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Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Gun Control: Defensive Gun Use (Part II)

This is the second submission of a multi-part essay by Jim V on Gun Control. Thanks Jim for the interesting read! Its nice to see how so many anti-gun people are lucky to be able to pay others to hold (and use in their defense) those nasty guns for them.
FerFAL
Defensive Gun Use
In part 2 of my series on gun control, I would like to examine defensive gun use. Could it be, as former gun control advocate turned gun rights supporter Dr. John Lott of Univ. of Chicago maintains, in his eponymous book More Guns, Less Crime, that we are safer with more guns? The young boy who drove off two home invaders in Houston in 2012 – reported at Houston’s KHOU TV – with his father’s AR-15 “evil” assault rifle would certainly agree. See www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-q2zHIovOE.  And here’s another story of  an“evil” AR-15 used to drive off intruders: New York Resident Scares the Hell out of Intruders” – video at http://www.thedailysheeple.com/ar-15-defense-weapon-new-york-resident-scares-the-hell-out-of-intruders_012013; story also found at http://www.kfiam640.com/pages/MoreStimulatingTalkRadio.html?feed=104668&article=10729296   And then there were the young students in Rochester, NY who thankfully were able to use an AR-15 to protect their lives during a break in – see http://www.13wham.com/news/local/story/Homeowners-Scare-Off-Burglars/7yaLSXAvCUGBkwgAZpGO4g.cspx. Finally, another story of an AR-15 used to save lives, this time in Detroit, where armed robbers retreat when they realize they are outgunned by a single guard with an AR-15: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwRoXIk1H3Q&feature=player_detailpage#t=33s. As a matter of fact, as the non-stereotypical gun owner Dan Baum – who is a Jewish Democrat who wrote for the New Yorker-  noted, while “Joe Nocera at the Times runs a daily tally of gun killings. He's not running a daily tally of how many people defend themselves with guns. For one thing we don't know about it most of the time. David Hemenway at Harvard is very pro gun-control and he thinks it happens about 80,000 times a year. If that's true, that means that guns are saving 10 times as many people as they're killing.” http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/03/what-liberals-need-to-understand-about-gun-guys/273736/
Similarly, as Aubrey Blankenship and Celia Bigelow told Piers Morgan (video and story at http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/22-year-old-schools-piers-morgan-on-guns/#yi5kmq2Ub6bbVgmH.99), there are very good reasons, particularly for women, to have not only guns, but specifically AR-15s. Stated the two ladies in a companion column in the National Review, “One, they’re lightweight,” the 22-year-old Bigelow responded. “They’re quite accurate. I can shoot them much more accurately than a handgun or a shotgun. And three … I want a gun that can hold a lot of ammo, because if I’m faced with an intruder or multiple intruders that come into my home, I want to make sure I have enough ammo to get the job done, especially if they’re armed. … I don’t have to take the time to reload… We saw a situation in Georgia just a couple weeks ago where a mom was hiding in her attic with her two children when an intruder entered her home. She had a handgun that only had six rounds in it. She fired all six rounds, missed the intruder once, hit him five times in the face and in the neck. And he still lived.”
And given that there are around eight thousand home invasions per year (and not one conducted by well-mannered, non-violent Boy Scouts), with at least one in five households experiencing a break-in at some point, the people above are just the tip of the iceberg.
But returning to Dr. Lott, here is Exhibit A: scarcely one week before the Colorado tragedy, a similar situation had an opposite ending in Florida, where 71 year old Samuel Williams stopped an armed robbery when two masked men entered the Palms Internet Cafe around 10 p.m. Friday, July 13, 2012. Make your own conclusion from the surveillance camera, which captures it all: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZNC2VwyaPU&feature=player_embedded#t=0s . Exhibit B: Scarcely a month after the Colorado theatre shooting, on the opposite side of the country, an Orange County, CA. jewelry and coin dealer thwarted and armed robbery – and possible employee deaths – by defending herself with her pistol. Video surveillance footage at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjXJBpV9YRI  And as if this wasn’t enough, the Oregon Clackamas Town Center Mall mall shooting – which was overshadowed by the Connecticut school shooting a few days later – was stopped by a citizen, Nick Melti,  exercising his right of concealed carry. Full details of this incident – not reported by the lamestream media – are at http://www.examiner.com/article/media-blackout-oregon-mall-shooter-was-stopped-by-an-armed-citizen.  At the risk of overkill (pun intended), here’s another video of a 65 yr. old woman thwarting FIVE armed robbers with her pistol in her store: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoDNJQtNVoc&feature=player_embedded#t=0s. In fact, it appears to be the case that, as ex-gangsta rap artist turned Christian rap singer Travis Tyler, known as Thi’sl notes, more gun restrictions are not the answer, as this will not stop criminals from getting guns. But listen to Thi’sl in his own words: http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2013/January/Ex-Gangsta-Rapper-More-Gun-Laws-Not-the-Answer/ (note that Thi’sl also identifies fatherlessness as a “huge role” in gun violence, as well as the issue of mental illness). Interestingly, Mark Mattioli, who lost his six year old son at Sandy Hook, also stated before a gun violence task force shortly after the shooting that guns are categorically not the problem – rather, it is mental health issues, issues that stem from media violence, lack of personal integrity, lack of parenting, etc. A Mattioli video speaking to this issue is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqpzOSYqX3c&feature=player_embedded#t=8s. Ann Coulter speaks to the Mattioli video at http://www.humanevents.com/2013/04/10/coulter-liberals-go-crazy-for-the-mentally-ill/, noting that the one critical piece missing from the leftist analysis of gun violence is that they refuse to deal with that fact that the vast majority of gun violence is caused by mentally ill. Says Coulter: “Mass shootings don’t correlate with gun ownership; they correlate with not locking up schizophrenics” and “For most of the 20th century, from 1900 to 1970, there was an average of four mass public shootings per decade. Throughout the ’70s, as the loony bins were being emptied, the average number of mass shootings suddenly shot up to 13. In the 3.3 decades since 1980, after all the mental institutions had been turned into condos, mass shootings skyrocketed to 36 on average per decade. And as exhibits for this exact issue, see Adam Lanza, Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech, James Holmes, Jared Loughner, paranoid schizophrenic One L. Goh, who murdered a number of people at a Christian college in 2012, Nidal Hassan, and others. For a complete list of mentally ill committing crimes, Coulter directs readers to E. Fuller Torrey’s book, The Insanity Defense: How America’s Failure to Treat the Seriously Mentally Ill Endangers Its Citizens. Fox News also does a concise expose of the issue at http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/04/10/it-not-knives-it-not-guns-it-mental-illness-that-kills/
But returning to the issue of the deterrence and such things as concealed carry, it turns out that the leftist Mother Jones article claiming to have produced its own study of all public shootings in the last 30 years, which concluded “In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun,” is an outright fabrication - in looking at just the most recent Oregon episode. And as Ann Coulter pointed out in an article shortly after the CT shooting, found at http://www.humanevents.com/2012/12/19/ann-coulter-we-know-how-to-stop-school-shootings/  Mother Jones, in typical leftist fashion “…reaches its conclusion by simply excluding all cases where an armed civilian stopped the shooter: They looked only at public shootings where four or more people were killed, i.e., the ones where the shooter wasn’t stopped.”  Don’t try this trick in a stats 101 class, or you will be flunked. Coulter’s article provides some extremely enlightening examples of mass murders stopped by an armed bystander: 
– Mayan Palace Theater, San Antonio, Texas, same week as the CT shooting: Jesus Manuel Garcia shoots at a movie theater, a police car and bystanders from the nearby China Garden restaurant; as he enters the movie theater, guns blazing, an armed off-duty cop shoots Garcia four times, stopping the attack. Total dead: Zero. (More details on this theatre-shooting-that-wasn’t because the shooter was stopped by someone with concealed carry  is at http://freedomoutpost.com/2012/12/the-theater-shooting-the-main-stream-media-didnt-focus-on-why/ )
– Winnemucca, Nev., 2008: Ernesto Villagomez opens fire in a crowded restaurant; concealed carry permit-holder shoots him dead. Total dead: Two. (I’m excluding the shooters’ deaths in these examples.)
– Appalachian School of Law, 2002: Crazed immigrant shoots the dean and a professor, then begins shooting students; as he goes for more ammunition, two armed students point their guns at him, allowing a third to tackle him. Total dead: Three.
– Santee, Calif., 2001: Student begins shooting his classmates — as well as the “trained campus supervisor”; an off-duty cop who happened to be bringing his daughter to school that day points his gun at the shooter, holding him until more police arrive. Total dead: Two.
– Pearl High School, Mississippi, 1997: After shooting several people at his high school, student heads for the junior high school; assistant principal Joel Myrick retrieves a .45 pistol from his car and points it at the gunman’s head, ending the murder spree. Total dead: Two.
– Edinboro, Pa., 1998: A student shoots up a junior high school dance being held at a restaurant; restaurant owner pulls out his shotgun and stops the gunman. Total dead: One. (Coulter neglected to cite some other cases, such as the high school shooting by Luke Woodham in Pearl, Miss., or the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, CO., where armed volunteers stopped the mayhem immediately.
Not included in Coulter’s article was a shooter who opened fire two weeks after the Sandy Hill massacre. Unfortunately, he did it in a place where people were armed – the Gloucester Township Police HQ – and, while people were wounded, no one was killed except the shooter. http://news.yahoo.com/3-cops-shot-nj-police-station-143541945--abc-news-topstories.html
There’s one more gunman incident Coulter also missed: On Aug. 29, 2010, and armed gunman, Thomas Richard Cowan,  entered Sullivan Central High School in Blountville, TN., and pointed his gun at the head of the school principal. This may well have ended up another Sandy Hook event – except for the fact that a Sullivan County Sheriff’s Deputy, Carolyn Gudger, was stationed at the school, and confronted the gunman with her own gun. Cowan retreated from this confrontation, and was later killed when he pointed his weapon at other police who had arrived since the initial confrontation. No Sandy Hook here. That’s because there was armed resistance.
The Marc J. Victor article cited elsewhere in this paper adds several more incidences to the list above, where an armed populace prevented a Sandy Hook massacre. Victor cites  a 1997 high school shooting in Pearl, MS., stopped when the vice principal retrieved a handgun from his truck; a 1998 middle school shooting ended when a man living next door heard gunfire and apprehended the shooter with his shotgun; a 2002 terrorist attack at an Israeli school was quickly stopped by an armed teacher and a school guard; a 2002 law school shooting in Grundy, Virginia came to an abrupt conclusion when students carrying firearms confronted the shooter; a 2007 mall shooting in Ogden, Utah ended when an armed off-duty police officer intervened; a 2009 workplace shooting in Houston, Texas was halted by two co-workers who carried concealed handguns. What part of “guns saved lives” don’t leftists get?
Let me answer the question above, if I may. Here’s what leftists don’t get – and which illustrates they really don’t ultimately care as much about each precious life lost at Sandy Hook as they do their precious agenda (and yes… please do use your best Gollum voice from Lord of the Rings when you say the word  leftist “precious agenda”; and no, our guns are not precious to most gun owners – rather, our freedom and liberty are precious, and guns are simply a guarantor of that). One story – which represents thousands of other unreported stories every year - with the headline of Woman Hiding with Kids Shoots Home Intruder Multiple Times, illustrates the point very simply: A quick précis of the story will suffice. A woman hiding in her attic with children shot an intruder multiple times before fleeing to safety Friday… The incident happened at a home on Henderson Ridge Lane in Loganville around 1 p.m. The woman was working in an upstairs office when she spotted a strange man outside a window, according to Walton County Sheriff Joe Chapman. He said she took her 9-year-old twins to a crawlspace before the man broke in using a crowbar. But the man eventually found the family. The perpetrator opens that door. Of course, at that time he’s staring at her, her two children and a .38 revolver,” Chapman told Channel 2’s Kerry Kavanaugh. The woman then shot him five times, but he survived, Chapman said. He said the woman ran out of bullets but threatened to shoot the intruder if he moved…” http://www.wsbtv.com/news/news/local/woman-hiding-kids-shoots-intruder/nTm7s/
This story has more than meets the eye. Suppose it was not just a single home invader, but three or four – and she was a resident of shot capacity limiting New York or another state banning those evil assault rifles that carry too many rounds? What if she – like many of us – wasn’t such good shot, under duress (and possible darkness), and missed with her six rounds? Then what? While she may have to abide by the round capacity laws, the criminal – who is already a criminal and thus doesn’t care – can carry a high capacity weapon on his side, making the law even more dangerous for the law abiding citizen – not safer.
Pam Loman of Shawnee, OK. went through the same experience a few weeks later, scaring off three men trying to break into her home. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/01/13/Oklahoma-Woman-Stops-Robbers-With-Her-Gun reports: “She was cleaning her home on Friday when a man knocked on her front door, while two others stayed in the car. When she did not answer the man resorted to banging on the door. Mrs. Loman got scared and went for her gun.“So my instinct was to go get a gun. I don’t know why, I never in my life felt like I needed to go get a gun,” said Mrs. Loman. She had both hands on her .32-caliber pistol when the man knocked down her door. “And just all of a sudden, with one kick, he knocked the door completely in. The frame came flying down. Things came flying everywhere,” she said. “And he saw that I had the gun, and he grabbed the door handle and pulled the door shut.” Mrs. Loman said if he did not run away and came into the house she would have shot him.”
At the risk of – pun intended – overkill, here are ten other stories cited by John Hawkins that you may review to understand how guns saved the lives of men or women, stopped rapes and saved the lives of children:  http://townhall.com/columnists/johnhawkins/2013/02/02/10-stories-that-prove-guns-save-lives-n1503549/page/full/. Another similar story of a woman saved from being beaten – possibly to death – by a concealed gun carrier who protected her is here: http://fox6now.com/2013/03/12/marine-with-concealed-carry-permit-stops-man-from-beating-woman/ .  And here’s a few more for the road in the event the above is not enough to convince you of the utility of guns to save lives:
·         A convenience store clerk and an immigrant defend themselves against attackers in Florida. The attackers fired first and were aiming to kill, these men defended themselves and protected the innocent. http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/01/15/3183760/two-robbers-shot-dead-in-hollywood.html

·         A man in San Antonio walks out to find a man going through the contents of his locked vehicle. He confronts the man and lawfully defends his life and his property. http://www.kens5.com/news/SAPD-Car-thief-killed-another-wounded-outside-Stone-Oak-home-186923501.html
Thankfully, something like the above would never happen to gun grabbers Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Shumer or any of the Hollywood glitterati, as they are surrounded by guards, who are armed. In fact, Obama signed a bill Jan., 2013 that rolls back a mid-1990s law that imposed a 10-year limit on Secret Service protection for former presidents. The bill, which will cost American taxpayers millions of dollars will have Obama (and other presidents) protected for life as well as their children up to age 16, by armed guard.  Hypocritically, during an ABC Nightline interview recorded before the Sandy Hook shooting, Obama said one of the benefits of his re-election was the ability “to have men with guns around at all times,” in order to protect his daughters (see http://www.bizpacreview.com/2012/12/29/obama-admits-to-wanting-men-with-guns-guarding-his-daughters-12581 ) The Sidwell Friends school attended by Obama’s daughters in Washington D.C. has no less than 11 armed security guards on duty at all times (http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/12/23/School-Obama-s-Daughters-Attend-Has-11-Armed-Guards-Not-Counting-Secret-Service ). Of course, the NRA suggestion of arming trained school staff for the poor unwashed masses at the common public school has been derided by the elite – that’s only for the “special” people! Or as the Washington Times put it, As The Washington Times put it:
“It is important to remember that while they are talking about disarming you and me, they are not talking about disarming themselves. They will still be coddled in their fortresses. The closer you get to the Capitol the more armed guards there are. Up close, there are bomb proof guard shacks, literally, on every street corner. Squads of machine gun-carrying guards dot the magnificent marble buildingscape at all times. Leaders in Congress ride around with escorts of huge armed men. Is that because what they do every day is more dangerous than what you and I do every day” Cited from http://www.ammoland.com/2013/02/washington-times-gun-free-zones-are-only-for-the-little-people/#ixzz2JlOzSVO7 . Meanwhile, what happens to the average citizen who – as in the case of post-Katrina New Orleans – is disarmed by the “authorities?” Hear for yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVyV9ojTA_I . Better, listen to real police themselves tell you that “you are on your own” until they can get there – whenever that is. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=1AQ1WBb81BE#t=14s
Below: Sidwell Friends, another gun free school – NOT

Sen. Diane Feinstein, who wants “Mr. and Mrs. America” to “turn in” their guns,(see http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=blXkl9YVoHo#t=2s where she states this ) admitted to availing herself of concealed carry for her own protection at one point – see http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=B1EObqM9Z0s#t=2s . Of course, our aforementioned gun control nut NY Mayor Michael Bloomberg has armed bodyguards at all times, and, in personal communication with a friend and neighbor who is a recently retired senior staff member from the Illinois State Police, he noted that at least up to 2009 when he retired, Bill Ayers, the leftist, Obama crypto-crony who was co-founder of the communist  Weather Underground (that conducted bombings of public buildings, including police stations, the U.S. Capitol Building, and the Pentagon), whenever he was in a classroom teaching at Univ. of Illinois Chicago, was always assigned to have armed state police in his classroom for protection. It’s just you, dear reader,that are left to your own (unarmed) devices when you are threatened.
And let’s not forget the ever-hypocritical  gun controller Michael Moore, who also maintains armed bodyguards, one of whom was arrested for carrying an unlicensed weapon at New York’s JFK airport back in 2005. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,144921,00.html#ixzz2FnQC65J3 . Yes, this is the selfsame Mikey Moore who owned shared of Haliburton (see Peter Schweizer’s book Do As I Say, Not as I Do: Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy) and has both an extremely expensive penthouse in NY, as well as a massive, multimillion dollar mansion on Torch Lake, MI., as seen below.

(Of course, the ultimate example of hypocrisy was illustrated by NY Governor Cuomo who stated after Sandy Hook, in granting permission for Learjet leftist Hollywood  to bring AR-15s to New York, that "There's no reason not to make a change ... to give an industry comfort, "especially ... [one] we want to do business in the state." Apparently, Cuomo didn’t desire to hinder any of those uber-leftist, gun-control fanatics Hollywooders  from making movies that glorify the criminal violence he's claims he’s trying to end.)
In contrast to the heavily defended Sidwell Friends school, or the latte leftists protected by gun toting guards,  the shootings in gun-free zones invariably result in far higher casualty figures — the Sikh temple in Oak Creek, Wis. (six dead); Virginia Tech, in Blacksburg, Va. (32 dead); Columbine High School, Columbine, Colo. (12 dead); the Amish school in Lancaster County, Pa. (five little girls killed); a public school, Craighead County, Ark. (five killed, including four little girls).
And here’s one more question: What if it is not “only” a half dozen people killed, but rather something like the horrific Beslan School massacre in gun control-happy Russia in 2004? 334 people were slaughtered – over half children – by Chechnyan Islamists. Good thing everyone in the school was unarmed – right?
One might consider – dare I quote him? – Michael Moore, in perhaps the single lucid comment of his entire career. Regarding the Sandy Hook massacre, he wrote in the Huffington Post: “The killer only ceased his slaughter when he saw that cops were swarming onto the school grounds — i.e, the men with the guns. When he saw the guns a-coming, he stopped the bloodshed and killed himself. Guns on police officers prevented another 20 or 40 or 100 deaths from happening. Guns sometimes work.”  Of course, Moore goes off on another deranged tangent after this, but in this case he actually got one paragraph right. And perhaps, with the direction our society is going, a properly secured firearm on school premises, wielded by fully trained school staff, may be what is needed. Why should there be a wait be for the police to arrive as more death occurs?
In fact, police themselves, as a rule, support civilian use of guns, and not just high profile cases such as several sheriffs in Colorado, Utah, or the sheriff of Milwaukee, WI. Here’s what police, themselves, think, per a questionnaire submitted to 15,000 law-enforcement personnel, asking about civilian gun use:
“When asked what the likely outcome would have been at Aurora and Newtown had a legally armed civilian been there, 80 percent said there would have been fewer casualties; 6.2 percent said it would have prevented casualties altogether. Only 5.5 percent thought it would have led to greater loss of life.
When asked what could be done to prevent future mass public shootings, the most popular answer — picked by 28.8 percent – was for more permissive concealed carry policies for civilians. More aggressive institutionalization of the mentally ill was the choice of 19.6 percent. More armed guards were favored by 15.8 percent. Of course, none of these solutions are acceptable to the gun grabbers. Improved background checks were in fourth place, the choice of 14 percent of the respondents, followed by longer prison terms when guns are used in violent crimes (7.9 percent). What did the law-enforcement professionals have to say about about the left’s favorite solutions? A meager 1.5 percent put tighter limits on weapons sales at the top of their list. While legislative restrictions on “assault weapons” and larger magazines didn’t even get a nod from one out of 100 of the boys and girls in blue, it was the choice of .9 percent.
When it comes to making the public safer, including our children, “the only professional group devoted to limiting and defeating gun violence as part of their sworn responsibility” has the right answer: Get more arms in the right hands. And do a better job of getting the truly crazy off the streets.” (Cited from http://personalliberty.com/2013/04/19/a-huge-defeat-for-the-gun-grabbers/)
Dr. Lott, the former gun control advocate turned gun supporter, documents many thousands of similar situations where civilian guns saved lives, but here is one woman, in her own words, discussing after the fact how her gun saved her life: http://bcove.me/zgbghtxu. As a matter of fact, Gun Owners of America, at http://gunowners.org/sk0802.htm, cites statistics indicating guns are used 2.5 million times a year in self-defense, or around 80 times a day (other statistics estimate this number could range as low as 1.5 million, but either number is a lot!). This includes 200,000 women a year using guns to defend themselves against sexual abuse – in fact, here is the actual 911 recording of some woman doing exactly that: http://www.therightscoop.com/holy-crap-911-call-of-woman-defending-herself-against-stalker-who-broke-into-her-house/. It is precisely these situations that the gun grabbers would make worse!   As a matter of fact, as of 2008, armed citizens killed more violent bad guys than the police (1,527 vs. 606).  Overall, guns in the United States are used 80 times more often to prevent crime than they are to take lives (http://thetruthwins.com/archives/you-wont-believe-the-crazy-things-that-are-being-said-about-gun-owners ). Cato Institute has a complete article on this topic for your further reading, Tough Targets: When Criminals Face Armed Resistance from Citizens," In fact, renowned author and poet Maya Angelou is a poster child (make that “elder”) for using guns in self-defense, telling Time Magazine in 2013 she once stopped a a presumed attempted burglary at here home by firing her gun. Said Angelou: “I do like to have guns around… I don’t like to carry them, but I like – if somebody is going to come into my house and I have not put out the welcome mat – I want to stop them.”  http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2139706,00.html
Interestingly, during the composition of this paper, during a radio broadcast on WMBI radio, April 23, 2013, at 1:15 AM,  a caller who identified himself as George, the owner of a limousine company, stated something very interesting, that corroborates the above. He noted that, as airlines at one point prohibited people from transporting guns, criminals in Florida would follow people who took out rental cars at airports to rob them, knowing they would be unarmed. Just a small tidbit, lost to history, and ignored by the politically correct – but for those murdered during these crimes, including children – the gun grabbers are complicit.
And what happens when people are not able to arm themselves? Just ask the citizens of Hungerford, England, where twenty years ago Michael Ryan went on a shooting spree, killing 16 people. As no one in the town was armed, he took over eight hours before anyone with a firearm was alerted and able to stop the rampage. While Obama used children a stage props, including plaintive letters from children asking him to ban guns in his January, 2013 anti-gun dog and pony anti-gun sales pitch, he forgot to discuss the recent cases of Kendra St. Claire, who used a gun to protect herself from a home intruder, a mother who shot an intruder to protect her two young sons, or an 18 year old widowed mother who shot two intruders to protect her baby.

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