Politics

What should she have done?

/ hsoi

Kari Bird just started law school and continues to work full time. Bird got home at 11:30 p.m. Wednesday and when she got out of her car, a group of three or four young guys approached her.

….he quickly pulled out a gun.

“He told me to … give him my keys,” Bird said.

She did turn over her keys, but realizing all her law books and belongings were in the car, Bird made a quick decision. With the gun still pointed at her, she reached into her center console to pull out her own gun.

“(He said), ‘Oh s***’ and then ran,” Bird told Fox 59.

Full story (h/t Brian)

Just one question.

For those of you who wish to ban guns, that wish to deny good people the ability to defend themselves, that seek to prevent people possessing guns in public (in their car, on their person)… why are you seeking to harm Kari Bird?

 

A little bit about me

/ hsoi

Would you like to know some things about me?

I just did some paperwork for renewing my Texas Concealed Handgun License Instructor credentials. Yes, I hold a valid Texas Concealed Handgun License, and I am also certified by the State of Texas as a CHL Instructor. So, there are a lot of rules, laws, fees, and paperwork I have to abide by.

Here’s some of them:

Eligibility Statement

I, JOHN C DAUB , hereby swear or affirm the following:

I satisfy all the eligibility requirements listed under 37 TAC Chapter 6, and Chapter 411, Texas Government Code.

This includes:

  • I have established legal residence in the state of Texas for the preceding six months (resident license only) or I am eligible for a license as a non-resident under Section 411.173(a);
  • I am at least 21 years of age; or I am 18 to 20 years of age and am eligible under Section 411.172(g) (military exception);
  • I have not been convicted of a felony (as ‘convicted’ is defined in Section 411.171(4);
  • I am not currently charged in any jurisdiction with the commission of a Class A or Class B misdemeanor or equivalent level offense, or an offense under Section 42.01 (Disorderly Conduct), Texas Penal Code, or of a felony under an information or indictment;
  • I am not a fugitive from justice for a felony or Class A or Class B misdemeanor or equivalent offense in any jurisdiction;
  • I am not chemically dependent (as defined in Section 411.171(2);
  • I am not incapable of exercising sound judgment with respect to the proper use and storage of a handgun;
  • I have not been convicted in any jurisdiction of a Class A or Class B misdemeanor or equivalent offense, or an offense under Section 42.01 (Disorderly Conduct), Texas Penal Code (as ‘convicted’ is defined in Section 411.171(4), in the past five years;
  • I am fully qualified under applicable federal and state laws to purchase a handgun. (refer to 18 U.S.C. § 922 (g))
  • I have not been finally determined to be delinquent in making child support payments administered or collected by the attorney general;
  • I have not been finally determined to be delinquent in the payment of taxes or other money collected by the comptroller, state treasurer, or tax collector of any agency or political subdivision of this state (or state of residence for non-resident applicants);
  • I am not currently restricted under a court protective order or subject to a restraining order affecting the spousal relationship, not including a restraining order affecting property;
  • I have not in the past 10 years been adjudicated as having engaged in delinquent conduct violating a penal law of the grade of felony; and
  • I have not made any material misrepresentation, or failed to disclose any material fact, on my application.

And that’s just the beginning.

But look at that and roll that around in your head a bit.

By the mere fact I hold a TX CHL, you can tell I’m what society would generally term a “good person”.

So why would you want to abridge me? What have I done to harm you? Why do you think more laws that will only serve to restrict my behavior are a solution? Shouldn’t we be promoting good people doing good things? enabling good people to freely live their lives? Why are you behaving contrary to this?

 

Good for you, Mayor Stothert

/ hsoi

The new Mayor of Omaha, Jean Stothert, just got her concealed handgun permit.

Mayor Jean Stothert is now the proud owner of a black, Austrian-made Glock 26 pistol.

But you might not be able to tell when she’s packing. The mayor says she’s awaiting delivery of a state concealed-carry handgun permit.

“It is not an issue of being afraid,” Stothert said Friday. “It’s an issue of not being afraid to protect myself.”

“Because it is the law, I wanted to really understand what went on in that concealed-carry class,” she added. “I thought, as mayor, I needed to understand.”

Before I go any further, I should give some context.

I was born in Omaha and still have family there. It might be my hometown because of birth, but I no longer consider it so because I’ve lived in Texas for 20 years — far more than I ever lived anywhere else. Austin is home to me. But still, family is there and they have a fair presence in town. I mean, my Dad was US Congressman from Omaha for 8 years, and did spend 6 years as Mayor as well. So there’s some interest in this for me.

Omaha has a lot of violence problems. Lots of gang problems. They worked hard to build things up, to try to combat and deal with it. A recent/former Mayor did a lot to tear down all that hard work and folks tell me things regressed pretty badly under his tenure. Jean Stothert looks to try to remedy things, so here’s hoping. And her getting a permit seems a good step. Because while Nebraska is generally alright in terms of gun laws, Omaha has a lot of weird things because it somehow thought more laws and ordinances would be adhered to by drug gangs. Yeah… people willing to smuggle millions of dollars of pot, heroin, and cocaine somehow care about your ordinance. 🙄 So law-abiding folks get abridged, and this even caused some weirdness for me when I’ve traveled there. Frankly, the laws there are really unclear, especially for visitors. But I don’t want to digress into this, other than to say maybe with this, Mayor Stothert will be able to fix things.

I do appreciate her desire to go through the process to gain first-hand understanding. Wouldn’t it be nice if more politicians gained first-hand experience about matters so they could better do their jobs? And not just doing it for a photo-op.

She does seem to get it:

“People have a right. They have a right according to the Second Amendment,” Stothert said. “And I feel like I want to let people understand that I agree with that right, and I don’t think that restricting gun ownership from responsible gun owners is the way that you address irresponsible (owners), and gun crimes and gun violence in a city.

“You’re not going to be able to restrict guns with responsible people and reduce the gun violence; you’re just not.”

So that’s good.

But this….

“If there is the occasion that I feel like I want to carry it, now I will be able to,” she said. “But I don’t have any intention of carrying it here while I’m at work.”

Members of Stothert’s staff already do. Stothert’s has a rotating security detail of retired Omaha police officers. Chief of Staff Marty Bilek — a retired Douglas County sheriff’s deputy — recently won the right to carry his old service weapon at work.

Because the City-County Building doesn’t allow weapons, Stothert had to seek permission from the Omaha Douglas Public Building Commission for Bilek’s gun.

That bothers me a bit more.

And there’s this:

In her request, Stothert raised the prospect of gunmen targeting random citizens or elected officials in a mass shooting.

“Our request for him to carry a weapon inside city hall is simply another layer of caution,” Stothert said at the time.

Stothert said she’s been threatened before, in phone calls and emails that she declined to elaborate on. The mayor said she hasn’t been threatened since taking office.

“I feel very safe and secure at work. I feel very safe and secure in my home,” the mayor said. “But again, I feel like its a right, and I wanted to exercise my right.”

I’m sure Gabby Giffords felt very safe and secure. In fact, most of us all feel safe and secure, until we get violated.

It’s a question of mindset here. But, I’m not going to totally be mad at her because she admits she did this more for the education than anything else. Plus yes, she has a security detail. Now I recall my Dad having some level of security, but it wasn’t like the Secret Service hovering over him at every moment. Maybe things are different now and she does have more regular security. But if not, just realize, Mayor Stothert, that those holes are when you are more vulnerable.

Yeah, you’ve been threatened. I actually recall my Dad receiving threats. I don’t know the extent of all that he’s dealt with as he chose to shield his children from such things (understandable). But in later years both Mom and Dad have revealed to me they received threats. I have to figure that it’s worse these days… the way things are these days. *sigh*

Anyways, I think what also bugs me is the statement of her security having to “win the right” to carry his service weapon at work.

Since when do we have to “win the right”? There’s something inherently backwards and wrong about that mentality. Just think about it. Should have to win the right to speak freely at the office? on public ground? Should have to win the right to attend the religious service of your choice?

And it’s her security detail. Why should someone tasked with the duty of protecting another have to jump through hoops to do their job? That’s just wrong.

But this is precisely what I hope Mayor Stothert may be able to improve in Omaha. Law-abiding citizens should not have to go through such hassle to go about their law-abiding lives. We need to rebuild a world where good people can live their good lives without abridgement, and only work to abridge those that infringe upon others to freely live their lives.

Good luck, Mayor Stothert.

Unintended consequences

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

In March 2013, the City of Austin instituted a “bag ban”. No “single-use” plastic bags for you!

Of course, there are some that took the mantra of “reduce, reuse, recycle” quite to heart. For example, we’d get part of our groceries in paper bags because paper bags had reuse around our household, and of course being paper they didn’t create the landfill problem. We did get some plastic bags because we would reuse them as garbage can liners (instead of buying plastic garbage can liners), and we’d dispose of messy things in them (e.g. dirty diapers (back when we had kids in diapers), scooping out the litterbox, etc.). And that which we didn’t or couldn’t use (e.g. bag had a hole on it), we would recycle.

Yes, there’s always been recycling of plastic bags. At least, as far as I’ve seen. Outside the front doors of every grocery store was a bin you could put your plastic bags into. They didn’t just accept the grocery store’s bags, but any sort of plastic film.

Did you ever realize how much plastic film you obtain?

There’s dry cleaning bags, product packaging, the plastic bags you bring produce home in. If you stop and pay attention, you’ll find there’s far more plastic being used and wasted in the products you bring home — in your reusable grocery bags — than there was in the bags themselves.

Wife made a habit of collecting all the plastic films and wrappers, along with plastic bags we couldn’t reuse. Every so often she would haul her collection to the grocery store, fill up the recycle bin, and the circle was complete. 🙂

We’ve been filling up our local plastic stash for some time… always forgetting to take it to the store. We collected quite a pile in the garage. 🙂  We needed to make space in the garage, so I piled all the wrappers and bags into my truck to take to the local grocery store to deposit in the bin.

As I rolled up to the store, I saw no bins outside any of the doors! I saw a store employee sweeping in the parking lot (it was very early in the morning) and asked. He said the bins were gone, that the city came by a few weeks ago and took them.

Uh… huh.

I dialed 311 to ask the City folk what I was supposed to do.

I don’t fault the person on the phone, it’s not their fault, but all they could do was quote to me what they read in the city’s information website:

CAN I RECYCLE PLASTIC BAGS, FILMS AND WRAPPERS?

No. We process recyclables at two local recycling processing facilities that use automated systems to sort and bale the recyclables. Prohibited items, like plastic bags, jam the automated machinery. Take plastic shopping bags to your local grocery stores for recycling.

I applauded when the city went to single-stream recycling. Not only does making it easy to recycle increase participation, but they also moved to a processor that could accept just about everything (e.g. not just 1 and 2 type plastics, but any type). But I knew it was an automated system that sorted things, so the denial of plastic bags makes sense.

But note, even now they still say to take the bags to the local grocery store for recycling.

Seems we can’t do that any more. It may be possible at some store, but I don’t have the time to go all over the city looking for the stores that will do this. Sorry.

And I was told to just throw my plastic in the trash.

Gee, Austin. Glad you like taking steps to “feel good” about “doing something” about “these problems that our society faces”. Next time, maybe you should think things through first.

And never forget what the road to Hell is paved with.

This is why we can’t have discussions

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Marc MacYoung posted the following on Facebook:

Conflict and violence are very human behaviors. They serve a very important survival and social purpose.

Having said that we’ve kind of put ourselves into a self-eating watermelon situation about them because we’ve allowed our understanding of the subject to be controlled by an extremist ideological position.

There’s an old joke with the punchline ‘We’ve already established that. Now we’re negotiating the price.” That ‘negotiation’ is critical when we look at conflict and violence. Where do we set the line as to how much (and when is it) is acceptable?

This is where we need to recognize the extremists. Specifically those who think violence is always the answer to any problem on one side. But the other extremist position are those who maintain ‘violence never solved anything.’ The first are obvious, the second, not so much. But it is an extremist position.

If you ask the right questions, you’ll find that yeah, overwhelmingly people acknowledge there are times that violence IS the appropriate answer. And ‘now we’re negotiating the price.’ Where are those lines? When is it appropriate? When is it not appropriate and to what degree? These are all damned good questions that we need to hash out among ourselves.

Personally I come from a place where that bar is set pretty damned low. Having said that, I like living in places where the bar is set high. But this experience gives me an understanding that people will have different standards of where that bar should be set.

This includes an important understanding, that is ‘no matter what your use of force’ decision, someone is going to disagree with it.

Now being a cynical bastard I will often point out that the people who tend to disagree most strongly are the ones who didn’t get what they wanted because you chose to act. Those folks seem to take the approach that any level of force beyond which they are comfortable using to get what they want is ‘violence’ — and therefore bad (especially when it is used against them). But what they’re doing isn’t violent and therefore they don’t deserve to have violence used against them. This especially because it hurts their feelings.

That last paragraph may seem like a rant from left field — and maybe it is — but it is also common theme among the extremists who maintain that violence never solved anything. Or, and this is another weird form of mental gymnastics, physical violence is always bad and wrong. Hence anyone who uses it is also bad and wrong. And while we’re at it, if you agree that sometimes violence is the appropriate response then you’re …

Yeah, that’s a good way to encourage mature discussion, understanding, education and coming up with effective coping mechanisms to deal with conflict and violence.

The problem with the extremist position isn’t that it exists, it’s that they won’t shut up about it. In doing so they don’t allow other people to have different points of view and, by extension, a discussion. They will constantly attempt to control the conversation or — if they can’t do that — shut it down with outbursts about how violence is wrong and evil, should not be tolerated and how society must change.

Uh actually that’s what we’re trying to do by ‘negotiating the price’ and gaining a fuller understanding of the subject than ‘it’s evil and wrong.’

Oh you want society to change in particular waaaaaaay…

He’s quite right… we are negotiating on price.

I used to hold onto the notion of violence never being an answer. For anyone that reads even a bit of my writing, you should know I no longer hold that position. I believe that violence can be an answer, and sometimes it is the right and only answer. Case in point, if a woman is being raped, should she not respond with violence? Isn’t a kick to the groin, a palm strike to the nose, thumbs to the eyes, pepper spray, kicking, biting, screaming…. fighting (back). Is this not violence? Is this not a violent response? Is this not an aggressive action? Think about it for a moment. If violence is never the answer, then what other recourse does this rape victim have? lie back and enjoy it?  Because even responses like to vomit or pee on your rapist are arguably a violent response, if perhaps just on the lower end of the scale. If you truly stand by the notion that “violence is never the answer”, then you are damning women to being raped. However, I don’t think this is what you mean, nor what you want.

So in fact, if you think about it hard enough and if you’re honest with yourself, you do accept that violence can be an answer and that sometimes it is the right and only answer. As Marc says, we’re just negotiating price.

Pay heed to the latter point Marc is making. If you really are an open-minded person, you’ll shut up and listen. You will earnestly allow for the possibility that you could be persuaded, even if it means giving up all you know and have built for yourself, if in fact Truth shows you were wrong and “the other way” is right. If you are unwilling to admit you could be wrong, if you are unwilling to give it all up, then it becomes rather difficult – and perhaps pointless – to have any discussion, because you don’t want to discuss, you just want to be right.

Alas, today more people are interested in being right than in finding truth.

But he was unarmed!

/ hsoi / 6 Comments

There are those that make great effort to point out how someone was “unarmed” when they were shot/killed.

This is typically done in an attempt to make a case of wrongful force disparity. That is, if A has a gun and B has only hands, then A is automatically at the advantage, B automatically at the disadvantage, and thus it’s wrong for A to use the gun to stop B because B was “unarmed”.

This isn’t dueling.

There aren’t any gentlemanly rules.

This isn’t sport where we strive to contrive an environment of “equal footing” and a “level playing field”.

This also isn’t necessarily murder or some other accusation you wish to cast upon A merely because A had a gun and B didn’t (blanket statement; each particular case should be examined on its own circumstances, data, and merit).

What this is is a failure to understand what sort of damage an “unarmed” person can do.

Tim has written a good article explaining the sort of damage an unarmed person can do. It has pictures and video to demonstrate.

Being “armed” or “unarmed” does not correlate to the level of danger one can pose to others. There are folks that are armed and not dangerous, and there are those that are unarmed and quite dangerous. We should not assume that having a gun means one is dangerous and not having a gun means one is harmless. Issues of use of force, force disparity, and self-defense are more complex than media hysterics and ignorant Facebook posts make it out to be.

Do you have ownership over yourself?

/ hsoi / 8 Comments

Do you own yourself? Do you have ultimate dominion over yourself, your body, your mind?

Or does someone else, like the state?

An interesting question put forth by Nico Perrino

Do you own yourself?

It seems like a simple question, doesn’t it? Not so, apparently. It has always been my belief that I own myself. That the individual is sovereign. That my body and mind is a ship that only I can captain, that only I can steer. This is one truism that I have always taken for granted. Call me naïve, but I didn’t think many people thought otherwise because to do so would be to admit to a state of enslavement.

Thinking about it, I guess I figured I always had ownership over myself. I cannot fathom it otherwise, that someone else could own me. I mean, ever since my childhood exposure to “Free to Be… You and Me” I thought we had that sort of freedom, right? OK, maybe my Mom has some right and dominion over me, but Mom’s get special dispensation here. 🙂  And even tho I take others into deep consideration, like Wife, ultimately I still own me, I still control me.

Right?

I mean, if it’s “my body, my choice”, doesn’t that imply one has ownership over themselves? That they do not want the State to interfere and control them? That you do not want the State to interfere with, control, dictate, harm, you?

From that, doesn’t it also flow that then you must take responsiblity for yourself? That you cannot, should not, and/or are unwilling to delegate ownership, control, and responsibility for yourself and your life to someone else, like the State?

The cognitive dissonance I’m experiencing here is saying it’s my body, it’s my choice, that on the one hand one doesn’t want the State involved in my life and controlling me, telling me what I can and cannot do. But then on the other hand, demanding the State control me and alleviate me of being responsible for myself, and telling me what I must do. Look around at the mainstream political issues going on right now, be it abortion, birth-control, self-defense, health care, whatever. Doesn’t matter what mainstream media, talking head, or politician we look at, because just about all are guilty of this behavior in some manner or other.

I don’t get it.

But this seems to be a common affliction these days, of wanting things that we perceive will achieve our desired end, even if the means conflict, even if the means are inconsistent, even if the means are hypocritical. But in many regards, it comes back to one issue:

A desire to alleviate the need to be responsible for yourself and your actions.

We want the good and not the bad. We want the benefits and not the cost. We want the glory but not the sacrifice. And if someone has to pay, you will pay for me.

And are you willing to give up your ownership over yourself to get there? I’m not, but apparently many are. Worse, they want to force me to do the same.

Wither society.

Framing the debate

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

There is no question that how one frames and presents things affects the tone and tenor of any debate or discussion. But sometimes we must step back and decide if the choice of words properly reflects and is guiding the debate in the desired direction.

“Gun control”. This tends to be the phrase bandied about, and there’s no question the use of those 2 words sets the tone of the discussion.

Some months ago I came across this article. The author writes:

Calling the debate “gun control” presupposes that there will be control — i.e., that government control over guns is the end, rather than the means. The only question remaining in such a debate is how much control the government will ultimately exert over citizens’ guns.

Most people, though, if they thought about it, would say that what they’re really aiming for is “violence minimization.” If one properly identifies minimizing violence as the goal, the debate changes dramatically. It forces those participating in the debate to ask, not “how many guns can we take away or how many magazines can we limit?” but, instead, “what approach results in the fewest number of gun deaths or overall violence?”.

When I speak with most people on these issues, I dig a little into their true intentions and most in fact are desiring to minimize violence and “senseless death”. Of course, they still tend to believe that banning guns would help achieve that end, but there’s data to support otherwise. The discussion continues.

But really, if the discussion is going to continue, we should strive to continue it towards the truly desired end. I mean, if what you’re truly interested in is minimization of violence, then let’s frame the discussion as such. There’s so much talk about “finding common ground”, I dare say you’ll find more on this discussion.

Of course, if you choose to keep the discussion about “gun control”, then perhaps that’s really what you are after. If so that’s fine, just be honest about it and stop hiding behind the children.

Denying the vulnerable

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Would you deny a woman the ability to protect herself from rape?

How about a pregant woman? Or an elderly woman? People who are more vulnerable than your average woman.

For all you women-empowerment types, that want to “stand by women”, and “girl power” and all that. You want to empower women, right? You want women to be able to stand on equal (or greater) ground than men, right?

Why would you deny her the best means of equalizing force?

Oleg Volk writes:

Opponents of firearms for effective self-defense tell others to run away from danger, to learn martial arts, or to “give the bad guy what he wants”. Not everyone can follow that advice…in fact, almost no one can. Least of all, the kind of people who are visibly vulnerable already, such as pregnant women or the elderly.

Ashley is a beautiful woman. She is currently three weeks away from delivering a child and one of the most fit looking expecting mothers I’ve seen. However fit and athletic she is, has little capability for hand-to-hand combat. It’s difficult to fight while carrying a heavy, fragile load within your own body.

Why might a woman like her have to fight? Pregnant women are easy prey for both human criminals and animal predators, especially dogs. They can’t fight effectively, nor can they flee quickly. Look up news headlines in your area and you will see examples of both kinds of attacks. Some women also face a threat from the future father who is not happy about having to support an unwanted child.

Indeed. People tend to get caught up in headlines and drama, instead of looking at the hard facts of reality. They tend to look at themselves or someone like them in a situation, not always considering there are those more vulnerable than they that may have needs greater than their own.

Those who oppose armed self-defense won’t be happy. Even though pregnant women are almost unknown to become violent criminals, the prohibitionists are against anyone other than the special people — the high-ranking politicians — having the benefit of effective protection. But they shouldn’t dictate how the rest of us take care of our own lives.

A response to “An Analysis of Gun Violence in Austin 2010 – 2012”

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

The [Austin] City Council passed Resolution 20130228-035 based on concerns about gun violence. The resolution language includes direction to the City Manager to explore methods for collecting data about the use of firearms in the commission of a crime.

In response, the Austin Police Department has compiled data into a report about trends in gun violence. That report is attached for your review. Based on nationwide statistics collected by the FBI, Austin remains one of the safest U.S. cities of our size. This fact is reflected in the comparatively small number of crimes that involve a firearm.

H. A. ACEVEDO
Chief of Police

The full report is here.

Austin’s Mayor and City Council are notoriously anti-gun. It doesn’t matter what reason and facts show, they just hate guns (made evident by their past actions both in and out of the council chambers). So they passed a Resolution about “gun violence”, tax dollars were spent, and the findings have been posted.

Basically, it shows that gun violence isn’t much of a problem in Austin.

Let’s see if their own findings will affect their future actions, or if they’ll ignore it and keep riding that horse.

That said, let’s look at some things:

The report disclaims and caveats the data. How different reports run at different times can get different results. That there are numerous cases in APD’s records system that include no weapon data at all. The way various guns are labeled causes a problem (to call a gun “automatic” is problematic, because a lot of older folks refer to semi-automatic guns as “automatics” or “auto-loaders”, but a lot of other people see the term “automatic” and think “fully-automatic”… this is both a statistics and a perception/reporting problem). So, it’s really hard to be certain of the integrity of this data. I’m sure bother sides of the debate will use this fact as a way to discount the study’s data and press on with their agenda.

Regardless, let’s look at the data provided.

The study looked at part 1 violent offenses (murder, attempted murder (aggravated assault), robbery, rape) and disorderly conduct.

Less than 1/4 of these offenses used guns.

Right there’s the money: guns are used in less than 25% of the offenses. That means 75% of the offenses used something else. I know news media and politicians like to make it out like it’s some major catastrophe, but the data isn’t there to back up the hysterics. Oh sure, it would be nice if the number of part 1 violent offenses was 0 (gun or no gun). But the point is, they want to see if “gun violence” is a problem, and it seems the far greater problem is “not-gun violence”.

Handguns are the most commonly used firearm type. Yet, “they” want to ban rifles. I’m not saying they should ban handguns (or rifles or much of anything). But if thinking a ban on X would reduce or eliminate a problem (perceived to be caused by X), shouldn’t you actually ban X instead of Y? and leave Y alone?

There’s a lot of aggravated assault in Austin. You have to remember, that used to be called “attempted murder”. All this means is someone tried to kill you, but didn’t succeed. But you may be injured, maimed, crippled for life. Don’t think it’s something “more friendly” or “more desirable” as far as crimes go. So I don’t know what that says about Austin… that there’s a lot of attempts to kill people, but they don’t succeed. Maybe it’s because the overwhelming majority of them don’t involve a gun? They involve something else… so why don’t we address why assaults are occurring, instead of looking at an object used in the commission of them? Maybe… just maybe… it’s not about guns.

Another fun take-home are the maps showing where most crimes happen. East of I-35; along the I-35 corridor between 71 and the river (esp. the Riverside area), and again around the 183 intersection (esp. the “northwest” quadrant). Read: avoid these places.

All in all, the report is pretty straightforward. It’s mostly a presentation of data, and opinion doesn’t really come until the end conclusions.

First, Austin remains one of the safest cities, if you measure “safe” by “number of violent crimes”. Not an unreasonable measure, but 1. there’s still more than many people would consider acceptable, 2. what about all the other crimes? property crime, burglary, etc. are pretty high.

Crime incidents involving the use of a firearm remain relatively low for the City. As a result, the limited data makes it challenging to formulate effective preventative measures.

Indeeed there’s not a lot of data. They looked at 3 years of data and with “so few murders”, it certainly is hard to formulate a plan.

But maybe that’s just it: maybe there doesn’t need to be a plan.

First, the summary statement above is loaded, because the wording shows they want to formulate effective preventative measures against crimes involving guns. They don’t want to formulate effective preventative measures against crime… no, it’s against guns. But the data shows that there’s just not as much involvement of guns in crimes as the City Council was hoping for, so there’s not much for them to do and go on. Darn the luck, but we’ll keep selectively researching until we get data that backs up our agenda!

Here’s a tip. What the data does show is there’s still a lot of violent crime in Austin. Focus less on the tools used in the crime, and focus more on the crime itself. I don’t see why it matters so much if someone tried to kill me with a knife vs. a gun vs. a car vs. poison vs. their bare  hands. Isn’t it enough they tried to kill me? Why don’t we focus on the whole “not killing me” part? Why are we so hung up on HOW people were killed? This isn’t a game of Clue. Instead of being so discriminatory towards certain traits about people, let’s focus on the root issues to really solve the problems.