Irony, Stat's, & Gun Control - Why the Anti-Gun Folks Just Don't Get It.

The appreciation of sarcasm is being lost at an alarming rate these days. There used to be a time when people understood you were being sarcastic, now you have to actually explain things to them or use one of those stupid symbols……  Being a NY’er, I despise this. If you've read any of my books, you'll know that my characters of quite fond of it as well.

The same hold true for irony. Some folks just don't seem to appreciate just how ironic they really are.

If you have turned on a TV, read a paper, logged onto Facebook or Twitter lately, you would see irony, in all its glory and pageantry, on full display, but at the same time being missed out on by so many who just don’t get it.

Examples are things like:

• Black lives matter……. Because, you know, all the other lives don’t.
• Be a champion of the climate change agenda, but fly across the ocean in your private G4, to accept an award, then immediately fly back to party in Caan.
• Christianity, which follows the tenets of Jesus who says to love one another, is bad. While Islam, which advocates killing in the name of Allah, is good….. You know; the whole religion of peace thing.
• No one under an FBI investigation should ever be able to purchase a gun, but you can still run for President if you’re under an FBI investigation.

I don’t know who originally coined the phrase ‘Word’s Matter’, but they do. Just like our President admonished us in a campaign speech back in 2008: “Don't tell me words don't matter. ‘I have a dream.’  Just words?”

IRONICALLY, he was accused of plagiarizing that, from a speech Deval Patrick made in 2006, by none other than Hillary Clinton. Oh well, like they say, politics make for strange bedfellows.

The problem I have with all of this is that we have stopped reading words, in the form of actual research, and have begun to accept talking points and snippets as actual truth. They are not.

Take statistics for example. Everyone loves to flaunt them, because they allow you to use evidence to support your argument, but are they really that good?

How about this little gem, stripped from the pages of that vaunted newspaper, the New York Times (Hint: insert Sarcasm symbol here), which authoritatively asserted the following: ‘In the United States, the death rate from gun homicides is about thirty-one per million people or the equivalent of twenty-seven people shot and killed every day.’

Just to drive home the point, they included a graph with more statistics, showing just how blood thirsty we Americans are. Seriously, it was like we are up here (hold your left hand up high) and they are ALL down here (hold your right hand down really low). Wow, that’s ominous……. 

It’s not accurate mind you, but very ominous, which is exactly the point.

You see the pundits and politicians don’t want you to know the truth, they just want you to accept their facts.

For the better part of my law enforcement career I was an investigator. Show me a stat and the first thing I want to know is: what was your methodology? What’s that? you ask.

Well, methodology is the systematic, theoretical analysis of the methods applied to a field of study. Or, as my astute boss once told me: garbage in, garbage out.

Too often we take the stats being offered as honest representations of the facts. They aren’t. In fact they are skewed to make you support what is being offered to you. So take the New York Times article, what should we take away from it? Well, number one would be that the United States is pretty damn violent and, number two that only rich, Western countries, with a GDP per capita over $25,000.00, matter.

Why is this significant? Because they want you to believe that we really are that damn violent.

The New York Times is anti-gun. Asking them for the unvarnished truth on guns is like asking the Devil to cite the benefits of Christianity. But let’s not bash on the Times alone. How about this from CBS News:

“Murder is the second leading cause of death among Americans aged 15 to 24, the study found. The research also showed that murder was the third leading cause of death among those aged 25-34. Compared to those in the same age groups in other wealthy countries, Americans aged 15-24 are 49 times more likely to be the victim of a gun-related murder. For those aged 25-34, that number is 32 times more likely, the research revealed.”

So, are we really that violent? Well, let’s look at some real numbers.

For the moment, let’s ignore the age groups. I’ll get back to them later. For now, let’s accept that there are roughly 320 + million people in the United States. We are number three in the world, but we only make up about 4 ½ percent of the population. In fact, China and India both beat us soundly by about one billion people EACH. That’s a pretty sobering stat, isn’t it?

Of those 320+ million, there are roughly 270 million guns owned by citizens. I’m not going to give you the stat, because I’m really not that good with math, so I will just say that we, collectively, have a LOT of guns. In fact, according to the Geneva based Small Arms Survey, the leading source of international public information about firearms, the U.S. has the best-armed civilian population in the world, with an estimated average of 90 firearms for every 100 residents.  If you like Wikipedia, that number jumps to 112.6. Why the disparagement in numbers? Statistics!

So, given either of those statistics, you would think the United States would lead the world in gun violence….. Right? The truthful answer is, No.

You see, many people like to pick and choose their stats. A methodology I prefer to think of as never having to say you’re wrong.

Most research focuses around what is best described as high income countries. Why? I don’t know. Last I looked bullets didn’t seem to discriminate along sex, race or religion, so why financial? I’m sure that there are some socio economic indicators that they will spout-off to validate their claims, but that’s kind of silly.  It’s also called cherry picking your data, which they seem to love to do. Guess diversity only matters some of the time……… How ironic.

So, with that many guns one would certainly be within their mathematical rights to extrapolate that the United States would obviously be the world’s murder capitol….. Right? And the answer is: No.

According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime the country that leads the world in intentional homicide is: Honduras, that socialist enclave in Central America, which has a rate of 84.6 per 100,000 inhabitants, despite restrictive civilian ownership of guns. Its fellow socialist and gun restricting neighbor, El Salvador is number two on the list.

Hmmm, corrupt, socialist government’s which don’t like guns, what a novel idea.

Well, surely the United State is high up on the list…… right? And the answer is still: No.

Scrolling through the list one finds that you have to go all the way down to number 108 (out of 218) to find the U.S. According to the U.N., statistically, you are more likely to die visiting a tropical resort in the Bahamas than you are in the United States.

So what is the problem?

Well, the problem is that no one wants to address the actual problem.

Awhile back there was a meme that pointed out that both Honduras and Switzerland had the same population, yet Honduras, with their gun laws, led the world in murder, but Switzerland, without the same strict gun laws, had one of the lowest murder rates. Everyone jumped on that saying that it was a flawed argument. 

Remember before that I said some would point to socio economic indicators to validate their claims? Well, the truth is that they want to cherry pick every form of data so that it validates their claims. They will tell you that you can’t factor in certain things because they are not relevant to the equation. Such was the case with Honduras. The experts claimed that you couldn’t equate the two because of the cultural, political and socio economic factors that play into gun violence, or a lack thereof.

Here is the problem I have with this argument:

• In 2016, Omar Mateen murdered 49 people in Orlando. The left immediately blamed guns.
• In 2015, Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik murdered 14 people in San Bernardino. The left immediately blamed guns.
• In 2015, Robert Lewis Dear murdered 3 people in Colorado. The left immediately blamed guns.
• In 2015, Christopher Sean Harper-Mercer murdered 9 people in Oregon. The left immediately blamed guns.
• In 2015, Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez murdered 5 people in Tennessee. The left immediately blamed guns.
• In 2015, Dylann Storm Roof murdered 9 people in South Carolina. The left immediately blamed guns.
• In 2014, Elliot Rodger murdered 6 people in California. The left immediately blames guns.
• In 2014, Nidal Hassan murdered 3 people in Texas. The left immediately blamed guns.
• In 2013, Aaron Alexis murdered 12 people in Washington, D.C. The left immediately blamed guns.
• In 2012, Adam Lanza murdered 27 people in Connecticut. The left immediately blamed guns.
• In 2012, James Holmes murdered 12 people in Colorado. The left immediately blamed guns.

The left will tell you that we should not consider certain factors, yet every time they focus solely on one factor: Guns. Let me tell you what they don’t want you to consider: the individual.

You see, they have no answer for the individual. They can’t explain to you why one person breaks the law and another person doesn’t. They come up with every excuse in the world as to why inner-city places like: St. Louis, Detroit, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York City, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Newark, New Orleans, Oakland, and Washington D.C. have such high crime rates, yet cities in the gun-crazy state of Texas, like Plano, El Paso, Arlington, and Austin don’t.  

Ironically, the left will tell you that you cannot factor some countries, because they have certain socio economic factors at play, yet they will tell you that you must include all U.S. cities, that have those very same socio economic factors, when you are talking about gun violence in the United States. Well, that’s so dumb it makes me squint. What would happen if you did a side by side comparison, you know like Honduras and Switzerland?

Well, Detroit and El Paso have almost the same identical population, yet Detroit has a murder rate of 43.5 while El Paso has a murder rate of 3.1. Heck, Fort Worth, which has a substantially larger population than Baltimore, is only 6.1 compared to the latter’s 33.8.

Shootingtracker, the site everyone goes to in order to document all the horrible mass shootings, listed an amazing 332 mass shootings for 2015, but when you research it a bit further you notice something unusual. Some of the urban cities, like I listed above, also have a larger percentage of the shootings. Call me crazy, but I don’t think it is legal gun owners shooting things up in Detroit, NYC or Baltimore.

Could it be the individual? Could it be that 15-24 and 25-34 demographic? Perhaps they might even be criminals? Or worse yet, actual radical Islamic terrorists? (Gasp)

So what do these vaunted cities have in common that makes them so vastly different?

• St. Louis - 1949
• Detroit – 1962
• Philadelphia – 1952
• Chicago – 1931
• New York City – 1971
• Baltimore – 1967
• Cincinnati – 1979
• Newark – 1953
• New Orleans – 1870 (Seriously? WTF?)
• Oakland – 1977
• Washington D.C. – NEVER

The numbers next to each city is the last year that they had a Republican mayor. Think we might have hit on something here?

To be fair, I did not count the Rudolph Giuliani era in NYC as it was more of an aberration. The old saying in NYC was that Christ himself couldn’t get elected mayor of NYC if he was a Republican. Truthfully, the last true Republican in NYC was Fiorello Laguardia in 1933. Giuliani won simply because the city hit rock bottom and had finally stopped digging. Michael Bloomberg was never a Republican, as evidenced by his own anti-gun / liberal policies, and John Lindsey was what would best be considered a RINO.

In my adopted home state of Illinois, every Monday brings another report of the weekend murders in Chicago. Over the Father’s Day weekend there were thirteen people killed and at least forty-two others wounded.  One weekend!  So far this year there have been 280 people killed and another 1,520 wounded. Do you even wonder why they call it Chiraq? In Chicago a person is shot, on average, every two hours and murdered every thirteen. You have a better chance of dying on the streets of Chicago then you do in Baghdad!

There comes a time when you have to stop blaming things and start blaming people.

The lefts clarion call for more gun control is a façade.  A dog whistle designed to focus your attention away from the real problem which is a complete breakdown in society. The cities with the highest violence are the same cities with the biggest ‘socio econimic’ problems and they are the same cities were Democrats keep getting re-elected.

The truth is that the politicians and pundits don’t have an answer for the individual, so they default back to gun control. They wring their hands, blame legal gun owners, pass even more restrictive gun laws (which only legal gun owners will obey) and then feign shock when things don’t change.

Here’s a newsflash, criminals really don’t care how many gun laws you pass……. They’re criminals!! Which is precisely the reason why those silly little ‘no gun’ placards have zero impact.

This is like a social experiment go awry, political correctness run amok.  We now live in an age where personal responsibility is in the middle of its death throes. Forty percent of all births are now to unmarried woman. Education levels are plummeting, incarceration rates are rising, and more people can’t find full-time work. Criminals are viewed as victims, while the police are viewed as criminals. We redefine terrorism as a hate crime, to make it seem more palatable, so we can turn away attention from the abject failures of the government. We are developing a mindset that we need the government to care for us from cradle-to-grave. Welfare is viewed as a right, while Social Security is viewed as an entitlement program.

But no, really, guns are the real problem.

We need to wake up and realize that we have been betrayed.

I remember back during the riots in Baltimore where a mother, Toya Graham, was caught on film slapping her son, after she saw him with a mask on and a brick in his hand, and pulling him out of a protest. I use the word protest loosely, because that’s the word the media used to explain the utter lawlessness that ran rampant through the city. I remember hearing a number of people calling for her to be investigated for what she did. Imagine that, a mother trying to get her child to act properly was going to be investigated. The media even asked her if she was concerned that she had embarrassed her son. Ms. Graham’s response: “Not at all, he was embarrassing himself by wearing that mask, that hoodie and doing what he was doing."

It’s amazing to me that, as we watched the city burn, the media’s concern was of a mother embarrassing her child by trying to get him away from the problem. Where are the rest of the Toya Graham’s of the world? Why have we abandoned the concept of personal responsibility? When did it become okay to blame the gun, but not the shooter?

As I said earlier, it is estimated that there are anywhere between 90 and 112 firearms per 100 people in the United States. The truth is that if gun owners were really as bad as we are made out to be, you’d know about.  

A recent report said that, over the past decade (2005-15), there were just over three hundred thousand gun related deaths in the United States. I think most people would agree this is incredibly high number, at least until you consider that it comes out to about thirty thousand a year. Of that number, less than 1/3 are attributable to homicides. Suicides and accidents comprise the other 2/3’s.

So what about the big bad Assault Rifles? Surely they must be responsible. I mean we are constantly being told that they are evil weapons of war that the politicians and media tout at every opportunity.  Well, beside the fact that they aren’t even actual Assault Rifles, the truth is they aren’t even used all that often. Of the roughly 8-9k gun related homicides each year, only around 300 were used. That’s all rifles, not just the evil AR-15 or AK-47. In fact, you have a better chance of being killed by knives, blunt objects or physical assault, than you are by a rifle.

“But, but…. I just heard that the American Medical Association called gun violence a public health crisis and has asked the CDC to research it.”

Well If I was the AMA I would as well, that’s because they probably don’t want you looking at them.

Why you ask? Because what you probably don’t know is that each year there are an estimated quarter of a million deaths from medical malpractice. Some reporting agencies put the number as high as nearly half a million. Let that sink in for a moment the next time you go see the doctor. You are far more likely to die this year, as a result of medical malpractice, then you are in over a decade of all firearms deaths.

The truth is you are far more likely to die from: Medical Errors, Hospital Infection, Alcohol, Tobacco, Motor Vehicle Crashes, Suicide, Drunk Driving, Poisoning (unintentional), Accidents (unintentional), than you are by a firearm. Consider only rifles used in homicides and you can add walking, drowning, fire, malnutrition, and falling out of bed to the list of things that are more dangerous.  This doesn't even include the usual medical issues of: Cancer, Obesity, Stroke, Diabetes, Pneumonia, etc.

Perhaps we should ban all assault fast food....

So why all the screaming and gnashing of teeth then? Because they don’t like them.

That’s it, in a nutshell.

For a moment, I want you to take a long hard look at the media. I want you to make a mental note of each time you hear a report about guns. Are they reporting the news, or are they telling you a story? Once you realize just how widespread this anti-gun bias is, you’ll be shocked.

Just recently, the darling child of the media, Katie Couric, was investigated over a gun documentary she did. Rather than just present the show, in its entirety, Ms. Couric’s crew selectively edited it. When Couric asked the group a question, regarding the ability of convicted felons and those on the terror watch list to legally obtain a gun, there was dramatic eight-second silence, as the camera panned the faces of the gun owners,  implying that the group had no answer. The truth was that they had immediately responded to the question. Simply put, the documentary was craftily edited to make the pro-gun group look bad and to present you with their anti-gun agenda.

Immediately after the Orlando terror attack, the media was dispatched in droves to seek out the horrific weapon of war and show how easy it is to buy one. In their zeal, some took it a bit far. Several reporters gleefully recalled how they could purchase one. Of course no one had a criminal record, so it was tantamount to someone over the age of 21 proclaiming they had just purchased alcohol. I’m not sure what is so amazing about purchasing something legally. A CNN reporter confronted Florida Governor Rick Scott with this question:  “Yes, ISIS, terrorism could be to blame for this, but can you accept any responsibility for the gun laws here in Florida?”

Seriously? ‘Could be?’ What does it take for them to call this horrific act terrorism?

Once again we see that it is not about terrorism, not about the individual, but all about those bad scary guns.

A New York Daily News reporter went so far as to describe his shooting of an AR 15 as: “It felt to me like a bazooka and sounded like a cannon. But mostly, I was just terrified.”

Awesome,…… Just for the record, my kids enthusiastically shot them (along with that evil AK-47) as they were growing up, but not this middle-aged man who gleefully added: “The recoil bruised my shoulder, which can happen if you don't know what you're doing. The brass shell casings disoriented me as they flew past my face. The smell of sulfur and destruction made me sick. The explosions — loud like a bomb — gave me a temporary form of PTSD. For at least an hour after firing the gun just a few times, I was anxious and irritable.”

PT FUCKING SD? Seriously?  

The writer then had to do a follow-up article, apologizing for his rather huge PTSD leap, which he then promptly used as a platform to attack those who called him out on his nonsense.  I’m sorry, but he knew what he was doing in his original article and the second was no better, but that’s the real problem. You see they just don’t like guns. They have this exaggerated fear of something and that is enough for them to decide that you can’t have it. If you disagree with them they berate you, or, as in the case of the reporter, if you call them out on their nonsense, they cry foul and run to the nearest safe-space. Sorry, you don’t get to have it both ways.

I spent over two decades in law enforcement, twenty with the NYPD, and I have owned firearms for over three decades. I have trained on and fired just about every handgun / rifle caliber from .22 to .308. I am also an NRA certified instructor. So who out there on the left is going to tell me that I don’t possess the pre-requisite capabilities and training to own these firearms? You would think that someone with my background would be opposed to these horrific weapons being in the hands of mere citizens, but you would be wrong. Gun ownership is a serious thing, but I firmly believe in the 2^nd Amendment and the people’s right to keep and bear arms.

I often hear people saying “you don’t need guns like that.” I’m sorry, but where did you become the arbiter of such matters? Did they offer that as a minor study in your Social Justice Warrior degree program? Again, why are we taking advice from people who have no clue about what they are talking about? Whether you like it or not the 2^nd Amendment really is about those guns.

Unlike you, I know the dangers we truly face in this world. Protection is just an illusion and one I witnessed first-hand on the mean streets of New York City. There were times when we would have four cops on patrol, two cars, for an area that had over a hundred thousand residents. Most crimes are reported, very few are actually stopped. Despite what a lot of people want you to believe: Safety is Not a Right. I’m not sure where this erroneous thought process ever arose, but even the courts have ruled that the police do not have an obligation to protect you. The 2^nd Amendment however is an actual RIGHT, and it is precisely this right which allows you, the individual, to protect yourself from someone who means to do you harm.

I saw one Rolling Stone (you know, the same Rolling Stone that elevated Boston Marathon Bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, to rock star status on its cover) reporter opining that: “Just think of what would have happened in the Orlando night-club Saturday night if there had been many others armed. How would it not have devolved into mass confusion and fear followed by a large-scale shootout…”

That’s liberal, gun hating, logic on full display. No, it was so much better for the unarmed victims to all huddle together, in a state of panic, while the only person with a gun, a terrorist, casually slaughtered them. How foolish of me.

It’s almost as ironic as Presidential pal, and domestic terrorist, Bill Ayers, a co-founder of the Weather Underground Organization, calling for more gun control. Hey, Bill, give us a call when you look to sponsor bomb control.

If you don’t like guns, then don’t own one, but don’t tell me that I can’t, because then we are going to have a problem. Like the old saying goes: “You can give peace a chance, I’ll cover you in case that doesn’t work out.”

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The Orlando Terror Attack - It's Not About Guns, It's about Radical Islam

I’ve been staring at this blank page for the last few days. I’ve felt an urge to write, but the words have alluded me. It’s not that I don’t have anything to say, I am from New York City, after all, it’s just that I have too much to say and I am not even sure where to begin.

Now I know some of you will immediately want to know why I am not writing my latest book, but I promise you, I am. I just needed to get this off my chest.

The problem probably started where it always does, on Facebook. I’m not exactly sure what we did before FB, but I vaguely recall that it was a much more productive time. My quandary exists because I have what can best be described as very eclectic friends, who have posted a wide range of responses to the Orlando terror attack. What saddens me is the fact that there has even been a ‘wide range’ of responses.

In just over forty-eight hours I have heard some of the following diatribes play out in social media:

• The attack in Orlando was a hate crime.
• This has nothing to do with moderate Islam.
• We need to ban these senseless weapons of war.
• The police responded slowly because it was a LGBT club.

Let us set the record straight right from the beginning. This was, first and foremost, a terror attack committed by radical Islam. Anyone who wants to muddy the waters by mincing words is being disingenuous. When some try to claim that this was a hate crime, they are attempting to minimize the significance of what occurred at the Pulse Nightclub. While hate certainly played a role in the attack, it was part of a much larger picture that many are attempting to gloss over: Radical Islam.

This attack was carried out as a direct result of the theological beliefs of a particular group. Unfortunately, for some strange reason, a large majority of our politicians, pundits and ordinary people refuse to accept this. If I had a dollar for every time I heard: “These acts don’t reflect moderate Islam…” I’d be living on a tropical island, without Wi-Fi access, in a perpetual state of bliss.

The question then is: What is moderate Islam and what do they believe?

The answer to this question is one that many do not want to hear. They want to believe in this illusion that there is a moderate world that just chooses to remain quiet, yet when you pull back the thin veneer, you see a world that doesn’t seem all that different from the radical.

I see you in the back, waving your hand like a maniac, and yes, I know you know a Muslim who is moderate…… and I know a lot of Catholics who live their lives quite differently then what is taught in the Bible. Hell, I used to be one of them. I was even an altar boy…… stop chuckling. The fact is that there is a big difference between calling yourself something and actually being engaged. I am talking about those who actually believe in and follow the teachings of the Qur’an.

In considering political rights and civil liberties, the vast majority of countries in the Middle East are simply not free. At least not the ‘being free’ which those of us, here in The West, think of. I am often amazed when I see groups, who identify themselves as feminists or members of the LGBT community, come out in support of moderate Islam, yet in the majority of those Muslim countries they would face severe penalties and even death for their beliefs. It’s tantamount to seeing a ‘Jew’s for Hitler’ sign.

The simple truth is, that even in moderate Islamic countries, the penalty for being homosexual is: prison, punishment and / or death. I’m not talking about Iran, or one of the other hardline countries, but the moderate ones like Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar. If you are lucky enough to be a lesbian in Kuwait you get a free-pass, but males are still breaking the law…… don’t ask, I scratched my head on that one as well. These moderate nations have even used their influence to block advancements in LGBT rights at the United Nations.

Unlike the west, which enjoys a separation between politics and religion, the Muslim world does not. For some unknown reason, many people don’t understand or accept that theology is the driving force in Islamic government. Islam is not just a religious belief system, but a legal system as well. Sharia law is the religious legal system governing the members of the Islamic faith. And therein lies the real problem.

The lives we enjoy in western civilization are in direct opposition to the Muslim world. They don’t believe in our values and they don’t respect that we recognize individual rights.

In the United States we have the 1^st Amendment right to freedom of speech. It means that I don’t have to agree or even like what you say, but you still get to say it. What I find extremely funny is the fact that all of the real cutting edge comedians and Hollywood celebrity types have a field day mocking Jesus, yet those same folks are nowhere to be found when it comes to mocking Muhammad. Ever wonder why? That’s because death threats don’t seem to lose any of their significance when they come from moderates.  

The Avant Garde folks over at Charlie Hebdo decided to push those boundaries, it didn’t end well for them.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have a problem with Muslims. In fact, I’ve had the pleasure of working side by side with many of them during my career. I respect them, but I also understand that we have very different belief systems. If my path took me to a country where Islam was the rule, then I would act accordingly, but here in the United States, it is not, and that is what has always made us great.

Unfortunately for us, it seems the principle of America being one great ‘melting pot’ has been forgotten. Instead of people coming to here to become Americans, we have more and more people coming here who want to change us into something resembling what they left.

In 1907, President Theodore Roosevelt made a speech regarding the assimilation of immigrants into American culture. It was true then and even truer now:

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American ... There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag ... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language ... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people." 

Why is this important? Because America is different.

Contrary to what many ill-informed people believe, we are not a democracy, but rather a constitutional republic. What this means is that we are a country where the officials are elected as representatives of the people, and must govern according to existing constitutional law which limits the government's power over citizens. It is sometimes referred to as the rule of law, not man.

Why is this significant?

Because in a democracy, that is a political system in which the majority enjoys absolute power, the majority can vote to impose tyranny on themselves as well as the minority opposition.  Simply put, without the constraints of The Constitution, the majority can vote to elect those who will infringe upon our inalienable God-given rights.  Thomas Jefferson referred to this as elected despotism.

This brings us to the 2nd Amendment and the current argument that certain guns need to be banned; for our own good.

You might not like guns and that is your right, but you simply don’t get to choose that for me. That might not sit well with you. You might be one of those enlightened folks who believe that, by simply getting rid of all the guns, the world will be one big happy family and that is within your 1^st Amendment right to profess, but I also have my 2^nd Amendment right just in case you are wrong.

It’s like that old adage: Those who beat their swords into plowshares usually end up plowing for those who didn’t.

The truth is that we cannot legislate morality. 

I’m truly sorry for the loss of lives in Orlando, but if anyone believes that the sole responsibility for what happened resides with a mechanical object, I suggest you seek some immediate help. In over two decades in law enforcement I have had a front row seat to man’s inhumanity to man. In his desire to kill another, man has no limitations. I have seen baseball bats, hammers, steak-knives, cars, ropes, broom-sticks, machetes, rocks, handguns, dogs,  arson, poison, swords, rifles / shotguns, explosives, and planes, along with a few I have probably forgotten, used to kill other human beings.  This absurd belief that, by somehow removing one item from the inventory list, we will somehow be able to bring peace to modern civilization is not only patently false, but extremely dangerous.

We look for simplistic answers to complex questions that we don’t want to address, like thinking we can we hangone of those stupid little 'no gun' placards outside of or homes, schools and offices and think that we are safe.

Let us take the 1994 ‘Assault Weapons Ban’ as an example. This was supposed to cure everything. In fact, after the Orlando terror attack, many are calling for its re-instatement. The truth however is much different than what the politicians and pundits would lead you to believe. A number of academic studies determined that this ban had little to no effect on gun violence and that the re-institution of the ban would have no significant merit.

Now granted, when we have an attack like this, it does seem to grab the headlines, but is it the gun or the person wielding it that is the real problem?

There’s the complex question that no one wants to address.

Whether it was Adam Lanza, Nidal Hassan, Jared Loughner, Dylan Roof, James Holmes, and now Omar Mateen, each had clearly observable mental health issues that went unreported / unaddressed. These issues should have precluded them from having access to any firearm. In essence, they were already breaking the law long before they ever pulled the trigger.  Unfortunately, society does not have an answer for mental health issues, so they look to shift the blame to something else and that is most often guns. Guns can be banned and restricted. Politicians can pass more laws and the media can sing their praises, at least until the next shooting.

You know, it is kind of ironic.  After every terror attack I hear the admonishment that we shouldn’t judge all of Islam because of a few bad ones. When we have a mass shooting, the mental health community is quick to remind us that we should be wary of stigmatizing the many, in an attempt to stop the few. Yet if the NRA, or a responsible gun owner, protests, they are quickly attacked as being evil.

We don’t want to fix the problem; we simply want to pass the buck.

Which brings me to my final thought: Blame the police.

It seems that our men and women in law enforcement have become the political piñata when all else fails.  To aggressive, not aggressive enough, too militaristic, ill-equipped, and the complaints and accusations just continue to flow, ad nauseum. They speak of them in abstract, as if they are some foreign entity brought in to punish them.

I have a question for those who enjoy bashing the police: just where exactly do you think they come from?

In over two decades of law enforcement I worked with people from every walk of life: Heterosexual, Homosexual, Christian, Jew, Buddhist, Muslim, White, Black, Asian, Hispanic, and the list goes on. The NYPD is comprised of well over fifty thousand uniformed and civilian members which covers the entire spectrum of the population of New York City.

We are not aliens, recruited from some distant planet, and brought here to subjugate the people.

We are the people.

We have just chosen to be that thin blue line which separates the innocent from the evil in the world. 

One of the best analogies I have ever read was Lt. Colonel David Grossman’s On Sheep, Wolves, and Sheepdogs.

Simply put: We hunt the evil that you pretend doesn’t exist.

This vilification and dehumanizing of law enforcement is done for one purpose and that is to pretend that the underlying problem is someone else’s fault.

I read a 2015 New York Times article that outlined a series of seventy-three (73) fatal police shootings, over the course of a 1 year period, from August 2014 to August 2015, throughout the United States. While the story strives to paint a picture of cops killing unarmed people, I could not help but note, that in all but three cases, the shootings where the end result of what started off as some type of criminal activity.

Look we have to be honest about things. Cops are not rolling down the streets of Chicago’s South Side doing drive-by shootings. Nor are they pulling up at playgrounds and schools to pop off a few rounds for giggles. In my twenty-two year law enforcement career I never worked with a cop that put on his gun belt and said ‘God, I hope I get to cap someone tonight.’ Yet, if you listen to the media and all the activists, you would think this nation was being patrolled by brutal mad-dogs Hell bent on killing everyone they encounter.

It should come as no shock to anyone that there are criminals in the world. If you engage in criminal behavior, eventually you will cross paths with law enforcement. There are unintended consequences of actions. Does that mean you should be killed for breaking the law? Of course not, but if it is 2 a.m. and you are coming out of a home, that you just burglarized, and you quickly reach into your waistband, as the cops approach you, there is a very good chance you are going to get shot. If it turns out you didn’t have a gun, well what can I say? Your mother raised an idiot.

I’m reminded of the Michael Brown case in Ferguson, Missouri. Here is someone who just robbed a store, then assaulted a police officer, while attempting to get control of his firearm, and then after running away, turned and charged back toward the officer. He was shot and killed.

The media and the political activists attempted to paint this picture of a mad-dog cop who gunned down an innocent child. The fact that the innocent ‘child’ was 6’4”, weighed 294 lbs., and had drugs in his system at the time of his death, seemed to somehow get lost in the translation.

• Crime 1 – Illegal Narcotics
• Crime 2 – Robbery
• Crime 3 – Assault / Attempted Robbery
• Crime 4 – ?

Well, let’s just say that I don’t think he was running back to surrender. Remember, “Hands Up – Don’t Shoot” was definitively proven to be a lie by eye-witnesses who testified that they believed Wilson’s life was in danger and that he fired in self-defense.

I’m sorry, but these are the unintended consequences of a criminal behavior.

Did Darren Wilson get up that morning thinking he was going to kill someone? No.

Did Michael Brown get up that morning thinking his illegal actions would lead to his death? No, and that is the problem.

We have turned a corner in society where we are abdicating personal responsibility. We are living in a new world, where it is always someone else’s fault for our actions and more and more people are buying into that premise.

• Bad grades in school: The teacher is at fault.
• Choose to pursue a useless degree program in college and now you can’t find a job when you graduate:  Greedy capitalism.
• Engage in bad behavior: The U.S. is a brutal police state.

I understand the allure. Let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to enjoy all the benefits, but none of the responsibility for ones actions?  But this is the real world.  The politicians and activist’s lie to you, the media paints a narrative they want you to believe, but ultimately it is up to us to search for the truth.

In the aftermath of the terror attack some are claiming that the police were at fault, that they were slow to respond because it was only a LGBT bar.

I was not there so I won’t comment on the tactics that were used, unlike some self-proclaimed experts who jumped at the chance to promote themselves. I will say that the moment Omar Mateen took hostages inside the club, and claimed to have explosives that he was going to strap onto the hostages, the entire situation changed.

Imagine the headlines Sunday morning had the police immediately entered and he detonated a bomb killing countless people. The press would have crucified the entire police department as well as the mayor and everyone in city government.

The problem with Monday morning quarterbacks is that, in most instances, they have never actually played the game, but have the luxury of being right 100% of the time. This causes them to think they are smarter than the people who actually do the job. Sorry Skippy, but you don’t get the right to judge me from your living room, twenty-four hours after the incident. You want to play Mr. or Mrs. Expert? Then I suggest you put on a uniform and get some skin in the game.

You might find that the BB gun, which looks so obviously fake, under the brilliant light of the TV cameras, looks a helluva lot more realistic at 1 a.m. when it is being pointed at your face.

In law enforcement this is called: damned if you do, dead if you don’t.

To the members of the LGBT community, don’t think for one second that the cops in Orlando did things any differently because it was a gay club. We don’t play games like. You needed help and they came and I can state with almost absolute certainty that in the group of cops who responded that morning a number of them were also members the LGBT community.

We are not the enemy, we are you.

The real enemy is the politicians we have elected. They don’t want to be bothered addressing the real problems and finding actual solutions; that would take honesty and require actual work on their part. They count on our ignorance and drive the wedge of division between us. One day soon we will have to wake up and realize that we are not Republicans or Democrats, but Americans. Only then will we be able to finally fix what is truly broken.

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The Importance of Reading my Novels in Order

The other day I was having a chat with one of my readers and it occurred to me that she had not read my books in order.  

Does that mean that you have to read them in order? No, but you should, if you want to get the most out of them.

When I started out, I had a vision for the direction that I was going to take the books.  Unfortunately, and you can blame my wife for this, that vision took a sort of detour when I wrote SmallTown Secrets. That book was only intended to be a short story, sort of like what I did with Cold Case, but my wife fell in love with the main character and it took on a life of its own.

So instead of having just the James Maguire series, we now have the Alex Taylor series. Each series is their own, but their stories also converge into the world of the other. 

The reason I suggest that you read them in order is that, while each book has its own storyline, they also contain sub-stories and characters who, while they might not be significant now, will play a larger role down the line.

That’s the fun of story-telling, you’re telling a story.  Even though it is fictional life, we know that life doesn’t end at the last chapter, it just moves on to the next book.

So pick up Perfect Pawn and start where it all began. You'll get the most of them that way and isn't that what reading is all about? 

I hope that you enjoy the journey! If you do, please don't keep it to yourself. Kindly tell a friend and leave a review. I cannot begin to tell you how much it means to authors when they get feedback from their readers. After all, we write for you.

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The Curious Case of Donald Trump

Donald J. Trump

Unless you have been hiking the Amazon for the last few months, chances are you have watched the juggernaut that is Donald Trump crashing through the caucuses and primaries being held throughout the United States.

What had started out as a fad, in most voter’s minds, has become a steamroller; crushing the competition one voting booth at a time. So why has someone like Donald Trump, a man who has never held any type of political office, suddenly become the front runner in the 2016 presidential race?

Truthfully? Most likely the reason is the fact he has never held political office.

What I find truly interesting are the protestations that are coming from both sides of the aisle.

What you are witnessing is not so much a validation of Mr. Trump’s bona fides, as much as it is a repudiation of the party system here in the United States. Plain and simply put, Americans are growing increasingly weary of the political bullshit being heaped on them by anyone with the letter (D) or (R) after their name. And why shouldn’t they? 

For decades we have been cheated, ignored, marginalized, and lied to by those we have elected. Rather than do the work of ‘We The People,’ they have instead done the work of ‘We The Party.’  Anyone who truly believes that politicians go to Washington to help you, probably needs to sit down and binge watch a season or two of House of Cards. 

For as long as I can remember, and certainly for as long as I have been voting, I have witnessed one politician after another promise that they were: a) going to Washington to fight for me, b) change the tone of politics, c) be my voice in Congress.  

And just how many of those promises were kept? None.

To be fair, it’s not all their fault. We have a level of complicity in all this. I liken it to the parents who send their kid off to college with a credit card to be used for emergencies. Then, when they get the bill showing it was maxed out, they yelled at their kid to be more responsible and sent them a new card. The truth is we stopped holding our elected representatives accountable for their actions a very long time ago; so is it any wonder that they look down at us with contempt?

No, the majority of folks in D.C. have only one thing on their mind when we elect them and that is getting re-elected. Old Joe or Janey might have needed you to elevate them to their perch, but they really need the party to keep them there. That means doing what the party wants, rather than what you want.

Ever wonder why that ‘fiscal conservative’ you sent to D.C. suddenly is listed as a co-sponsor on a bill that is wasteful? Party politics, plain and simple. Vote the way they want you to, or watch your re-election war chest wither away like a slug in a sandstorm.

People in D.C. are a special brand of hypocrite.

They are the same ones who lose their mind when Donald Trump doesn’t disavow David Duke or the KKK ‘fast enough,' yet are completely silent on the fact that Hillary Clinton once referred to the late Senator Robert Byrd, himself an actual member of the KKK and an Exalted Cyclops, as her mentor.

They are the same folks who claim that judicial nominations in a presidential election year should not go through, when the sitting President is not a member of their party, yet demand that it go through when he is.

This is not a swipe at any one party, but examples of hypocrisy that both sides are guilty of. The real problem is when We The People are too blinded, too entrenched by party politics to see that neither side has our best interests at heart.

Now I don’t know if Donald Trump will become the party nominee, but one thing is for certain, the Republican Party is on very thin ice right now. In fact, I would venture to say that the fracture that is growing is at a critical juncture.

The rank and file members of the Republican Party are tired of the nonsense. In 2011 they sent a strong message by electing 242 Republicans to congress, the most since 1947. John Boehner was sworn in as Speaker of the House and the members waited. Unfortunately, the news was bleak. The Congress couldn’t do anything, because the Democrats controlled the Senate. They changed that in 2015 when they also gave Mitch McConnell the Senate. Yet despite the unequivocal mandate, many felt that the establishment was ignoring them.

Charles M. Schulz / United Feature Syndicate

It soured a great many, who began to consider whether the party was really interested in doing their will or the party’s will. The rank and file began to see themselves as Charlie Brown, while the establishment took the role of Lucy Van Pelt, giddily snatching away their political ‘football’ at the last minute. In the end, it took down the speakership of John Boehner and ended his congressional career.

Last September the RNC strong armed Donald Trump into signing a loyalty pledge, a pledge that was ultimately signed by all 17 Republican presidential candidates. Each one pledged to support the GOP's eventual presidential nominee in what RNC chair Reince Priebus called a sign of party unity. Unfortunately, in September of 2015, no one really thought Donald Trump had a snowballs chance in hell of being that nominee.

Surprise, Surprise, Reince………. Didn’t see that one coming, did you?

So now come the knives in the back, fitting in a way, since we are quickly approaching the Ides of March.

Donald Trump has won ten of the last fifteen state elections, while Cruz has won four and Marc Rubio has won only one. I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure that at this point there is no way, short of Trump and Cruz walking off hand-in-hand into the sunset, that Rubio could amass enough delegates to get the nomination. So why is he still running? Why are all the ‘establishment’ people supporting him?

Because he is the establishment’s choice. He has been ordained, just as Hillary has been on the left.

It’s the same reason that they whipped out old Mitt Romney, a man who single-handedly managed to rip defeat from the jaws of victory, to excoriate Donald Trump. Really? This is the same man who, back in 2012, said: “Donald Trump has shown an extraordinary ability to understand how our economy works,…. It means a great deal to me to have the endorsement of Mr. Trump.”

Hypocrite much, Mitt?

The truth is the establishment does not know what to do. Donald Trump is a threat to them, to their very way of life. He’s brash, he's bold and he's a media darling: @RealDonaldTrump He is also rich enough that he doesn’t need them. At the end of the day, that’s what scares them: a candidate who doesn’t need them or, more importantly, their money.

However, what they fail to realize is that there is something even more dangerous to them and that is a membership base that has become completely disenfranchised with them. This isn’t true for just the republicans either. Polling indicates that a lot of democrats are beginning to feel this way as well, as witnessed by the defection of 20k plus in Massachusetts since January. Is this a trend that we will see continue through the election cycle? Only time will tell, but it should serve as a wake-up call to those in charge that the people of this great nation are fed-up with politics as usual.

I don’t know how Donald Trump would be as President. Some contend that he will be the same bombastic individual he presents on reality television while others say that he is a savvy businessman who will help lead us away from the precipice of financial doom. Who is right? I don’t know.

What I do know is that over the last eight years we have seen the promise of ‘hope and change’ fade away into more of the same. The political rancor is at an all-time high and growing nearly as fast as our national debt. Watch any political interview once and you can recite the other dozen appearances because all that is regurgitated is party approved talking points. Our elected officials repeatedly lie to us, about things big and small, and we tolerate it. Yet ask the same people if their kids acted the same way and they’d tell you they would immediately put foot to ass. Obviously we have much more lenient standards when it comes to those ruining, I mean running, our country.

So here are your choices:

• Marco Rubio – Attorney / Career Politician - 1 term US senator.
• Ted Cruz - Attorney / Career Politician - 1 term US senator.
• John Kasich – Investment Banker / Career Politician – 9 term US congressman / governor
• Hillary Clinton - Attorney / Career Politician - 2 term US senator / Secretary of State
• Bernie Sanders – Community Activist / Career Politician – 8 term US congressman / 2 term US senator

Notice a trend here? Does it sound a bit familiar?

• Barrack Obama - Attorney / Community Activist / Career Politician - 1 term US senator.

There is an old saying that goes: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

We are nineteen trillion dollars in debt and growing. Eighteen trillion of which we have added in the last 34 years!! Think about that for a moment. We rack up debt like the energizer bunny main-lining speed. Seriously, it’s like ten grand a second. Take a look at the Debt Clock. The numbers rotate so fast that you’ll need to take Dramamine to watch it.

In 2015, we brought in 3.1 trillion dollars and spent 3.7. This isn’t an anomaly. Over the last seventy-five years there have only been 12 years we have kept our spending under control. That means both parties have pissed our money away like drunken sailors all while pointing the finger at the other person when it comes time to pay.

And what do we get from our politicians? Reforms? No, don’t be silly, we’re just going to spend our way out of debt…… If we ran our personal lives like this we would be homeless or in jail.

It has been said that Donald Trump started out with around $200,000.00 after college. By 1982 his worth was estimated at around $200 million. When his father died he inherited an additional amount, possibly as high as another $200 million. Today his worth is in the billions. Some might squabble about it, is it two billion? Four billion? Eight billion?....... seriously? I don’t care if it’s only one billion. The bottom line is that he obviously has a knack for taking money and making more. Perhaps we should take the reins away from the career politicians and give it to a career businessman.

I’ve had enough with the career politicians and their hollow promises. Trump might not be the answer, but I know the other five knuckleheads certainly aren’t.

The one thing I do know about Trump is that he surrounds himself with the right people and he listens.  Is that any different than what any President does? Maybe it’s time to give Trump a chance.

What’s the worst that can happen? We rack up trillions in debt, the Middle East falls apart, illegals flood across the border, our enemies don’t respect us and our allies don’t trust us………. ? Sounds like a normal Tuesday under the current administration.

But hey, at least Whoopi Goldberg, Kanye West, Cher, Al Sharpton, Miley Cyrus and Rosie O’Donnell will be another countries problem. I'd call that a win! #MakeAmericaGreatAgain

But what do I know? I'm just an old retired NYPD sergeant who writes books about cops, criminals terrorists and politicians. 

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Deadpool – 50 Shades of Utter Awesomeness!!!

After my last angry movie rant, involving Star Wars: TheForce Awakens, I thought I would take a second chance and see if Hollywood could redeem itself, so I load up the family in the old SUV and we headed off to see the new Ryan Reynolds movie, Deadpool.

20th Century Fox
Anyone know where Francis is?

For those of you who may not be familiar with the protagonist, Deadpool, he is a fictional anti-hero who first appeared in comic books published by Marvel. Originally, the character was depicted as a super-villain in ‘The New Mutants’ (Issue #98) and later in issues of ‘X-Force’, but he has since evolved into the current role. 

Deadpool is a disfigured, and mentally unstable, mercenary with the super-human ability of accelerated healing and physical prowess. He is known as the ‘Merc with a Mouth’ because of his highly talkative nature.

Before I get into it, I’d like to send out a big Fuck You to the 20th Century Fox execs who thought it was a great idea to slash seven million dollars from the budget, effectively removing nine pages of glorious Deadpool action from the movie.  There’s a special place in Hell awaiting you.

That being said, if you are looking for a completely irreverent, action packed movie starring the anti-hero of all anti-hero’s then brothers and sisters do I have a movie for you. The acerbic wit of Deadpool was enough to make this old grizzled New Yorker feel downright homesick.

I admit that I was a bit apprehensive. Fans of the comic book character know that he frequently breaks the fourth-wall, interacting directly with the audience, and I wasn’t sure how that was going to come off on the big screen.

For the record: Reynolds Nailed It!

I know a lot of you folks might have seen his original appearance in the 2009 film X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Don’t worry, despite the suck factor of that one, this incarnation of Deadpool is brilliant. Don’t believe me? It brought in over $150 million in box office sales over the four day opening weekend, utterly brutalizing the previous records in typical Deadpool fashion.

20th Century Fox
No..... It's not a ROM-COM

Now, just so you know, this is not a family movie……  Don’t be confused by the graphic showing Deadpool with his hands in the shape of a heart. This is a hard ‘R’ movie. A very hard ‘R’ movie. I don’t want anyone coming back leaving comments that they thought this was a Rom-Com.

It’s not……

It is filled with unrelenting sophomoric humor that only seems to further endear the character to the audience. Honestly, sometimes don’t we just need a kick-ass anti-hero?  Apparently the ass-hats in Hollywood didn’t think so. In fact, Deadpool is the box off smash that almost never was.

The fight to get Deadpool on the big screen has been going on for years.  It seemed as if this film had to get pushed all the way up the hill. Back in 2010 an early version of the script had been leaked on-line. For a typical movie that would have been a disaster, but the exact opposite happened. Fans got behind it and added their voice, calling for the film to be made. A couple of years later some test footage of the freeway fight scene was also leaked and fans went nuts. This proved to be the push needed and the project was finally green-lighted.

Now I am sitting, impatiently waiting, and wondering when the sequel will come out…….. Note to movie execs, mention J.J. Abrams name and you’ll end up a character in my books. Trust me when I say that it will not end well for you!

Moving forward the real issue will be how to add Deadpool into the X-Men world. Marvel’s cinematic universe has become a huge juggernaut and one that doesn’t seem quite sure just how to open up for the real Deadpool. To be fair, their universe seems much darker and serious, whereas Deadpool would make a joke out of a massive heart attack.   The movie does take a swipe at the conundrum when Deadpool says to Colossus and Negasonic Teenage Warhead: “Wow, this is such a big house [referring to Xavier’s school], but I only ever see the two of you here. It's like the studio didn't have enough money for any more X-Men....”

20th Century Fox
This is how you do Bad-Ass

The cast is superb. Reynolds was born to play Deadpool and, fortunately for him, he stole the Deadpool suit after production ended so they have to bring him back. Morena Baccarin was incredible as Vanessa. Okay, she is really hot and appears naked and spoke some words. Actually I’m really hoping that the sequel expands her role to include Copy Cat, but time will tell. Ed Skrein as Ajax was intense and Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead was perfect. At least we didn’t have to contend with some pretentious, emo, teenage pain-in-the-ass, ala Kylo Ren. The movie also stars MMA fighter, Gina Carano, as Angel Dust. She’ll kick your ass, but what a way to go.

If you’re looking for an action packed movie that will also make you laugh your ass off, then you need to check out Deadpool. You’ll probably end up going back to see it a 2nd time, I know I am, so that you can see and hear all the things you missed the first time, while you were wiping tears from your eyes. For hardcore movie geeks there are a ton of Easter Eggs in this movie. 

Well, I’d like to say more, but you really need to go see it for yourself. So, in the immortal words of Deadpool: It’s time to make the chimi-fucking-changas! 

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Star Wars: The Force Awakens (Spoilers and one pretty pissed off rant)

LUCAS ARTS

Ok, I tacked that ‘Spoiler’ thing on top because you might be one of the last few remaining holdouts, like I was, who hadn’t seen Star Wars: The Force Awakens yet. If you haven’t, then close the page, because I’m going to discuss it now, and you are going to be REALLY pissed if you keep reading, because it will spoil the experience.

Okay, you have been properly warned.

I held out going, because I’m old and grizzled now, sort of like Luke, but with less hair, and I didn’t want to have to fight with the young kids over good seats. As reality would have it, I should have waited another month. Seats were still limited and I had to watch the movie with my neck craned, staring up at the screen. I’ll probably go again in another month when I can sit back and enjoy the cinematography better, instead of feeling like I am sitting on the nose-cone of an X-wing traveling through space.

So, what did I think of the movie? Let me start by getting this off my chest right away: Fuck you very much, Disney and a slightly less, but still a very much fuck you, J.J. Abrams.  I’m glad you guys trashed the entire Expanded Universe so you could ‘phone in’ what you want us to accept as a good story, but it didn’t work. You suck, strong message follows.

That being said, I liked it….. sort of, kinda, maybe….. Well fuck, it was still better than The Phantom Menace which brought us that loathsome creature, Jar Jar Binks. Damn, now I have to go rinse my mouth out, with whiskey, to make the painful memories go away again.

It’s not that TFA is a bad film; it’s just that it’s an old film pretending to be new.

Here, let me give you a hint:

• A droid with valuable information finds itself stranded on a desert planet.
• A darkly clad, masked villain, strong in the force, shows up a short time later looking for the droid.
• Stormtroopers arrive shortly thereafter and begin blasting the locals on desert planet.
• The masked villain interrogates (a.k.a. tortures) our hero looking for the information.
• Our force sensitive hero (or in this case heroine), who is an awesome pilot, lives a lonely existence on this desert planet and dreams of better things.
• There’s a big, planet destroying, space platform, run by a cruel and high ranking military commander.
• The really big boss, who controls our masked villain, appears via hologram.
• Han and Chewie are still being hunted down by crime figures, intent on killing them, for screwing them over.
• Our hero’s end up in a cantina looking for transport to the rebels.
• One of our heroes turns his back on the others, only to return to help them.
• The rebel base is situated in a lush tropical forest.
• A good guy is cut down by someone previously close to him who turned to the dark side.
• One of our heroes watches helplessly, from afar, as this person is murdered, and then they flee the planet killer in the Millennium Falcon.
• The big planet killer is attacked, with only moments to spare, by the rebels and the entire rebel attack is overseen by Princess (now General) Leia in a control room.
• X-Wings once again rush headlong, through another trench, being fired on by ground based weapons and TIE fighters, toward the awaiting target.
• Despite the rebels miraculously blowing up the station, our masked villain escapes,…..

Yep, that about sums it up………………… The Force Awakens, A New Hope (Part Deux)

Really, J.J.? That was the best you could fucking come up with?

There are like 70 friggen’ books (not counting comics) that occur AFTER Return of the Jedi and the best you could give us was  ANH 2.0?

A major FUCK YOU, Disney…….. And a minor Fuck You, J.J. Abrams for being that little shit-tard Mouse’s minion…….

Wow, that was actually quite cathartic………

Seriously, do you guys even know how to advance a plot? What happened to meaningful dialogue?

Aside from Obi-Wan Kenobi lying his ass off in ANH, about who Luke’s father was, I came out of the theater knowing who everyone was and what was happening. The same goes with the other movies. TFA seems to want to throw some vague semblance of a ‘story’ into a battle movie.  I get the whole J.J. Action film, but seriously this was an important film and you fucked it up!!

Where was the dialogue about the First Order? Why don’t we know more about the Knights of Ren? Where was the heart-to-heart between Han and Leia discussing in-depth what happened to Ben. Why is the ‘Resistance’ operating away from the Republic and why the hell don’t they have ANY capital ships?  And why the hell doesn’t ‘General’ Hux look old enough to even shave?

I admit that I was willing to suspend all of that, right until THAT scene………….. Yes, you know what I am talking about….. They killed Han Solo !!!

Lucas Arts

Now, I know what some of you might say, Harrison Ford had wanted to kill the character off at the end of Return of the Jedi. Yeah, and you know what? Fuck you too, Ford. You’re an ass. You’re an actor, so just friggen’ act and stop trying to ditch the role that made you who you are.

Reminds me of that pedantic little shit, Daniel Craig, who forces himself to play James Bond and then makes disparaging comments about the character. You’re an ass too. What’s next, you gonna give me political advice as well?

Which leads me to another point, that whole ‘murder’ scene was just painful to watch. If that was your pinnacle moment, like the death of Ben Kenobi in ANH, and you are killing off one of the MAIN characters, you’d better be able to reach down deep into that acting pool and pull off a performance worthy of a MF’ing Academy Award…… 

We fans deserve that much at least.  

Han Solo was an iconic figure, someone who brought a grey into the world of black and white. He was an immoral hero who somehow managed, for the most part, to keep himself on the righteous side of hell. Surely the rough as nails smuggler, with roguish grin and itchy trigger finger would be able to deliver a performance worthy of the moment.

I watched that scene, witnessing the murder of my childhood hero, and after the shock subsided I thought….. Meh

But that seemed to be a reoccurring theme in this movie. Consider the whole Han / Leia romance for a moment. Think of The Empire Strikes Back, that first hot steamy kiss on the Falcon. The whole dramatic “I love you,…” “I know…” moment in Cloud City.

So what do we get in TFA? Nothing ……. No tension, no passion, no fierceness. Han Solo and Leia were the two bad-asses and now we have…….. Meh. 

No wonder their friggen’ kid became a little whiney-ass, emo bitch.  I’d have tried to off them as well. For the record, I actually do like Adam Driver; I just think they beat the whiney-ass horse to death with Anakin in the prequels. There was no reason to resurrect that shit again. You can pull off torn and emotionally frustrated without sounding like a prissy, spoiled brat.

I grew up on Star Wars and I sat there thinking that something had just gone horribly wrong.

RKO Keiths in a state of disrepair, like TFA

I still recall seeing it for the first time in the summer of 1977 at the RKO Keith’s on Northern Boulevard in Flushing, New York. I walked out of that theater in a state of utter amazement and never looked back.

A lot of us didn’t associate with Luke, some of us needed that anti-hero and I found it in Solo.  

After Return of the Jedi, a lot of us immersed ourselves in the world beyond the films, devouring everything we could find on the continuing saga. It was this media that soon turned into the Expanded Universe, a place Disney decided was not worth the time and investment to consider, along with the storyline that George Lucas’ had envisioned beyond ROTJ, and trashed it. And therein lies the problem.

To the average movie-goer, TFA is an awesome movie, but to those of us who were immersed in the Star Wars’ world, it falls flat for any number of reasons, but there are a few that stand apart for me.

It would have been nice if someone sat down with Abrams and advised him of the relationship between Han and Chewie.

Chewie owed Han a life-debt, that’s a fact. He actually saved Chewie’s life twice. To a wookie, that is a serious matter. When Kylo killed Han there is no way you can tell me that Chewbacca would not have gone bat-shit crazy. We saw this in TESB, when they were putting Han in carbonite. In fact the only reason he stopped was because Han had ordered him to, basically extending the ‘debt’ to Leia. And yes, I will agree that he would have been torn, since Kylo Ren is Ben Solo and Chewie would have been his ad-hoc Uncle, and I think that is the reason Chewie shot him low, instead of putting a blaster bolt through his head. That being said, those stormtroopers would have been toast and that in-itself would have made that scene great.

Consider for a moment a wookie so enraged that he began ripping limbs off stormtroopers as he battled his way forward. That would have been a pinnacle moment. Instead we got a lackluster, I hate you daddy-issues patricide as Han’s body plunged lethargically from the catwalk, just as I hope Ford’s career does now.

Speaking of the enraged wookie, did anyone also tell JJ about a wookie’s strength? Well, apparently not…… again! Consider for a moment something so minute that it almost gets passed over: Chewie’s bowcaster.  You see, bowcaster’s are much more powerful than standard blaster rifles and few humans are capable of toting one around, let alone being able to hold one steady enough to take a shot. A fact apparently lost on the writers, as Han seems to enjoy shooting the shit out of it. 

It is those kinds of things that give Star Wars’ fans migraine headaches.

And why, for the love of Pete, did they have to go and change Han and Leia’s son, Anakin Solo, to Ben (Call me Kylo, damn-it) Solo?.... More on this to come, folks.  And while we are at it, what happened to the twins, Jacen and Jaina?

And can someone please explain to me Captain Phasma? Seriously, does any fan, worth their salt, believe that Captain Phasma would have just tossed her hands up in the air and happily lowered the shields?

Are you fucking kidding me?

This is the commander of ALL First Order stormtroopers. A bad-assed, absolutely loyal, veteran whose position is actually on the same level as Kylo Ren and General Hux, but she figured, fuck-it, they have blasters…….. Really?

Phasma would have taken one to the head before she ever lowered those shields.

Oh wait, they had to wiggle in another tired cliché joke about tossing her into the trash compactor….. Ha, ha…. No, Fuck you, J.J. It was a damn disgrace to demean the character like that.

Okay, enough……. I could go on, but blood is beginning to seep from my eyes like that bat-shit crazy fucker in Casino Royale.

Lucas Arts

So, now to the big question on everyone’s mind: Who is that badass Rey?

Seriously? You don’t know?

Hey, I hear there is a new Star Trek movie coming out, go get ready…….

For the rest of you, let me try and piece this together.

Rey is Luke Skywalker’s daughter.

Didn’t know he had a kid, yeah, he had a son, BEN, but we already know they fucked that up by naming EMO-boy Ben. So why not really screw things up (keep those fans guessing) and make her a girl…….

Luke hooked up with Mara Jade, the Emperor’s Hand, who was sent to kill him. Romance ensued and she turned from the dark side and joined Luke, becoming a Jedi Master herself. They had one child, Ben.

I think we will find out that Rey was sent away to protect her until……. Sound familiar? Here is why:

• She is obviously force sensitive, hell it isn’t even sensitive, it is strong. Why not, her parents were both Jedi Knights.
• She has inherent amazing piloting skills, ala Luke Skywalker.
• While she is at Maz Kanata’s, she is called by the sound of a baby crying. When she opens the box it is a lightsaber,…. Not any lightsaber, but Luke’s. She was specifically drawn to it. So why did Maz have it?
• Maz Kanata says to Rey: "I have lived long enough to see the same eyes in different people. I see your eyes... I know your eyes!"
• Rey has a vision of Luke and R2-D2.
• R2, who has been powered-down since Luke left, suddenly activates when Rey arrives at the base. Why? BB-8 was already there, so something else caused him to activate. He was Luke’s droid, so something familiar had to have happened to power him back up.
• Rey even struggles with the dark side, just as Anakin and Luke did.

Also, why would Leia, send a complete ‘unknown’ to find Luke if she didn’t already know who she was?

There is another possibility that Rey is actually Kylo Ren’s sister, but I still question that. There would be WAY too much ‘Solo’ story to be altered for that to be true. In order for this to be true, it would have to be a re-imagining of the Solo twins, Jacen and Jaina.

The death of his younger brother, Anakin Solo, was partially responsible for Jacen Solo turning to the dark side and becoming  Darth Cadeus. He then killed Ben Skywalker’s mother, Mara Jade. Jaina Solo became a Jedi Master and ultimately killed her twin brother.  If Kylo / Ben is the re-imagined Jacen, then it is possible that Rey is the re-imagined Jaina.

But what about Han and Leia? Surely they would ‘know’ their daughter. As evidenced of the pain they have for what has happened to Ben, they surely are concerned parents. Neither shows any particular maternal / paternal connection.

I have also heard one theory that she is Obi-Wan’s granddaughter……. I cannot wrap my head around that. 

However, all that being said, ultimately, Star Wars is a story about the Skywalker’s, so it makes perfect sense that Rey would be the last in the line: Anakin (Ep 1-3), Luke (Ep 4-6) and Rey (Ep 7-9). Otherwise the end becomes the Solo / Skywalker or the Solo / Kenobi finale and I just can’t envision that leap.

Oh, just one final thought.

In the April 2015 TFA 2nd trailer Mark Hamill did a voice over: "The Force is strong in my family. My father has it, I have it, my sister has it. You have that power, too."

I rest my case.

Now I'm going back to writing my books. At least I know how to develop a continuing plot.

If you’d like to stay up to date on the newest releases, then please like my Facebook page and feel free to follow me on Twitter.

January 2016 Update - The Importance of Reviews

I sincerely hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a great start to the New Year. Despite all the busyness of the holiday season, I have managed to get some writing in. I can happily state that the latest installment in the James Maguire series is over 1/3 complete and I am currently brainstorming the next Alex Taylor one as well. 

The feedback coming in on the novella I wrote back in December: NYPD Cold Case - The Katherine White Murder, has been amazing and there will be more coming.

Creating stories is not what I consider work, as I enjoy the process very much, but I would be lying if I didn't say that it didn't require work. There is a tremendous amount of effort that goes into creating, organizing, editing, and polishing a manuscript, as my esteemed editor, and co-author, aka: my wife, Nancy Nelson, will attest to. The finished book that you read over a weekend takes hundreds of hours to physically produce. I think I can speak for all authors, especially ‪#‎indieauthors, when I say that the greatest thing you can do for us, besides reading our books, is to review the book and then

recommend it to your friends and families.

Sometimes it feels as if authors are pleading for reviews and the truth is, we are. In the case of indie authors, like myself, we do it all, including the PR work. A legacy publishing house like Ballentine, Putnam or Little Brown, have amazing PR departments who can get an authors book onto the desk's of reviewers for USA Today, the NY Times, etc..... Indies, not so much. 

I can certainly tell you that I much rather prefer writing a new book, for you to read, then I do trying to market them. When it comes to writing, it is truly a labor of love. The majority of authors are lucky if they make enough money to pay for the electricity usage to run the computer they write on. They don't do it for fame or riches, although I don't think that any of us are actually opposed to that concept, but because they have a story to tell. At the end of the day that is who we are, storytellers. Only a small percentage of authors actually make a living from it and it is an even smaller group, like the Martin's, Patterson's and Clancy's, who actually become famous. Once again, it is the readers who decide that.

Author's require readers and, while we appreciate each and every one of you, we really depend on you to review our books. Amazon, which most of us use to publish our print and ‪#‎kindle e-books through, have a very stringent set of analytics which they use to rate books. You can have the greatest book in the world, but without reviews the book will languish because Amazon only showcases / promotes books that have good review numbers.

So if you enjoy books by indie authors, show them some love and take the 2-3 minutes required to write a review.

As for me, it's time to get back to work.

Remember to also follow me on ‪#‎twitter @Andrew_G_Nelson where I tweet about some other great indie authors as well.