Politics

Illustration of the folly

/ hsoi

In New York’s knee-jerk rush to implement feel-good-do-something-for-the-children legislation, they also screwed their local law enforcement:

The ban on having high-capacity magazines, as it’s written, would also include law enforcement officers.

Magazines with more than seven rounds will be illegal under the new law when that part takes effect in March.

As the statute is currently written, it does not exempt law enforcement officers. Nearly every law enforcement agency in the state carries hand guns that have a 15 round capacity.

Now, state officials are coming out saying this doesn’t affect the police, they are not in violation, but the simple fact is laws are specific and must spell out exemptions if they are to be any. Any time a law isn’t to apply to police, they spell it out. The fact they didn’t, means this applies to police as well. And so, they are working to “fix” the law.

What this demonstrates is the folly of such limitations.

“Why does anyone need one of those?” Well, this is why. If the police need them, first, that’s “somebody” needing one of those. Second, if no one ever needs more than X arbitrary number of rounds, shouldn’t that go for the police as well?

From Reason

DNAinfo.com calls the absence of a law-enforcement exemption a “loophole in the law,” but in fact it is the very opposite of a loophole: Cops are outraged at the possibility that they might be treated the same as “a regular citizen” under the law. One has to wonder: If, as Seabrook says, the new magazine limit will have no impact on criminals and if, as Seabrook and Palladino agree, more than seven rounds sometimes are necessary to “save lives,” what justification can there be for imposing this arbitrary restriction not just on “law-abiding retired cops” but on law-abiding citizens in general?

Indeed. Why should law-abiding citizens be restricted and the police not? What justifiable reasoning can be given? To say “they’re the police, they may need it” assumes the private citizen never needs it. I’ll keep thinking back to that one student of Tom Givens that needed 11 rounds in order to save his life. Obviously he needed more rounds than these laws would permit — are you going to look him in the eye and tell him nobody needs more than 7 rounds or 10 rounds? that his life wasn’t worth it? that saving “just 1 life” wasn’t worth it?

Whodathunkit

/ hsoi

(h/t Brian)

So what you’re saying is… criminals use criminal means to get their guns. They don’t go through channels that fill out 4473 forms, that get background checks. Really? You don’t say.

Furthermore, you’re saying that criminals are deterred by someone with a gun, because they don’t want to get shot. That concealed carry does deter them because criminals don’t know who has and who hasn’t a gun (so this means CC even improves the lives of anti-gun folks, security through obscurity).

That if a home is known to have armed residents, they’ll pick the home that is known to have unarmed residents.

Whodathunkit!

Now I’ll grant. This segment was produced by Fox News. You can see some bias crapola, like needing to point out “illegal immigrants” in the lead-in. Interesting choice of prisons too. And I’m sure of all the inmates they interviewed, they cherry picked the ones with the best sound-bites that served their purpose.

But for those that wish to dismiss this video segment, my challenge is to find refutation of what was presented. Go into a prison, talk with inmates and see how many are willing and prefer to victimize gun owners. I’m sure you too can cherry pick and find a gem here and there, but the fact remains that, on the whole, criminals are not stopped by laws, that adding more laws will not stop criminals from performing criminals acts, and that sometimes the only language a predator is willing and able to understand is seeing the teeth of a sheepdog.

Hypocrite

/ hsoi / 7 Comments

And these are our kids. This is what they’re thinking about.

And so what we should be thinking about is our responsibility to care for them and shield them from harm and give them the tools they need to grow up and do everything that they’re capable of doing, not just to pursue their own dreams but to help build this country. This is our first task as a society, keeping our children safe.

This is how we will be judged. And their voices should compel us to change.

– President Barack Obama

So…. how about the 3000+ children killed by abortions (census.gov) each day in the US? According to that census.gov data, that’s 1.2 million abortions per year. Compare that to the 543 people that have been killed in mass shootings over the past 20 years. So about 27 people killed in mass shootings per year versus 1.2 million abortions per year. This isn’t minimizing, it’s perspective on the killing of innocent lives (children or otherwise) and what is truly a culprit.

Where is your outrage?

Where is your responsibility to care for them, to shield them from harm, to give them not just the tools to grow up but even the chance to be born to they can pursue dreams to help build this country.

Why is this not your first task?

And yes… this IS how you will be judged.

If you want to talk about how “if it saves just one life then it’s worth it”, then I reckon banning abortion ought to be pretty damn worth it, eh?

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. — and his guns

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

Some people keep asking “why would anyone need one of those?”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. needed “one of those”. From the HuffPo:

Most people think King would be the last person to own a gun. Yet in the mid-1950s, as the civil rights movement heated up, King kept firearms for self-protection. In fact, he even applied for a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

A recipient of constant death threats, King had armed supporters take turns guarding his home and family. He had good reason to fear that the Klan in Alabama was targeting him for assassination.

Granted King and his supporters didn’t use AR-15’s; they used the current technology of the time, as the AR-15 hadn’t been invented yet. But if it was today, they certainly would have because it’s the current technology of the time. Just like we use the Internet and iPhone’s, instead of black-and-white TV’s and hand-written letters.

In fact, you can see some of the racist roots of gun control because of Dr. King:

As I found researching my new book, Gunfight, in 1956, after King’s house was bombed, King applied for a concealed carry permit in Alabama. The local police had discretion to determine who was a suitable person to carry firearms. King, a clergyman whose life was threatened daily, surely met the requirements of the law, but he was rejected nevertheless. At the time, the police used any wiggle room in the law to discriminate against African Americans.

Lordy no! We can’t be letting them filthy niggers have guns! that might allow them to stand on equal footing with us! That might enable them to stand up to our tyranny! Hooray for gun control and its racist roots. *sigh*

Dr. King wasn’t the only civil rights activist that kept a gun:

T.R.M. Howard, the Mississippi doctor and mutual aid leader who founded the pioneering Regional Council of Negro Leadership, slept with a Thompson submachine gun at the foot of his bed. During the murder trial that followed the horrific lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till, Howard escorted Till’s grieving mother and various others to and from the courthouse in a heavily-armed caravan.

Similarly, John R. Salter, one of the organizers of the famous 1963 sit-ins against segregated lunch counters in Jackson, Mississippi, said he always “traveled armed” while working as a civil rights organizer in the South. “I’m alive today because of the Second Amendment and the natural right to keep and bear arms,” Salter said.

The original HuffPo article ends with:

Whether a broader acceptance of the King’s later pacifism would have made us safer than choosing guns, we will never know.

Nothing said Dr. King was aggressive about his use of guns. He used them to stay alive in the face of obvious danger to his life. Granted his life was cut short, but how much sooner could he have been taken from us? Might we never have heard his “I Have A Dream” speech? No, we will never know.

But this is why some people need guns. It may be that woman with a crazy ex, because a piece of paper called a restraining order will not keep him away from her. It may be the elderly couple that just cannot stand up to a strong young thug. It may be the black man in fear of his life because as far as we’ve come, we’ve still a long ways to go.

Most gun owners I know are not violent people (conversely it seems lots of anti-gun people are rather violent). They do not wish violence, they do not want violence. They are peaceful people and try to undertake actions and options of peace and avoidance. They would prefer to just go through their lives peacefully and being left alone, and leaving you alone to live your life. The difference is we accept ugly things may happen to us, and we wish to be prepared to contend with them if they do — just like Dr. King was.

Austin Gun Show Ban – next chapter

/ hsoi

Austin wanted to ban gun shows.

Much legal precedent, and the Texas AG came out and said “you can’t do that”.

Now it appears Travis County officials have accepted that:

AUSTIN (KXAN) – Travis County Commissioners on Tuesday voted to honor the existing contract with the organizer of the gun shows at the Travis County Expo.

The unanimous vote came after the five-member body met with its lawyers and heard from people with an interest in the topic.

Full story (h/t Tim)

As far as I can tell, it wasn’t a question of if they wanted to or not, but merely a question of if they had any legal ability to do so. And they do not.

“The first thing we ought to do is huddle with legal counsel in executive session for a follow up legal briefing,” Travis County Judge Sam Biscoe said before the vote. “We discussed it in part last Tuesday, and the preliminary determination was that we probably did not have the authority — which is why we didn’t take any action. ”

The angle I took with the Travis County Commissioners as well as the Austin City Council wasn’t that of guns — because it’s evident they have their minds made up on that topic. So, it was better to take the approach of what a politician cares about: money and re-election. If they tried this, they would have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in simple rental revenue, and they would have likely lost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars from the resulting lawsuits. Given “these tough economic times” and how it’s been tough for the City and County to manage a budget, all the other cuts they’ve had to make, all the tax increases they’ve done well… to invite revenue loss through severed contracts and lawsuits, that would simply be irresponsible.

Seems they realized this:

Opponents argue the county would lose $128,000 in rental-fee revenues from the pending contracts of the nine Saxet Gun Show events scheduled this year.

[Travis County Judge Sam] Biscoe said if they were to cancel those contracts, it’s more than likely the county would face legal battles for damages.

I doubt this issue has been put to rest, but it seems at least a dose of reality has been taken.

Updated:  I need to ammend this.

First, it seems the devil is in the details. They are going to honor the existing contract. The implication is future contracts will be “considered”, and you can bet they’ll reject them for whatever reason. And in some respects, that’s their prerogative.

Second, it seems the City of Austin is still going to figure out what they can do regarding city-owned properties. So yeah, the issue hasn’t been put to rest.

Bullshit

/ hsoi / 3 Comments

President Obama is starting to talk about his gun control measures:

The Biden task force has “presented me now with a list of sensible, common-sense steps that can be taken to make sure that the kinds of violence we saw in Newtown doesn’t happen again,” he told reporters. “I’ll present the details later in the week.”

He added, “My starting point is not to worry about the politics. My starting point is to focus on what makes sense, what works, what should we be doing to make sure that our children are safe and that we’re reducing the incidence of gun violence. I think we can do that in a sensible way that comports with the Second Amendment.”

I hate the phrase “common sense”. Any time anyone drags that phrase out, what they mean is “something that I like, that I agree with”. As humans, we are born knowing nothing. We must learn everything. Consequently, we all can not and will not know the same things. Nor will we have the same experiences in life that will color our perceptions. If “common sense” is defined as “equating to the knowledge and experience which most people already have, or which the person using the term believes that they do or should have”… well, the emphasis is on the latter part, because it’s what people believe you should have.

We’re back to the same old thing of “agrees with me”. That if you don’t know the same things I do, if you don’t hold the same view that I do, then you lack common sense and you are a moron, to be looked down upon and shunned.

How sad that we behave in such a manner. But one people trot out the “common sense” line, this is what the mean, and often it’s meant precisely to demean “the others”.

Not worry about politics? Ha! This is precisely about politics. If you wanted to do things that actually worked, then you would. But you won’t, and you aren’t. You need to show some proof and data that your proposals actually do lead towards reduction in violence — because all the ones the gun control groups tend to trot out endlessly have a demonstrable record of failure.

And a sensible way that comports with 2A? Well, hopefully you remember what 2A actually means — it’s about tyranny, not hunting.

But will Congress adopt proposals like renewing the assault weapons ban? “I don’t know,” Obama acknowledged. Lawmakers opposed to such steps must “examine their own conscience.” In some cases, Congress won’t act but he will, the president said.

Gee… way to make it seem like anyone that doesn’t agree with your proposals must be some sort of unfeeling, heartless bastards.

He added that “responsible gun owners—people who have a gun for protection, for hunting, for sportsmanship—they don’t have anything to worry about.”

Bullshit. First, this shows you don’t know what 2A is really about. Second, there are those of us that use AR’s for protection, for hunting, and for sportsmanship. So yeah… we’ve got a LOT to worry about.

True, we haven’t seen precisely what the proposals are. But the track record so far, the words, the actions, the efforts of folks so far, it reeks. Sure, I do think it’s be wonderful to be pleasantly surprised if they actually proposed measure towards reduction of crime. I’d love it! But I doubt that would happen.

I mean, for a start… if you want to stop the senseless killing of innocent children… why not start with banning abortion?

Some of us already knew this…

/ hsoi

Researchers who have evaluated gun control strategies say buybacks – despite their popularity – are among the least effective ways to reduce gun violence. They say targeted police patrols, intervention efforts with known criminals and, to a lesser extent, tougher gun laws all work better than buybacks.

Full story, which I’ll deconstruct a bit.

It’s good that this article is in the USA Today. Not only because their parent company is anti-gun, but USA Today is a fairly mainstream and popular paper. So it’s good to see some facts and realities being printed, even if they might not be popular.

So why are buybacks ineffective?

The biggest weakness of buybacks, which offer cash or gift cards for guns, is that the firearms they usually collect are insignificant when measured against the arsenal now in the hands of American citizens.

[…]

The relatively small number of guns recovered isn’t the only problem, Scott said. Buyback programs tend to attract people who are least likely to commit crimes and to retrieve guns that are least likely to be used in crimes.

[…]

That means buyback campaigns more often end up with hunting rifles or old revolvers from someone’s attic than with automatic weapons from the trunk of a criminal’s car.

[…]

A buyback in Tucson, Ariz., last week collected about 200 firearms, many of them old or inoperable, in exchange for about $10,000 worth of grocery gift cards. A few hundred feet away, gun dealers set up tables and offered cash for any guns in good enough condition to resell.

“Every gun that came in was an old gun, no assault weapons,” Tom Ditsch, who watched the event, told The Associated Press. “They didn’t even take any weapons off the streets.”

That’s the thing. Criminals don’t participate in buybacks. Those who do participate are generally not involved in crime. The guns turned in tend to be junk (tho sometimes a rare gem comes along), and really have little effect upon things. I know amongst some gun-owners, they are happy to use these buyback programs as a way to clear the crap out of their attic and get more money for a broken gun than the junk is worth. So the program fails to achieve the aim.

Alas, despite the up-front admission of facts, the article goes on grasping for justifications of the practice.

“If we can save one life, if we can stop one act of violence, if we can get a gun out of one person’s hands, we have made progress in the fight to end violence in our communities,” said Ennis Tait, pastor of Church of the Living God in Avondale.

I expected someone would trot out the “if we can save one life” line. Given the number of lives saved because of the defensive use of firearms every day — certainly at least one life saved — then I guess that means having guns, concealed carry, and other such actions are worth it then, eh?  I mean, that’s the logic, so if it applies in that realm, it applies in this realm too.

Here’s some more facts from the article:

But some say that energy could be better put to use in other ways. Alex Tabarrok, research director of the nonpartisan Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif., said investing in buyback programs makes little sense when study after study shows they don’t work.

A few researchers believe buybacks may even do some harm: A 1999 article in the Law and Order journal found that some people sold guns to police during buybacks and then used the money to buy new guns.

Tabarrok said buybacks consume thousands of dollars, most of it donated, that would be better spent on police overtime to put more officers on the street, or on other law enforcement efforts that are more likely to have an impact.

First, we have unintended consequences. But moreover, what we have is people saying that all this money and effort would be better spent doing things that are demonstrated to work to reduce violent crime. Gee… how novel.

Look, I don’t know any gun owner that doesn’t want to reduce or eliminate violent crime. I mean, the fact some of us carry guns is because we accept the world contains violence and we’d prefer to not be a victim. We wish there wasn’t violent crime, we just accept that there is. Our approach tends to be looking at approaches that work towards the desired end. If the goal is to reduce violent crime, then let’s work on things that reduce violent crime. Just like this article stated: targeted police patrols, intervention efforts, those work. As well:

The most successful efforts involve old-fashioned police work, in which officers, probation departments and other law enforcement agencies work together to identify and target the biggest threats.

So it’s nice to see such a mainstream article presenting facts as they are. Gun buybacks make for sexy photo ops, but they just don’t do anything to reduce violent crime. When we have tools that we know work, we should focus our finite time, energy, and resources on them, instead of failed policies and processes.

Lead by example

/ hsoi

“These anti-gun politicians were not elected to positions of royalty,” [Alan Gottlieb, executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation] said. “They are citizens, with no more rights than any other citizen. They were elected to serve the public, not treat the public like serfs. If they want us to put our safety at risk, they should drop the pretense and give up their guns and guards before daring to suggest that anyone else do the same.”

 Full story.

But Alan, the story of the 15-year old boy that defended himself and his 12-year old sister with an AR-15? That actually happened back in 2010. Doesn’t negate the point, just keeping dates straight.

What should we be doing right about now?

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

With all the talk of gun banning, collapse of our Constitutionally guarded rights, potentials for civil unrest… well….

Take a cue from The Suburban Dad Survivalist on how we should be behaving:

  1. Respect the Constitution.
  2. Pray for our leaders, even if you don’t agree with them.  Pray for God to heal our collective souls.  Pray for wisdom for yourself.
  3. Educate yourself and others.
  4. Remember you get more flies with honey than you do vinegar.
  5. Be vigilant about what’s going on in the news and in politics.  Stay on top of current events.
  6. Reach out to those who disagree with you.  Build relationships with them.  Let them see you are not a bad person or a nut job.
  7. Value truth.  Don’t hide from facts.
  8. Prepare for the possibility of more difficult times ahead, for you and your family.
  9. Support candidates who espouse your values.  This means supporting their campaigns financially.  It also means reaching out to them to let them know what’s on your mind.
  10. Be a nice person.  Don’t be a jerk, even if someone else is being a jerk to you.  Set a good example.

Emphasis on that last one: be nice.

America’s problem isn’t guns – it’s gangs

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Chicago’s murder numbers have hit that magic 500. Baltimore’s murder toll has passed 200. In Philly, it’s up to 324, the highest since 2007. In Detroit, it’s approaching 400, another record. In New Orleans, it’s almost at 200. New York City is down to 414 from 508. In Los Angeles, it’s over 500. In St. Louis it’s 113 and 130 in Oakland. It’s 121 in Memphis and 76 in Birmingham.

Washington, D.C., home of the boys and girls who can solve it all, is nearing its own big 100.

Those 12 cities alone account for nearly 3,200 dead and nearly a quarter of all murders in the United States. And we haven’t even visited sunny Atlanta or chilly Cleveland.

Read the full story here. (h/t Tom Givens)

Really, go read the story. While the Obama-bashing and editorializing detract some from the article, the facts and data presented in the article are undeniable, as is the conclusion.

Furthermore, it demonstrates that any sort of “gun control” legislation will be ineffective because most of the people perpetuating gun violence are criminals to begin with and won’t obey your laws.

So again, mind your data. Think about these deeper root causes of violence (like in Austin). Work to address those deeper issues, those actual root causes.