No doubt, on this Labor Day, you all are sitting at home contemplating and discussing with your children the Bolshevik Revolution, the writings of Karl Marx and Sol Alinski, studying the Cuban Revolution, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the wisdom of Che Guevara, and reinforcing your solidarity with the proletariat, wishing for a Labor uprising in the U.S.A. that would crush the tyranny of capitalism and lead to one big, world-wide labor union.
Category Archives: Crap For Brains
Quote of the day–ubu52
Food and water are basic human rights. I can’t believe anyone would argue that they aren’t.
ubu52
August 24, 2010
Comment to Crap for brains
[This came up in the context of a “right” to health care. She supported her claim with a link to the UN declaration of “Human Rights” which includes this statement:
- Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and
well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and
medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the
event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of
livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. - Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All
children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social
protection.
Hence it is not about someone depriving someone else of food, water, or air. This is about some government (people with guns) taking goods and services from some set of people and giving it to others.
And she “can’t believe anyone would argue” against that viewpoint? An “interesting” and totally naive perspective. I would like to remind anyone that believes such a thing that 100+ million people died in the last century because of attempts to create just that type of utopia. If she and others would like to volunteer themselves for the next experiment doomed to failure I only request they take it to some place where my family and friends don’t have to contend with defending our lives and property and disposing of the rotting flesh.
–Joe]
That explains it
I ran across this post today and had to read the bold (added by me) section below twice to make sure I read it correctly:
Private, unlicensed gun sales are currently exempt from federal background
checks and sales retention requirements, such as purchases at gun shows, some of
which are (conveniently?) attributed to robberies of homes, cars or dealer
stores.Surprisingly, only seven states and the District of Columbia require gun
owners to report their guns lost or stolen – another reason for the need of
national standards.By some counts, of an estimated 300M guns in the U.S., there are close to 4
million assault weapons. The number of undocumented gun owners and their
unregistered guns in this country may surpass the numbers of undocumented
immigrant workers. All of the above infringe upon the rights of law-abiding
Americans.
What???
What sort of perverted definition of “right” does this guy have? And to further confound things this is on the website of a lawyer who specializes, among other things, in criminal law. A lawyer who apparently has read the Bill of Rights sufficiently close to know you have right to an attorney and to not incriminate yourself. But yet, yesterday, still wasn’t aware that the Second Amendment guarantees a specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.
He compares “undocumented gun owners” to “undocumented immigrant workers”. Where is the “clue bat”? “Undocumented workers” entered the country illegally and are working here illegally. Gun ownership with or without “documentation”, in of itself, is a guaranteed right and is not illegal.
I wondered, “What could possibly get this guy so confused?” I then noticed his address. It is Oxnard California. They drink a lot of Kool-Aid down there.
Don’t take pictures of your criminal activities
I just wonder if they will use the video as evidence at their trial, thereby putting it into the public domain:
Authorities identified the suspects in a break-in at a rural home at Elma
after viewing a sex video filmed by a pair and recognizing them.According to the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office:
A neighbor who had come to collect mail while the homeowner was away walked
in on the pair as they were having sex on the floor. The naked couple fled,
leaving behind a stolen camera .A 39-year-old woman was arrested in Montesano on investigation of burglary.
An arrest warrant was issued for a 31-year old Elma man.
Crap for brains
Someone has their tin-foil hat on too tight and is asking if the NRA funds the Brady Campaign.
The answer is no.
I would like to point out that the NRA people have lots of things to do besides get involved in politics. They have instructors to train, classes to create and teach, they have events to put on, they have ranges to help design and build. If gun control activists and politicians were to go extinct the NRA would have lots of things to do that probably would be a lot more fun that wading through the mud with the politicians.
On the other hand–if the Brady Campaign were to get a universal ban on firearms in this country they would have to move on to knives and sharp sticks. So if they had millions of members and were in fear of their money drying up they would be more likely to fund the NRA (or some other pro-freedom group) as their boogieman.
While I’m pointing out people with crap for brains–Here are a couple more examples:
The more important matter here, however, is the fact that these people have the guns. The mistake that we on the Left make is our advocacy for gun control. Make no mistake about it, when the working class rises up to take their rightful place as the ruling class, there will be people on the Right with guns, and they will not hesitate to shoot. Wisdom would therefore dictate that the Left not be left with only rakes and hoes to defend themselves.
Most of the people I know with guns or are activists for gun owner rights just want to be left alone. They want the government to back off to it’s constitutionally authorized limits. The constitution does not create or grant that there should be a “ruling class”. There are public servants and not much more.
Congressmen, Senators, HMO’s and health insurance companies have profited for far too long. They are the causation of the current health care crisis. Get rid of the health insurance companies and the millions of illegal aliens and problam fixed. Free health care for all US citizens. Its a moral right. Not to be profited by anyone. Its genocide by the health insurance companies. They need to pay for their racketeering scheme for turning ours healths into national profits.
“A moral right”? If they had said “A Human Right” or a “Natural Right”I would have known what they were talking about and been able to tell them they didn’t know what they are talking about. But a moral right is meaningless to me so I guess have to address them at that level.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. You no more deserve free health care than you do free food. And that’s not just because I derive profits from a farm and a wife who works in the health care field. Do you demand the grocery stores to give you food for free? Isn’t food a more basic need than health care? Until you demand free food you are nothing more than a hypocrite. And the instant you demand free food you expose yourself as a communist. If you believe communism is the appropriate political philosophy then go join or create a commune. There is nothing in the laws of this country that will stop you and your friends from doing the same test (and achieving the same result) as millions of other people have done over the last 150 years. And if you are smart enough you will avoid killing yourself and a few tens of millions of people in the process.
Layers of Oversight
Heard on a local AM radio newscast this morning;
A Deary (Idaho) man charged with aggravated assault and unlawful discharge of a firearm into an inhabited dwelling.
The firearm was described as;
“…a three oh eight caliber shotgun.”
At first I thought maybe it was a combination gun and they just did a clumsy job of describing it, but no. They just got it wrong. I wonder how many people had to approve the copy before it aired, and how many other mistakes they’re making regularly that I wouldn’t notice so easily.
It’s like the talk show host I’d never heard of, but ran into briefly the other night. He sounded pretty good, like he knew what he was saying about relationships and politics, until he started talking about getting electricity from any point in space, from gravity. HE had the answer, which the oil companies had kept secret for generations! At that point you have to not only question everything he says, but seriously doubt it. It might not even be fair to cast doubt on all his human behavioral analysis based on his lack of understanding of physics. One can be well versed in one subject and ignorant of another, but it’s very hard to take someone seriously again after hearing such an ignorant bit. We all make mistakes, but wow. In the case of a news service, with reporters, editors and anchors, it’s a different story. Those proverbial Layers Of Oversight are supposed to catch these things.
We’re All Gonna Die! – Details at Eleven
This post from Uncle reminded me of John Stossel’s campaign to ban dihydrogen monoxide. It’s about what I call ignoracracy– control of the people through ignorance, or the “Ignorati”– those who use that tactic. Stossel got plenty of signatures on his petition. He told people things like; dihydrogen monoxide, used heavily in industry, corrodes metal, and it kills thousands of people each year including children. Congress is doing nothing about it! All totally true of course.
Yellow journalism could be seen as a form of ignoracracy, except that we can turn it off or look away at will.
Education would be the obvious antidote, except that education is owned by the Ignorati.
I think I see the problem here
Sometimes when you are trying to teach someone something and they just aren’t getting it your student will say something and all of a sudden you realize what the problem is. Typically it is some fundamental assumption either the student and/or the teacher had made but had not articulated.
I remember one time I was trying to explain the difference between current and voltage to someone. They weren’t getting it. I finally made the analogy to water in a hose. With a very small hose, say the diameter of pin, it really doesn’t matter if you have 1000 pounds per square inch of pressure (voltage). The rate of flow (current) coming out of the hose is going to be slower than a very large hose, say the diameter of your leg, with a pressure of one pound per square inch. If you want to quickly fill a bucket with water which do you want? High pressure or high current? His answer was, “I don’t know.”
It was like time froze for me. I wouldn’t be surprised if I went pale, my jaw dropped, and I started drooling. I realized what the problem was. He was just too stupid to understand. My assumption was that since he was able to walk upright and speak in complete sentences that he was capable of understanding simple everyday concepts involving the physical world. I was wrong. That was 30+ years ago. He now teaches art at a high school.
I had another epiphany recently. In the comments to one of my posts moderately anti-gun commenter ubu52 said:
Every death is a loss to society, every single one of them. There is no such thing as a “throwaway person.”
Oh! I understand now.
This is the type of thing taught in kindergarten and early grade-school. It’s a simple concept that works for most interactions at that level. It’s sort of like a child who learns that if they drop a glass on a hard floor it will break. That simplistic view of gravity will serve them well for years. Later on Newton’s three laws will be important if they want to understand why things are different when riding in a vehicle undergoing acceleration or orbiting a celestial body. Still later Einstein’s thoughts on gravity, space, and time may be of importance.
I am not, yet, of the opinion that ubu52 is incapable of understanding the applicable concepts. I suspect it is a systemic lack of exposure to the evidence and concepts involved. There appears to have been school of thought that “no one is better than anyone else” which has taken in a large portion of our culture and is largely unchallenged. I suspect it is the logical extension of the Marxist view of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” which progressed to “everyone deserves just as much as everyone else” and then to the final warped conclusion that “no one is better than anyone else”. But that is just a guess. There are similar extraordinary errors in thinking (or more likely application) that go back much further such as, “Judge not, least ye be judged yourself.”
No wonder the concept of “use of deadly force in the defense of innocent life” is a non-starter for her. We are talking Newtonian physics to someone that hadn’t gotten past the stage of looking out for falling apples when they walk under a tree.
Many other anti-gun people have similar naïve or immature belief systems. Still others arrogantly believe they are intellectually superior to the red-necked, knuckle-dragging, Neanderthals who wish to exercise their specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms. They believe the Second Amendment is obsolete and no longer, if it was ever, useful in today’s society. If not evil, then typically their thought process is incomplete and proceed something like this, “Gun are used to commit crimes. Even if it is a right restrictions should be put in place and crime will be reduced.” They frequently are aghast that people disagree with such a simple and obviously correct conclusion. They conclude that anyone that does not agree with them must be their intellectual inferiors. It is this sort of thinking that results in things like this, this, this, and this. It is the “reasoning” of bigots.
The CliffsNotes version of schooling necessary for ubu52 (and others like her) to get up to speed with the rest of us is the following:
- The deaths of Ted Bundy, Richard Kuklinski, David Berkowitz, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Albert Fish, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Joseph Stalin, and millions of other lesser known threats to society were not a loss to society. Their deaths were a net benefit to society.
- Philosophers, lawmakers, and religious leaders from all over the world and nearly all cultures are almost unanimously in agreement that the use of deadly force to protect innocent life is at least acceptable if not an obligation.
- While there is an unacceptably large percentage of the human population that are a threat to society they are vastly outnumbered people who respect the rights of others to live their lives free of threats to life, limb, and property.
- In order to defend against the villains of society the aged, infirm, outnumbered, and smaller need tools to put them on equal terms with the monsters who would prey upon them.
- The firearm is the best tool ever invented for equalizing those who would be prey with the predators in our society.
- Accidents and misuse of any type of tool can result in a tragedy.
- Training and the proper design of tools reduce the risk of accidents.
- Punishment is the appropriate response to those who misuse tools.
- Firearms design and training is more mature than for almost any other tool in common human inventory.
- The number of tools more frequently used for criminal purposes than benign or beneficial uses is vanishingly small and firearms are not in that set. It does not matter if the tool was a screwdriver used to pry open a cash box, a box cutter used to hijack a plane, or a firearm used to rob a store. Any proposed restriction on a tool must take into account their benefits as well as their misuse.
- Restrictions on the use of tools work no better than the restrictions on the use of recreational drugs or sex.
- The rules for the use of deadly force are well established in U.S. law and are among the first things taught in self-defense classes involving firearms.
- The nearly universal rules are that if the attacker has means, intent, and opportunity to cause death or permanent injury to innocent human life then the use of deadly force can be justified.
- All restrictions on firearms yet conceived reduce the number and/or ability of those who are likely to be prey to protect themselves more than it reduces the number and/or ability of predators. Even the simplest (and in implementation it is far from simple), most innocuous restriction of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) deters as much or more potential prey from defending themselves than it prevents predators from hunting their victims.
As Sean Flynn once said (paraphrasing), “I’ve spent years studying the issue, my opponents only minutes”.
Quote of the day–Ralph Fascitelli
It matters not that some of the victims may have been affiliated with gangs. These were two groups that were with family and friends out celebrating a sunny Seattle weekend.
…
Let’s make our parks gun-free zones where families can gather with
peace of mind without the worry of sudden death to innocent loved ones (and
let’s have our park rangers make spot checks to ensure that no one does indeed
have a gun in their possession).
Ralph Fascitelli
President of the board for Washington Ceasefire.
Sammamish park shooting underlines need for gun control
[It doesn’t matter that the people doing the shooting were affiliated with gangs? And if they were engaged in illegal activities, such as assault and battery they aren’t “victims”.
Make our parks gun-free zones? Yeah. Right.
“Gun-free zones” like Virginia Tech, Columbine, Fort Hood, Chicago, and Washington D.C.?
And since we are violating the Washington State Constitution and the Second Amendment we might as well violate the Fourth Amendment while we are at it. Or how about this–since they don’t have a problem violating specific enumerated rights how about we make it illegal for their anti-rights organization to exist? Or for illegal for people to advocate the violation of specific enumerated rights?–Joe]
Obfuscation and Delusion as a Way of Life
Someone gave us some “tofu milk” and some “vegan rice milk” they didn’t want. It comes as a powder. If we run out of real milk, I’ve been mixing up a batch of one or the other for my morning coffee. It’s not too bad. If you’re desperate.
Reading the ingredients on the rice milk, I find one of them is “evaporated cane juice”. Seriously; who are we kidding, hippies? “Cane juice”? I’m pretty sure it’s not bamboo we’re talking about. It must be sugar cane. That’s right; we don’t like added sugar, but we like the taste, so we’ll use sugar and call it something else. It’s not sugar. It’s “evaporated effing cane juice”. How dare you say otherwise. What are you, a racist teabagger?
I’ve seen “evaporated cane juice” listed on some hippie kids’ cereal boxes, along with warnings about how corporations hurt animals and kids!
Call it “raw cane sugar” if you want to be accurate. But no– you don’t want to be accurate. You want to be deluded. You want to fool yourself and hope no one else notices. It feels better. And instead of “statist” or “totalitarian” you call yourself “progressive”. That makes it all better, doesn’t it? Just use the language differently. Now it all sounds perfectly wonderful, and anyone who calls you on it is a bad person.
Don’t anyone come on here and say I’m being unfair by conflating the use of “evaporated cane juice” with statism. Note the aforementioned cereal box– it does that all by itself. The same people who can’t be honest about adding sugar are warning us against corporations (while profiting in selling sugar-laced cereal to kids). It’s all part of the same culture, people.
Who Knew…
…that there would be warm water on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, that there would be sunlight on the Gulf, or microbes in the water?
It seems the major catastrophe that was supposed to happen, that the anti capitalists desperately wanted to happen, isn’t happening. Damn it!
FYI; Diesel fuel, for example, needs to have preservatives added to it, or it will rot in the tank. Yes, it’s food for little bugs otherwise. I know that, ’cause I used to run a diesel car.
Think it through Dennis
Dennis Henigan tells us guns aren’t useful as a deterrence against violent crime:
Apart from the statistics, the deterrence theory poses an interesting conundrum. If criminals are deterred by the prospect that their victim may be armed, how can we account for attacks by armed criminals against other armed criminals? Why do armed drug dealers have anything to fear from other armed drug dealers? Why do armed gangs have anything to fear from other armed gangs? Pro-gun researcher Gary Kleck of Florida State University reports that street gang members are over eight times more likely to own handguns than other youths, and nineteen times more likely to be homicide victims. Drug dealers are almost four times more likely to own a handgun and six times more likely to be homicide victims. Why doesn’t their gun possession deter attacks on these criminals? Surely it can’t be true that bad guys fear only armed good guys, but not other armed bad guys.
Half-Truth Henigan, as is usual, only explores a subset of the situations. The missing part is where one side is armed and the other is disarmed. How much deterrence is there then?
It’s obvious Henigan is only a lawyer for the Brady Campaign instead of an engineer, a scientist, or a carpenter. If carpenters built houses like Henigan builds his theories of criminal behavior the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization*.
* I’m plagiarizing Wienberg’s Second Law.
Quote of the day–Thom Mannard
Finally, the Court’s ruling to extend the scope of the Second Amendment has
national implications. The gun lobby is using this decision to further its
real agenda, that they want anyone to have any gun, anywhere, at any time
regardless of the proven risk to police and the public. Their unstated motive
is to enhance the profits of the gun industry by encouraging individuals to
believe they need a multitude of guns and are seeking nothing less than the
complete dismantling of our nation’s gun laws for their own political and
financial gain. Lawmakers in state legislatures and in Congress must utilize
the Supreme Court’s decision to press for common sense gun laws for the safety
and security of the America people.
Thom Mannard
Executive Director of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence
June 28, 2010
Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence Issues Statement On Supreme Court Ruling Over Chicago’s Handgun Ban
[He is just repeating the same lies anti-gun people have been attempting to use for decades. Here is a quick scan of the obvious lies from just this one paragraph:
- I have had many “behind the scenes” conversations with multiple people placed high in the power structure of “the gun lobby”. I read nearly all their media releases. I have never heard anyone in power within “the gun lobby” even hint they want “anyone to have any gun, anywhere, at any time”. Mannard is either lying or is delusional.
- If there is “proven risk to police and the public” then Mannard (or anyone) should be able to answer Just One Question. Just One Question has been posted for nearly six years now. Still there have not been any answers which Mannard is likely to tout (I do have a nomination for an answer that I must investigate sometime soon–if I can just find the email they sent).
- The “gun lobby” that represents the gun industry and is concerned with their profits is the NSSF. They had an exceedingly small role in the Heller and McDonald decisions. The NRA (with, at best, minor roles) and SAF were the gun lobby organizations that won those decisions. The NRA and SAF are grassroots organizations that represent individuals, not the manufacturer and profits of “the gun industry”. Even five minutes of research would have clearly revealed these facts. That is, if Mannard had been concerned with facts.
- Mannard has motive for “the complete dismantling of our nation’s gun laws” exactly backward. If the NRA and SAF were to be totally successful, by Mannard’s criteria, then they would have destroyed their “industry”. And with it any further political and financial gain. In fact some gun rights activists accuse the NRA of not wanting to win because it would destroy their positions of power and money.
-Joe]
How’s that health care working out for you?
I heard two different stories on the “health care reform” yesterday. I had lunch with an old friend. He has his own small business and with the downturn in the economy he is slowing sinking. He is looking for a contract job writing software and may end up leaving the Seattle area for a few weeks to “go do some coding in Iowa”. The new health care regulations aren’t helping him any either. He pulled out his Group Health identification card and told me, “I was paying $1000/month for this until they passed the bill. Almost immediately it went to $1500/month.”
That evening I had dinner with some other friends. One of them told me about explaining to one of his employees just yesterday that he is now required to offer her health insurance. He told her, “I’m required to offer you health insurance. So I’m doing that now. But if you accept I’m going to have to cut your hours back to 20 per week. At that point I no longer have to pay your insurance. If you sign this other piece of paper saying you don’t want the coverage you can continue to work 40 hours per week.
She clarified, “So I could work 20 hours per week and not have health insurance or I could continue to work 40 hours per week and not have health insurance, right?” “That’s right”, he said. “Unless you can talk Ruth out of her raise. We just don’t have the budget for any additional expenses.”
As Sebastian rhetorically asks on a slightly different topic, “Who could have predicted this?”
And your point is?
The following is from Chicago so in some respects it’s understandable:
What is missing in the court’s decision and all the glee among its supporters is
recognition that this ruling accentuates and legitimizes and further establishes
our violent character as a nation. Its premise is that violence is best met with
and countered by violence, that the best way to fend off a violent attack is to
practice violence in turn, including lethal violence. It clearly supposes that
the way to reduce violence is to increase the capacity and means to inflict it.
Moreover, it authorizes the privatization of state-sanctioned violence; each can
now be given the requisite permission to own and carry—and in certain
circumstances, use—a firearm to injure or take the life of another.
Are there any facts from anywhere, anytime, on this planet that counter the claim “violence is best met with
and countered by violence, that the best way to fend off a violent attack is to
practice violence in turn, including lethal violence”?
As far as I can determine this has been an immutable law of nature for about a billion years. For this guy to assume, without any supporting data whatsoever, something different and to expect everyone else to just nod their heads in agreement is arrogance or ignorance on a scale that is seldom seen outside of government.
Quote of the day–Barbara Griffith-Wilson
It’s going to be bang, bang, shoot ‘em up on the streets of Flint. In the end, mothers will not be able to do a thing except bury their children.
Barbara Griffith-Wilson
July 12, 2010
Flint City Council postpones gun control ordinance change
[Ahhh yes… The blood in the streets argument. Another person, A.C. Dumas (appropriate name) has this to say, “It’s going to get bad in the city of Flint as you’ve never seen it before. We’re going to open a can of worms that’s never been opened before.”
I’m reminded of something on a t-shirt, “The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.”
They are fully aware the rest of their state allows open carry yet they apparently believe the facts from outside their city limits do not apply to the people that live inside their city limits. This is mind boggling stupid.–Joe]
Like that will help
Sounds like a good time and place for rival gangs to set up an ambush:
Sanders, senior pastor at the Koinonia House of Worship in Bellevue,
said he hopes the Omaha Police Department’s gun-amnesty program –
scheduled for Saturday at 30th and Spencer Streets in north Omaha –
will help gang members and others end violence.“One of the
things we’re working on is a gun ceasefire and a truce between the
gangs,” Sanders said. Gang members, he said, are “looking for a way
out.”People who drop off their guns and ammunition at the
dropoff point between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. will not be questioned, and no
names will be recorded. Omaha police will perform ballistics tests to
determine whether the firearms had been used in crimes, but will not
check for DNA or fingerprints.
If they want “a way out” then why not just leave the area or not associate with other gang members? I don’t see how giving up their arms fundamentally changes their situation unless the “way out” means being defenseless when they get whacked by their rivals.
There is more than a little bit of truth to the bumpersticker that proclaims, “Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who didn’t.”
Those Racist Lefties
She has obviously struck a nerve.
I’ll keep reminding people that the KKK were virtually all Democrats, until it is taught in public schools nationwide, and Bill Clinton with Obama get together for a national public service ad and apologize to the world for the KKK/Democrat association.
I wanted make a bigger point about the slinging of insults, often including some rather well contemplated sexual insults, when you have no argument, but I just don’t have the energy. Then there’s the even bigger point of that against which we are fighting. It doesn’t reason and it doesn’t have empathy or compassion. It doesn’t even want to be seen as reasonable, if spending the energy to appear reasonable isn’t necessary. It longs for a situation in which all pretense of reason and compassion become unnecessary. It’s hate with a life of its own, and it will flow from one person or group to another. As such we should understand that this isn’t personal. You can defeat this person or that group of people, and the monster lives on. Hell, am I starting to sound religious? You may call it that if it makes you feel better.
Gun cartoon of the day
The artist apparently doesn’t realize this has never been an issue at the level of the Supreme Court. Even the Cruikshank decision in 1875 and the Miller decision in 1939 supported the individual rights interpretation. And if they would have read the Heller decision they would have realized this was settled law two years ago rather than something new with the McDonald decision last week.
But, by definition, bigots have little need of facts to maintain their belief system.
[H/T to Reese who sent me an email with the link to this cartoon.]
Quote of the day–NRA-ILA
Most people who are familiar with the Violence Policy Center (VPC) know that the Court’s decision appears to doom the very thing for which the little anti-gun fringe group was formed–a total ban on handguns.
As it happens, this also appears to have sent Josh Sugarmann, Kristen Rand and their one or two fellow VPC employees into conniption fits. After the Court’s decision became known, at least the Brady Campaign pretended to address the decision’s substance, claiming it gave a green light to the states to impose every form of gun control short of a total ban on handguns. But VPC, used to living fat off the dole from the Joyce Foundation, hysterically claimed that “People will die because of this decision” and “areas of the country with the highest concentration of gun ownership also have the highest rates of gun death.”
Scary sound bites indeed. But VPC’s religiously-held belief that increasing the number of privately-owned guns necessarily causes firearm-related deaths to increase is proven false by the fact that, since 1991, as the number of firearms in the U.S. increased by about one-third, the firearm-related death rate decreased by more than one-third. The best estimate is that guns are used for protection 3-4 times more often than to commit a crime, and the disparity between defensive uses and criminal homicides with guns is much greater.
NRA-ILA
July 2, 2010
VPC’s Self-Induced Plunge Into Irrelevancy Continues With Knee-Jerk Reaction To McDonald Decision
[Conniption fits indeed! And maybe some sort of psychosis. In addition to the delusion that increased gun ownership means increased violent crime the people at the VPC have a hallucination that the NRA is a lobbyist for gun manufactures rather than a civil rights group for individuals.
Someone should remind them to take their meds on a more regular basis.–Joe]