A Screaming Comes Across the Sky

Speaking Truth to Power

[A Screaming Comes Across the Sky @filmandcalculus]

@BigFella2024 @firearmvideos You're using rhetoric rather than engaging with the argument. It's not "word slop" you just don't understand it. Whether they were used to kill someone or not is irrelevant. There is a realistic chance that many were. My Type 30 bayonet literally has blood stains on it.

[A Screaming Comes Across the Sky @filmandcalculus]

@BigFella2024 @firearmvideos Im closing in on 50 in my collection. The point is whether the gun was used to kill someone or not is irrelevant. So what you're saying is there is a moral distinction in *who* the gun was used to kill and in what context?

[A Screaming Comes Across the Sky @filmandcalculus]

@BigFella2024 @firearmvideos idk what you're talking about man. as a military surplus collector probably most of my guns have been used to kill people on the battlefield.

[A Screaming Comes Across the Sky @filmandcalculus]

@HowardMSklar Yeah the lower courts taking an extremely expansive view of footnote 9 is absurd. It literally uses the word presumptively as a qualifier

[mike bski @BskiMike22802]

Let me ruin your June for a second.

Every year when National Gun Violence Awareness Month rolls around, the same people who have not read a single page of John Lott's 13,312-regression peer-reviewed study start posting pictures of children and demanding you feel responsible for deaths you did not cause and had nothing to do with.

So. Let us talk about children. Since they brought it up.

In 2006, the CDC recorded 642 accidental firearm deaths in the entire United States. For children under the age of ten — the number was 31. Thirteen under age five. Eighteen between five and nine.

Tragic? Absolutely. Every single one.

But here is the number that will not appear on a single "Orange Friday" awareness post: 80.

Eighty children under the age of five drown in bathtubs every year. Every. Single. Year.

ALMOST THREE TIMES as many children drown in bathtubs annually as die from ALL firearm accidents combined — including adults. And forty more drown in five-gallon water buckets. The kind you buy at Home Depot for $4.99.

I have given this information at talks and watched jaws drop, because people genuinely believe the number is in the thousands. They have been so thoroughly marinated in "gun violence awareness" content that their perception of actual risk is completely detached from reality. That is not an accident. That is the point of the campaign.

Where is Bathtub Awareness Month? Where is the congressional hearing on five-gallon bucket control? Where is the hashtag? Where are the orange ribbons for the children who drowned while their parents were in the next room?

There are none. Because the campaign was never about children. It was never about safety. If it were about safety, they would be equally outraged about cars — which killed 1,305 children that same year. Or fire. Or drowning. But they are not. The selective fury lands exclusively on firearms. And if you are a scientist, which I happen to be, you do not get to cherry-pick your data based on which conclusion you prefer. Quinn's Law Number Six: facts are the enemy of liberalism.

Now let us talk about what the actual data says about guns and safety, because John Lott ran 13,000-plus statistical regressions across every county in America and the results are not ambiguous.

Fifty-six percent of convicted felons surveyed in a ten-state study said they would NOT attack a target they believed was armed. Fifty-six percent. The deterrence is real, it is documented, and it functions whether or not a shot is ever fired. The firearm you carry protects your neighbor whether your neighbor knows it or not.

When states passed right-to-carry laws, multiple-victim public shootings — what the media insists on calling "mass shootings" to maximize terror — dropped by 67 percent. Deaths in those events dropped by 75 percent. Injuries by 81 percent. States that adopted these laws virtually ELIMINATED mass public shootings within four to five years. The remaining events? They happened almost exclusively in the specific locations where guns remained banned. The gun-free zones. The places we hang the sign that only the law-abiding ever read.

There were between 760,000 and 3.6 million defensive gun uses in the United States last year alone, depending on which of fifteen national polls you consult. A JAMA Network Open study from March 2025 estimated 489,000 DGUs in which a firearm was actually discharged. The Department of Justice's own National Crime Victimization Survey puts the conservative floor at 65,000 defensive uses per year against assaults, robberies, and home invasions.

No dead body. No coverage. No awareness month.

Here is one more number for you: 74. Seventy-four percent of convicted felons in a National Institute of Justice survey said they actively avoided homes they believed were occupied by armed residents. Criminals respond to incentives. That is not ideology — that is basic deterrence theory, and it is confirmed by the people who actually commit the crimes.

I also want you to think carefully about something the Supreme Court already settled. DeShaney v. Winnebago County (1989). Town of Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005). Two separate rulings establishing that the government has NO legal obligation to protect you as an individual. None. You are your own first responder. That is not my opinion — that is settled constitutional law from the highest court in this country.

So the political class that just told you the government is not required to protect you... is also the one demanding you surrender the tool you use to protect yourself.

I want fewer people dead. That is why I know the data. That is why I read the book. That is why I am furious every June when emotion and fundraising replace science and evidence in a "debate" that has actual life-or-death consequences for real people.

You want to honor the children? Honor ALL of them. The ones who drowned. The ones who died in car crashes. And the ones who will never be born because a woman alone in her house at 2 a.m. had no way to stop what was coming through her door.

But what do I know — I am only a published textbook author, a science teacher, a father of four, and a combat medic who spent his career reducing human suffering and who actually read the peer-reviewed data before forming an opinion.

IF you agree:
LIKE this post so the algorithm shows it to people who need to read it.
SHARE this.
COMMENT below — did you know the bathtub number? Or did the narrative keep that from you? Tell me.

And if you want MORE of this -- the data, the history, the science, the stories -- JOIN Bski's Classroom community on X or YouTube.

#MAGA #Veterans #Trump
@JoJoFromJerz @GuntherEagleman @catturd2

[Howard Sklar @HowardMSklar]

One thing about the NFA and state permit-to-purchase laws…they're NOT "shall-issue licensing regimes" that are addressed in footnote 9 of Bruen.

They are *registration* regimes. They don't exist to ensure that only proper people hold the items. They exist for some other reason: taxing the items (for the NFA), or just being a bureaucratic burden (permits-to-purchase).

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

Britain had a moment of silence for George Floyd. Our politicians kneeled en masse to show their outrage at his killing. "I can't breathe" became a slogan.

George Floyd died on the other side of the world. He wasn't British.

Henry Nowak *was* British and his treatment by the police was shocking and negligent in the extreme. Yet there is no minute of silence. There is no coordinated public campaign. There is no kneeling at sporting events.

And we all know why.

During the summer of BLM, some people said "All Lives Matter". This was treated as the highest form of racism and anyone who said this was immediately cancelled. Why? Because the people in charge don't actually think all lives matter in the same way.

They have created a racial hierarchy of victimhood where a career criminal who died through mistreatment by police in a foreign country with 0 evidence of racism like George Floyd is automatically sanctified because of the colour of his skin.

And Henry Nowak, a British man, one of ours, is automatically dismissed and ignored because of the colour of his.

This is the ugly fruit of so-called "anti-racism", an obsession with race that has created a two-tier society which treats people differently because of the colour of their skin.

This needs to stop.

[Garry Kasparov @Kasparov63]

I'm speechless. At the time of Putin's genocidal war in Ukraine, claiming innocent lives every day, to recall a tragic incident that happened in the US 6 (!) years ago. I don’t think this is apples and oranges, it’s moral priorities and performative BS.

[A Screaming Comes Across the Sky @filmandcalculus]

@SadinNj @MorosKostas @2Aupdates Yep this is what I'm thinking

[A Screaming Comes Across the Sky @filmandcalculus]

@MorosKostas I'm very open about it. I'm in liberal NY so most of my social circle is antigun. I mostly post my WW1-2 collection. People have told me in private they think it's cool.

[A Screaming Comes Across the Sky @filmandcalculus]

@Gabe_Lackman69 @bonchieredstate @docjiles This is like absolving him if having a swastika tattoo because buddhists have used it for hundreds of years and continue to today

[A Screaming Comes Across the Sky @filmandcalculus]

@ConceptualJames I've been Israel skeptical since the 2009 flotilla raid, but not anti-Jewish. I grew up in a neighborhood with many Jewish people and graduated from a Jewish college.

[Rob Romano @2Aupdates]

@MorosKostas If someone stops it before 4 people are shot: "They didn't stop a mass shooting because it wasn't a mass shooting"

If someone stops it after 4 people are shot: "They didn't stop a mass shooting because it was already a mass shooting before they stopped it"

[A Screaming Comes Across the Sky @filmandcalculus]

@mikesports1992 @Benaskren He was placed on ECMO which is the maximum possible level of life support. He also coded numerous times during his hospital stay. He basically did die.

[A Screaming Comes Across the Sky @filmandcalculus]

@stoolpresidente Rico isn't just some kickboxer. Arguably the greatest HW kickboxer of all time

[Bonchie @bonchieredstate]

You really typed this out and thought, “Yeah, I should send this. This is good.”

Sociopathic.

[Anti Lying @aimtomisb3hav3]

PSA:
Israel is not all Jews.
Much of the Jewish diaspora opposes Bibi (as many do in Israel).
To equate criticism of the government of a secular ethno nationalist state with hatred of an ethnicity does not follow your normal logical argument.

Furthermore, there are no small number of Israeli or Israeli supporting groups pretty open about silencing dissent and buying elections. It isn't subtle anymore.

The people this accusation will hurt long term are Jewish.

We all rejected it when BLM used this argument, and we still should.

[Peter Schiff @PeterSchiff]

Thanks to Donald Trump, we now have two Democratic parties. With the defeat of @RepThomasMassie for being a principled fiscal conservative, the Republican Party basically exists in name only. We have two big-government political parties, each offering its own brand of socialism.

[Wokal Distance @wokal_distance]

Most people don't realize how common this is.

People high on openness tend to gravitate towards things that are new or on the fringe, and many of them end up moving to the right to escape the stultifying conformity of cultural spaces that rigidly enforce left wing orthodoxy.