RKBA

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.

Mind your data

/ hsoi / 1 Comment

This video has been floating around for a little while, and I finally got to watch it:

So if want to go back to the City of Austin wanting to ban gun shows thinking it will reduce violent crime, well, like I said, you have to look deeper.

I’ve looked at crime data before, like the City of Austin’s crime data.

A look at the 2009 FBI crime data and how it’s going down, but 6% of the murders used no weapon at all.

In a backlog clearing, I pointed to the 2011 semi-annual FBI crime stats, showing violent crime in the US is way down. What’s interesting about this is the speculation as to why crime is down. It shows it’s a VERY complex issue, and why it’s difficult to compare countries when talking “gun policy” because the social structure, cultural norms, and so many other things are different from country to country. With so many factors in the equation, comparing countries is like comparing apples to horses.

Folks, take a cue from the maker of the above video. Stop getting your information from obviously biased sources. Yes, that even means from the NRA, because they too have a strong agenda. Look at the raw data itself. Or do like Howard Nemerov did and take your data “from the other side” to show how their own data doesn’t even hold up and in fact supports their opponent.

Alas, what makes this a difficult discussion to have is one side is based upon emotions and irrational thinking. It’s hard to have a discussion in such a context. Policy based upon emotion only leads to greater problems. We need to think clearly, understand facts and data, and make future plans and policies based upon rational thought, not emotional agenda.

And the shoe drops

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

Yeah… kinda expected Our Benevolent Overlords in Washington would entertain this route:

Vice President Joe Biden revealed that President Barack Obama might use an executive order to deal with guns.

“The president is going to act,” said Biden, giving some comments to the press before a meeting with victims of gun violence. “There are executives orders, there’s executive action that can be taken. We haven’t decided what that is yet. But we’re compiling it all with the help of the attorney general and the rest of the cabinet members as well as legislative action that we believe is required.”

Yup. Screw checks and balances. Screw the will of the people. They know what’s best for us. Of course, the reason for taking this route is there would be less opposition, because they know what they want to do is unpopular and will receive one hell of a fight.

And no, I don’t like Executive Orders no matter who is doing them for whatever “good” reason they do them.

Of course, the “if it saves just 1 life” line was trotted out:

Biden talked also about taking responsible action. “As the president said, if you’re actions result in only saving one life, they’re worth taking. But I’m convinced we can affect the well-being of millions of Americans and take thousands of people out of harm’s way if we act responsibly.”

Well Vice-President Biden, I present you with this:

The 15-year-old boy and his 12-year-old sister had been home alone in the Mount Royal Village subdivision when around 2:30 p.m. a pair of burglars tried the front and back doors, then broke a back window.

The teenager grabbed his father’s assault rifle and knew what to do with it.

Looks like that teenager’s use of an AR-15 saved two lives… and not just any two lives, but 2 children. So by your line of reasoning, Mr. President and Mr. Vice-President, since it saved two lives, then keeping our AR’s must be doubly worth it.

3 ounces isn’t very much, is it?

/ hsoi / 2 Comments

TSA limits us to 3 ounces of liquid in our carry-on luggage.

I think we’ve all agreed this isn’t much, and doesn’t really provide us with enough to get the job done. Doesn’t matter what the liquid is, be it water for drinking or shampoo for your hair — it’s not enough to get the job done.

Well to be fair, maybe it gets you through; maybe some people get by alright. I know most men have short hair and 3 ounces of shampoo is perhaps enough for them. I’ve got long hair and 3 ounces doesn’t cut it; maybe one shampoo, but if I need to wash my hair a second time? Forget it.

These reduced capacity containers just don’t work for all situations. Yes perhaps it works for the statistical average, but statistics are of little comfort when you’re the anomaly (and no, I’m not going to cut my hair).

We supposedly free citizens are restricted in our liquid carrying capacity for our own safety. We acknowledge it may not get the job done, it may leave us in a lurch… but at least it’s just shampoo, nothing that’s difficult to obtain no matter where you go, and your life generally doesn’t depend upon it.

I think about other contexts where capacity is limited, and the same principles apply. That restricting the amount of ammunition law-abiding supposedly free citizens can carry or possess may not be enough to get the job done. Oh sure, statistical averages say you’ll be attacked by a single person, but that doesn’t mean your enjoyment of your Starbucks won’t be interrupted by a violent mob of 25 pipe-wielding people.

Think about applying this sort of capacity restriction across the board in your life. If all liquids could only come in 3 ounce containers. Your milk, your coffee, your soda (wait… this might give Bloomberg some more ideas), your housecleaning supplies, gasoline… we wouldn’t stand for it because we know it’s a silly restriction and causes more problems than it solves. Yes… causes more problems than it solves.

Um… they didn’t work, but I know something that does.

/ hsoi

A man goes to the Family Research Council’s offices in Washington DC and starts shooting.

DC Mayor Vincent Gray doesn’t get it.

…a Herndon man who purchased a firearm on Aug. 9 and brought it “into our city,” Mr. Gray said Thursday on NewsChannel 8.

“He would not have been able to do that in the District of Columbia,” Mr. Gray said,

Not have been able to do what in “your” city? Because it looks like he certainly did. Now I grant, after reading Emily Miller’s trials in obtaining a handgun in Washington DC it’s a tough thing to do, but not impossible. Regardless, this man didn’t seem to care about any laws.

We already have laws on the books that prohibit murder.

We already have laws on the books prohibiting assault.

We already have lots of laws in the books that make it difficult for people to obtain guns and other weapons. Heck, we have laws that can make it difficult to obtain just about anything and everything. I mean, drugs like meth, cocaine, heroin… they’re all banned, but that hasn’t seemed to stop much.

“We don’t need to make guns more available to people,” Mr. Gray said. “There are irresponsible people, there are people who have mental health problems, and the easier access they have to guns the more likely we are to predispose innocent victims, like yesterday, to the use of the guns.”

Actually we do need to make guns, training, and a better mindset available to more people. Why? Because the reason this particular situation didn’t get bad was because someone was willing to fight back. Granted, the extreme cases of someone really hell-bent on causing harm are going to do what they’re going to do. But the vast majority of criminals – petty or large-scale – only do what they do due to lack of opposition. Consider many that do the mass shooting spree stuff… once the cops show up, they commit suicide. They don’t want opposition, they want easy targets. Most criminals wanting to mug someone will hit up the person with their nose stuck in their iPhone as they walk down the street, not the guy with his head up walking like the baddest lion on the plains. Why do most burglaries happen on weekdays between 10AM and 3PM? Because most folks aren’t home thus the burglar won’t face opposition. Why does the rapist attack the woman walking alone a night and not the group of women walking around together? They just want a quick score, not a righteous fight. Consider where many crimes happen — in gun free zones, in places where it’s promoted to curl up and die. It’s rare to see crimes in MMA gyms, police stations, NRA conventions. Why might that be the case?

I don’t disagree with Mayor Gray, that irresponsible people, people with major problems, should be better managed and helped with their problems. But we must remember, someone bent on destruction will do whatever — law will not and do not stop them. I recently read a story where a mass killing occurred via arson, with the arsonist using 2 gallon milk jugs filled with gasoline, and matches. Are we going to ban the corner grocery store? Are we going to require background checks and waiting periods and monthly rationing to fill up our SUV’s? I mean, if grandma’s got a cold, we’ve got laws to make it difficult for her to get a decongestant. We can’t travel in this country any more without being considered a possible terrorist. Why are we looking at addressing symptoms instead of addressing root causes? I grant because it’s easier to make yourself feel like you’re doing something if you can pass a law and ban some talisman of evil… but it doesn’t solve the problem, and typically only makes matters worse.

Mayor Gray, you have lots of laws. Washington DC still makes it immensely difficult for law-abiding people to live their lives. Your laws didn’t stop this from happening. No, what stopped this was a person willing to fight back and stop the madness before it became a tragedy.

If you want to do something to help, Mr. Gray, why don’t you enable good people to fight?

Let’s be consistent

/ hsoi

From Unc I read how a man was fired from his job for “liking” a Facebook post.

Daniel Ray Carter Jr. logged on to Facebook and did what millions do each day: He “liked” a page by clicking the site’s thumbs up icon. The problem was that the page was for a candidate who was challenging his boss, the sheriff of Hampton, Va.

That simple mouse click, Carter says, caused the sheriff to fire him from his job as a deputy and put him at the center of an emerging First Amendment debate over the ubiquitous digital seal of approval: Is liking something on Facebook protected free speech?

I think most people would agree that yes it is free speech, it should be protected. You are expressing your opinion. To “click Like” is merely a shortcut/shorthand for saying “I like this” or “I agree with this” or some other statement of agreement and affirmation. It’s just a more efficient (lazy?) way to do it. Are we saying that if someone typed a comment under the posting “I like this” that that wouldn’t be protected? or if I wrote it on a piece of paper, or spoke it aloud in a public venue for others to hear? So why wouldn’t clicking “like” be offered the same protection under 1A?

But apparently not:

The interest was sparked by a lower court’s ruling that “liking” a page does not warrant protection because it does not involve “actual statements.” If the ruling is upheld, the ACLU and others worry, a host of Web-based, mouse-click actions, such as re-tweeting (hitting a button to post someone else’s tweet on your Twitter account), won’t be protected as free speech.

Methinks someone in the lower court doesn’t quite understand technology advancements.

“We think it’s important as new technologies emerge . . . that the First Amendment is interpreted to protect those new ways of communicating,” said Rebecca K. Glenberg, legal director of the ACLU of Virginia. “Pressing a ‘like’ button is analogous to other forms of speech, such as putting a button on your shirt with a candidate’s name on it.”

So isn’t that interesting? Our Founding Fathers never could have imagined this thing called the Internet. They could never have imagined Facebook or Twitter or iPhone’s. They could never have imagined the act of pressing with your finger could act as a proxy for expressing your liking something. But just like they understood technology advancements like clay tablets, papyrus paper, quill pens, moveable type, printing presses, pony express, and so on… they probably understood that technology would continue to advance. I’m sure they wanted speech to be protected regardless of the technology used to convey it. Certainly that’s what it seems the WaPo, the ACLU, and others put forth. I know many people will be outraged if these advances in technology would not be upheld as protected under that 200-year old document written by men that (some day) had no clue.

So why isn’t this same standard held to the Second Amendment?