after 10:30), not many miles away or overseas, like some. (And it’s slow tonight, so we should be able to sneak out and watch some fireworks in a bit.) As Huey Lewis put it, “I’m taking what they’re givin’ ‘cuz I’m working for a living.”

    Y’all go blow shit up!

    • Make that 242nd birthday…

      Weird – the edit function worked (since I checked the boxes to save my name, etc.), but it loaded a blank window with no text to edit… edit function still has a lot of bugs, I see.

  22. “…Consider gun violence survivors on the Fourth of July”

    OK. I will consider them and I think they should get to light off the first round. It will help them by making them feel a bit more in charge of the situation.

  23. This cropped up on local social media in the form of “concerned” individuals. They didn’t link it to gun control but I suspected that the leftist lemmings were getting their “concerns” from some dark source. Many of these brain-dead zombies were parroting the same thing about concern over pets and those with PTSD. Good lord, it was irritating AF!

    • Is’nt it great how “concerned” they are about everything? A more suspicious person might suspect they had ulterior motives!😉

      • Aye.

        I need to get more suspicious on some of this. It took me a good long while to realize that they weren’t just being the typical window-lickers they usually are on our local social media sites. They were parroting cloned ideas, which I thought was odd but not too suspicious as they share the same dysfunctional turnip cell for a brain. Until this article, I didn’t even know of Everytown’s involvement. That explains a whole lot.

        Damned leftist zombies!

  24. We’ve been having this fight in my neighborhood facebook group (and in public). There are a few pearl clutcher horse owners who have been screaming their head off about neighbors setting off fireworks. Neighborhood is rural residential. Maybe 30-40 homes of 1-2 acres and about 60 homes of 3-5 acres. An 80 acre farm and half a dozen 6-10 acre properties. I’ve been in the neighborhood about 6 years now. I am good friends with some folks who have lived here 20+ years. Fireworks has always been a thing here.

    But if you hear the pearl clutcher tell it all wildlife will die when you set off a firework. Their horses will commit suicide. Their dogs will either all run away or rip their own throats out. Veterans with PTSD will wet themselves, go on a shooting spree or suffer a stroke (not sure which, maybe all at the same time?). Their barns will burn down. Baby Jesus will die for our sins again. Oh and farmers livestock will also promptly fall over dead in their fields or barns.

    I am aware some livestock and pets don’t like fireworks. Out of the last several years, other than some dogs that have run off (only from the pearl clutchers strangely), none have ever had a horse harm itself. No fences broken. No barns burned down. Now, perhaps there were some puddles of pee (their own) that they had to clean up. The neighbor who sets off the most fireworks every year is a 20 year vet who served multiple overseas tours in war zones. The pearl clutchers’ facebook pages is pretty much picture after picture of sadness. 90% pictures of their horses or dogs. Often dressed up and looking like “please, do something about this human”. Shockingly the half dozen or so women only one is married (it might be 2 still married, I know one is divorced). Only two have kids.

    These are the same ones posting crap all the time about trophy hunting being evil and love all wildlife. But also ride their horses through the state park nearby screaming their heads off and letting their dogs run wild chasing deer (but they want their quiet enjoyment, damn you!). They also weep about some fox or raccoon killing their chickens and decry any mention of trapping or shooting said predators.

    I wish I could say they are some stereotype of political persuasion, but looking at their personal facebook pages they are all over the board (some seem straight up psychotic) from uber liberal to Trump is my emperor 37 more years!

    Frankly all of the rest of the neighbors are feed up with them. Between constant pleas on facebook, on the 4th one or more of them called the cops on a neighbor who gave a heads up about fireworks displays this week (because one of the ladies asked, “why can’t you even give us a heads up!?!”). He and his family weren’t even home. They showed up and found a cop there because a neighbor called to say they were setting off fireworks. At one of the larger fireworks displays in the neighborhood (right next to one of these pearly clutchers) the cops also showed. “We are really sorry, but we have a complaint so we are required to investigate. Looks like you are having a safe and good time. I see you have a few fireworks left. We will be out of the neighborhood in five minutes and there really isn’t a way for us to get back in time if another call comes in. Have a nice and safe night”.

    Yeah, fireworks are illegal in my state. The county cops in my part of the country know the score. Also the only way the cops could have made it in time as busy as I am sure they were is if either a car was already very, very close and not busy, or the pearl clutcher saw us all at the neighbor’s house and called the police before we had even set any fireworks off (it wasn’t like a 20 minutes display. Like 5-6 minutes and then the cops showed up with an average response time in my part of the county of about 10 minutes). It is getting to the point where I suspect some neighbors are likely to start retaliating against them (like setting off fireworks deliberately at odd hours. A firecracker just happening to fall in to their yard, etc). I am against that. Let them just be miserable human beings. But I know most of the neighbors are done with them.

    • You DO realize that they only do this out of “concern” for everyone’s emotional well being! Every time someone allows them to dictate anything, they feel a little more empowered. I.E. congress. I also foolishly compromised with my libtard neighbors concerning my shooting, after the agreement took place, found out through the grapevine that were talking to the town to try to stop me completely. NEVER turn your back on em, and remember, they spell compromise a lot like surrender.

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