WEIRD, BECAUSE ALL WE’VE BEEN HEARING ABOUT ARE TEXAS, FLORIDA, AND ARIZONA: California now has most COVID-19 cases.

QUESTION ASKED: Is St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner Framing the McCloskeys? “If it’s true that the gun was inoperable during the incident at the McCloskeys’ home, Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner or her office may be framing the McCloskeys in order to prosecute them… And what about the rifle Mark McCloskey was holding? Police reported finding no ammunition at the McCloskeys’ home when they confiscated it, and that it was not loaded. Was it ever loaded? Has it ever even been fired prior to being in police custody?”

Related: Gateway to the Wild West: The accelerating collapse of St. Louis, the most violent city in America.

THIS ISN’T NEWS IF YOU’VE BEEN TO A GUN SHOP LATELY: News: Skyrocketing Ammunition Demand. But wait, there’s more: “Ryan Repp, director of content and communications for Brownells, indicated the company experienced something slightly different. ‘Our ammo sales are up a few points, but our emergency food and survival supplies sales are trending up higher even than ammo.'”

UPDATE: You can always check out my former students’ site, LuckyGunner.com. New shipments arriving every day — but lots of folks buying, too.

AT AMAZON, Shop Amazon Warehouse Deals – Deep Discounts on Open-box and Used Products.

Plus, Shop Amazon Outlet – Clearance, Markdowns and Overstock Deals.

LIVE AT 3:30PM EASTERN: PJMedia VIP Gold Live Chat with VodkaPundit, Kruiser, and Preston.

VODKAPUNDIT’S DAILY INSANITY WRAP: California’s Lunatic Booze Rules, Plus Biden Can’t Hack It.

Today’s Wrap found itself in yet another target-rich environment.

BRYAN PRESTON: Blood and Metal: Why 1641 Matters So Much to Understanding America’s Founding (Not 1619). “1492 and 1630 are more significant years for the founding of America than 1619. But neither is as significant in the stream of ideas and human rights as 1641. It was in that year that King Charles I went head to head with John Pym, leader of the Puritan faction in the House of Commons. For a stretch a couple of months in late 1641 and early 1642, Pym and Charles went eyeball to eyeball and took England up to and over the brink of civil war. But we have to go back a few years to understand why they clashed.”

This is quite good.

WELL, YES: Adam Carolla on AOC: She’s ‘Insane, Maniacal.’

MORE HANS BADER:  Research race and racism had better toe the line.

HANS BADER:  “Anti-Racism is Racism in Disguise.”

NO THANKS, I’VE SEEN THE MOVIES WHERE RESEARCHERS ACCIDENTALLY BREED SOMETHING: Researchers accidentally breed sturddlefish.

SPEWING COMMUNIST CHINESE PROPAGANDA WITH THE GREATEST OF EASE: Nancy Pelosi Calls the Wuhan Coronavirus ‘the Trump Virus.’

I EXPECT THERE WERE EARTH-SHATTERING KABOOMS: Earth, moon were bombarded by asteroid shower 800 million years ago.

LIES, DAMNED LIES, AND THE LEFT: Writer Tweets Video Of Police Brutality Implies It’s From America, But It Was From Serbia.

JUST A FEW BUSHELS OF BAD APPLES: Another ‘Mostly Peaceful’ Protest: 49 Chicago Police Officers Injured.

SO MUCH FOR ELAINE BENES’ CLAIM THAT IT’S JUST A WHISTLE-STOP ON THE EXPRESS TRAIN TO GAYTOWN: Skepticism of male bisexuality unfounded, researchers say.

GOOD FOR HIM: Kmele Foster on Why He Opposes Cancel Culture and the Anti-Capitalist Side of Black Lives Matter: The Fifth Column podcaster is done with cancel culture, identity politics, and political orthodoxy. Same.

I THINK THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION NEEDS TO INVESTIGATE THIS OFFICIALLY-TOLERATED POLITICAL BULLYING: Conservative Student Leaving Syracuse University Due to Harassment and Threats.

Complain to grantmaking agencies under Executive Order 13864.

SCIENCE, UNSETTLED: Ancient stone tools suggest first people arrived in America earlier than thought.

WHERE IS SARAH HOYT’S SHOCKED FACE WHEN YOU NEED IT MOST? Steele Dossier Was British Disinformation: From A Steele Employee.

HEATHER MAC DONALD: Four Months of Unprecedented Government Malfeasance.

The coronavirus lockdowns demonstrated our leaders’ ignorance of economic interdependence. After the riots, that ignorance has been shown to run far deeper. It is an ignorance about government’s most fundamental obligation: to safeguard life, liberty, and property. It is an ignorance about human nature and human striving.

Property and capital are not soulless abstractions, easily replaced by an insurance payout, as the rioters and their apologists maintain. (The Massachusetts Attorney General noted that burning is “how forests grow.”) Capital is accumulated effort and innovation, the sum of human achievement and imagination. Its creation is the aim of civilization. But civilization is everywhere and at all times vulnerable to the darkest human impulses. Government exists to rein in those impulses so that individual initiative can flourish. America’s Founders, schooled in a profound philosophical and literary tradition dating back to classical antiquity, understood the fragility of civil peace and the danger of the lustful, vengeful mob.

Our present leaders, the products of a politicized and failing education system, seem to know nothing of those truths. Pulling the country back from the abyss will require a recalling of our civilizational inheritance.

Read the whole thing.

HAM SANDWICH NATION UPDATE: Is St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner Framing the McCloskeys? If so, she should be subjected to discipline by the appropriate authorities.

YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: China Perfidy Roundup for July 22, 2020. “Time for another roundup of China’s various crimes.”

To be clear, this is the Communist People’s Republic of China on the mainland, and not the well-run Republic of China on Taiwan.

WOW: Ford Has Doubled Production of the Bronco First Edition Due to Demand.