Category Archives: Gun Rights

Leftist governments are theocracies

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I just started listening to Thomas Sowell’s The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy but already I have several ideas for blog posts from the material. Then this evening I read How the Academic Left Engages in Debate by John Lott. It could have been another case study done by Sowell. The academic left, aka “the self-anointed”, comes up with some idea for social policy and then when the results come in different than what was expected they make excuses, attack those that point out the policy is a failure, and in general show a complete disregard for factual data.

Here is a sample:

In a debate carried nationally on National Public Radio, Donohue claimed that Wilson not only was employed by the National Rifle Association, but had let his employment bias his academic findings:

The lone dissenter was someone who was not an econometrician, who admitted in his dissent that he wished he knew more econometrics, and who had previously testified as an expert witness on behalf of the execrable NRA.

When later called on to justify this claim after the debate, Mr. Donohue did not offer proof, but instead called on Wilson to prove that he had never gotten paid by the NRA. When asked for evidence, Donohue e-mailed me: “Do you have Wilson’s email address or not? I am going to assume you do and that you know he worked for the NRA since you could ask him via email to confirm or deny and cc me, and you are not doing so.” Even later in 2009, after Wilson had denied that he had ever worked for the NRA, Donohue refused to accept it: “On the issue of the NRA, somehow I suspect that the Ronald Reagan professor of public policy doesn’t think the NRA is a bad organization and therefore any affiliation would not be deemed problematic.” Even during the last couple of weeks, with repeated calls to publicly retract his claim, Donohue has yet to correct the record.

Their beliefs cannot be refuted because facts are irrelevant to them. The leftist ideology is faith based. They just worship government instead of god(s). I find this very depression. Theocracies of any flavor have a strong tendency toward bloody repression of dissent.

Quote of the day—Roy Denney

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And, if you anti-gun liberals don’t want law-abiding citizens to have the guns, then go to the auctions, buy the guns, and destroy them yourselves. This still provides money to the communities for education.

Roy Denney
Aug. 15, 2011
Sales would aid communities, and gun haters could help
[Great idea! And I would be okay if they expanded the program to buying guns, with their own money of course, brand new from their friendly nearby gun shop. Buy them all send them all to hell. For the children–of course.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Diane S. Sykes

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The City considers live firing-range training so critical to responsible firearm ownership that it mandates this training as a condition of lawful firearm possession. At the same time, however, the City insists in this litigation that range training is categorically outside the scope of the Second Amendment and may be completely prohibited. There is an obvious contradiction here.

Diane S. Sykes
July 6, 2011
Circuit Judge
United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit
RHONDA EZELL, et al., v. CITY OF CHICAGO
[One never hears claims that the anti-gun people are too smart or that their logic is impeccable. It’s nice to see judges and the general public coming to the realization that these guys are mostly nuts and should be treated as such.—Joe]

Planting seeds in Canada

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About 1996 I was working as a contractor for Microsoft on DirectX video drivers. Some guys came from ATI (later purchased by AMD) in Toronto to learn how to write drivers for themselves. I was the guy they were assigned to.

In my office I had an USPSA and other targets with bullet holes in them. DeVerne expressed an interest in the targets and I offered to take him to the range. He quickly agreed and he shot my Ruger P-89 and a rented .22 pistol. I don’t remember a whole lot about it except I remember that as we were leaving he said something to the effect of, “That is the most fun I have ever had.” I was a little surprised and suppressed a snide remark about a guy as smart him having not discovered sex yet.

He checked into things and reported back that he could get a pistol if he went through some paperwork hoops. Hmmm… he might actually be serious about this.

I hadn’t thought much about it in a long time but then I got an email from him about a month ago:

Hey, Joe.

Set the Wayback Machine for 1996/97. Remember that dude DeVerne from ATI who was stuck in your cube at Microsoft “’cause Canadians don’t like guns”, but turned out to be OK with guns, and actually worked?

I see from your blog you are still enjoying the shootin’ sports. And you seem to spend part of your time in Seattle. I am going to be in Redmond for a (no doubt) enjoyable and illuminating conference/meeting on Windows 8, and I thought if you found it convenient, we could have a coffee and shoot a deadly paper target or two.

And then I’d ask you all about good area gun stores, since I have become a ISSF pistol shooter in the past 8 years.

DeVerne

In the following emails I discovered:

Went to the Canadian National Handgun Championships, got 1 gold, 2 silver and 3 bronze. Did not make the Paralympic team  🙁

http://www.aha.abshooters.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=70&Itemid=155

Uhhh…. Wow!

Paralympic? Hmmm… I wondered what that was about.

We got together last Thursday and went off to the range. He put a few magazines full through my STI. He said mostly he wanted to show me that he was a better shot than he was the first time we went to the range:

WP_000157

He was. And that was when he shot nothing but one handed Bull’s-eye style. But what impressed me more than his shooting was that he now owns about 40 guns! His collection includes rifles and handguns both very old and very new.

I asked about the prosthetic foot. He told me it was new since I had seen him last but the story was far less interesting than he would have liked it to have been for the price paid. It turns out the foot has an unexpected advantage to his shooting sports. It puts him in a different class of shooters and instead of being a middle of the road ordinary shooter he is a very good handicapped shooter. Hence the metals in the National Championship match.

I said would give him a link to Breda, the only other shooter I know with a detachable appendage.

I planted the seeds of a monster and now he is corrupting Canada from the inside. In Toronto even! Smile

Quote of the day—Solomon Friedman

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Those that voluntarily submit themselves to licensing and training requirements, register their firearms, store them legally, are in fact subject to, in some ways, to more strict regulation than individuals that are convicted of violent firearms offenses.

Solomon Friedman
August 12, 2011
Collector, Not Criminal
[This is in Canada, not the U.S., but some of the things he says apply to people who hold a Federal Firearms License. Is it too much to ask that firearms owners exercising their natural right to keep and bear arms be treated no worse than violent criminals and pedophiles?

If I have the time later today I have some interesting info to report about my efforts to defeat the anti-gun people in Canada.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Violence Policy Center

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Although the majority of Americans favor stricter handgun controls, and a consistent 40 percent of Americans favor banning the private sale and possession of handguns, many Americans do believe that handguns are effective weapons for home self-defense and the majority of Americans mistakenly believe that the Second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the individual right to keep and bear arms.

Violence Policy Center
1988
Conclusion to Assault Weapons & Accessories in America
[It wasn’t a majority of Americans that were mistaken in their beliefs about the Second Amendment. It was the bigoted minority—like those that supported the VPC and the Brady Campaign and would not believe us no matter how many times we told them and explained it to them.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Diane S. Sykes

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Both Heller and McDonald suggest that First Amendment analogues are more appropriate, see Heller, 554 U.S. at 582, 595, 635; McDonald, 130 S. Ct. at 3045, and on the strength of that suggestion, we and other circuits have already begun to adapt First Amendment doctrine to the Second Amendment context.

Diane S. Sykes
July 6, 2011
Circuit Judge
United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit
RHONDA EZELL, et al., v. CITY OF CHICAGO
[This occurred over a month ago but the taste is still incredibly sweet. The Second Amendment is to be treated like the First Amendment. Learn to use that analogy when you have discussion with the anti-gun people. If we learn to use it correctly I’ll bet it will have a great effect on them.

And to give yourself a nice warm glow read up on “chilling effect” and ponder those implications.—Joe]

Second Amendment Infringements in a Nutshell

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This one, possibly from Daniel Nauenburg, together with this classic from the Half Hour News Hour, tell you just about everything you’ll ever need to know about the subject of gun restrictions.  Add one more, illustrating what governments have done to their disarmed populations, and you’d have all the bases covered in just a few minutes.

The moral depravity and intellectual bankruptcy of the anti-rights movement would be laughable so long as it never gained any traction.  As it is, there remains justice to be done, wrongs to be righted where possible, thousands of laws to be repealed, and government agencies to be disbanded.  When can the healing begin?

A riot story from long ago

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This came from the gun email list at work from Brennan B. Published with permission:

I had just moved to the U.S. and was attending U.C. Riverside at the time of the L.A. riots.  An RPD cruiser got flipped and burned in the shopping center across the street from my apt.  Roommate worked in an auto parts store over in Rubidoux (the closest thing Riverside’s got to Compton) but he wasn’t on shift those days.  We acquired plenty of beer before the stores closed and spent much of that time in lawn chairs on the roof drinking, listening to a portable radio, and watching the city burn.  It was nothing if not picturesque, especially after sunset.  I don’t have much to tell first-hand, but his work’s monthly staff meetings involved meeting up at our place, talking plenty of smack and drinking plenty of beer, so I heard all that they had to say on the subject.

Prior to this, the auto parts store where my roommate worked had been getting robbed pretty regularly every 3~6 months.  Less than a year before the riots one of the employees got beaten because the robbers didn’t believe that he couldn’t open the safe or get more than $20 out of it at a time.  Shortly thereafter the store manager and assistant manager, Carlos and some Korean guy whose name I forget, both got handguns and started carrying them regularly.  Everything was completely black-market, no paper trail, no permits, no nothing.  Like most folks in that neighborhood, honorable intentions or otherwise, I presume they saw little point in applying for a concealed carry permit since they would of course get denied anyway… and if they were ignoring that one particular asinine gun law, why bother with the rest of them?  Hard logic to argue against in a neighborhood where following the law very likely meant compromising one’s life, and apparently no beat cop in his right mind was interested in driving around demanding to see people’s CCW permits anyway.

Anyway, some guy tried to rob the store shortly thereafter on a day when both managers were on shift, and one was crouched down stocking behind some shelves.  In no time the robber got bum-rushed, disarmed, pistol-whipped, dragged out back at gunpoint, beaten like a piñata and left in the dumpster to sleep it off and reconsider the poor decision-making process that had brought him to that unhappy point in his life.

Then when the riots hit a mob came into the parking lot with Molotov cocktails in hand screaming that they were gonna burn it all to the ground.  Carlos and whassisname came out to discuss the issue with their pistols tucked Mexican-carry into the front of their waistbands in plain view, and asked who wanted to light up first.  The mob abruptly decided they had something more important to burn down elsewhere and went on their way.

Though I never asked, I was completely confuddled as to why these guys risked their lives like that for an employer that didn’t treat them particularly well in the first place and, had the regional office ever caught word of such goings-on, would certainly have fired them all in a nanosecond, done everything possible to sell them out to the police for maximum jail time, and anything else that might make an appropriate example of such vigilantism.  I also wondered if the regional manager ever pondered the question of why those few stores in that mini-shopping center were the only ones for blocks around that didn’t at the very least have some broken windows.  …in fact I remember hearing that something like 80% of the [national chain] Auto Parts in Los Angeles, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties got torched, and this one was in one of the worst neighborhoods of any of them.

It was only much later that I realized it had nothing to do with loyalty to their employer.  Rather, it was for themselves and the workers for which they felt genuinely responsible.  I think they simply recognized that they spent a large portion of their waking lives there, and that no one was going to take care of the chronic crime for them, so they finally decided to let the neighbors know not to bring trouble around their doorstep anymore because they were sick of dealing civilly with uncivil individuals.

Objectively speaking, their revised approach to the problem seemed to work out pretty well.  My roommate transferred to another store but kept in touch.  We even still occasionally hosted some staff meetings from the old store, and word was that work life had become blessedly boring following those two confrontations.

There really is no socially acceptable moral to this story.  Actually in retrospect I have to say this saga planted one of the many seeds of cognitive dissonance in my mind that [much] later blossomed into a full-fledged rejection of the “guns are bad, m’kay?” stereotypes that inform us as to what sort of people carry guns (especially illegally), and how tragically this was all supposed to have turned out both times.  Though I’m still not inclined to press my luck with the black-market guns and unlicensed carry.

I think the moral to the story is that morality and the law only have a slight positive correlation and there is sufficient data to support the hypothesis that willfully breaking the law is sometimes the correct thing to do.

Quote of the day—Henry Mencken

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The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

Henry Mencken
[I’m unable to find the date or the context but the ‘net seems unanimous in attributing it to Mencken.

Mencken makes a very important point whether it is a First, Second, Fourth, Fifth Amendment or natural rights issue. The oppressors make it difficult because they get to choose the “poster children” who will have standing to challenge the oppressive law. This is the main reason I am far more tolerant of the ACLU than many of those that I keep company with.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Dennis Henigan

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It’s a shameful law. The gun lobby is determined to force guns into every corner of our society. That does not make us safer.

Dennis Henigan
Interim president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence
August 6, 2011
South Florida cities, counties forced to scrap gun laws — NRA-backed state law forbids local regulation of firearms
[The law is not shameful. It’s shameful that Henigan’s organization even exists.

Henigan has it exactly backward. The “gun lobby” is slowly reducing the force that was determined to remove guns from every corner of our society. The only thing the “gun lobby” is forcing is for governments to stop using force against people who exercise constitutionally protected rights. It’s no different than repealing laws prohibited blacks from voting and it’s time for Henigan to face the music and shut down his organization. We need to move past this shameful chapter in our history and closing down the Brady Campaign would be a major step in the right direction.—Joe]

We’re winning in Illinois

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There are now law enforcement openly supporting concealed carry in Illinois:

The Illinois Legislature may still be divided on allowing residents to carry concealed weapons, but Fox Valley police chiefs and sheriffs are much less split.

Of the dozen area law enforcement leaders contacted by The Courier-News, none said they opposed concealed carry.

…

The Illinois Sheriffs’ Association long has been in favor of concealed carry. Last year, the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police went from “against” concealed carry to “neutral” — a significant change after years of opposition.

It will be a race between SAF/Gura and the Illinois legislature to see who brings home the prize. One thing is certain, the anti-gun people will soon be contemplating the whiskey and sleeping pills or maybe Tequila. Others will probably want to maintain a suicide watch but I think it will be best if we just keep advancing as fast as we can.

In a few months we can be advocating for the abolishment of NFA weapons as a cost saving measure. By then the ATF will be hurting so bad that they will agree to almost anything as long as they aren’t completely abolished.

Quote of the day—Dave Workman

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Fascitelli would have the world – or at least the Pacific Northwest corner – believe that just one more gun law, and a lot fewer guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens, would be a panacea to the kinds of irrational violence witnessed recently at the Kent car show and a casino near Auburn.

He would gladly sacrifice our civil right to advance his political agenda. That may be okay in New York, but he’s on the wrong side of the Mississippi River to be pushing involuntary public disarmament.

Dave Workman
August 5, 2011
Question to CeaseFire president: Who is the real extremist?
[The Washington CeaseFire board president claimed the Second Amendment Foundation was an extremist organization. This is particularly amusing, as Workman points out, because SAF was on the winning side of  the Heller and McDonald decisions while the position advocated by Fascitelli was struck down. When the Supreme court disagrees with you might want to revaluate who you are calling an extremist.

Does anyone else keep seeing “Fascist” when they glance at the name “Fascitelli”? As a name for anti-gun advocate that has to rank right up there with Professor Bogus.—Joe]

Privacy issues

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Numerous times I’ve posted half-baked concerns about our increasing loss of privacy and the dangers and even extreme dangers.

Some people have brought up good points and/or asked good questions and I will respond to those people then share further thoughts I’ve had on the topic.

Acksiom asks (after I said having a twin could be useful to raise reasonable doubt about who did what):

Joe, what kind of situations do you have in mind where that would be appropriate?  I can’t imagine any where I would want to raise reasonable doubt by blaming another innocent person, so I’m curious.

What if your employer is extremely conservative/liberal and a picture shows up of you at a gay-bar or sex shop/gun range or Tea Party rally? There are lots and lots of things of this nature. In the mild case they are things like pictures of a drunk, topless, woman at spring break 10 years ago who now wants to run for public office or be a Sunday School teacher. In the worst case we are talking matters of life and death, Jews in the Attic, type of things.

Alan states:

Privacy is a recent illusion caused by growing population and increased mobility.  Technology is allowing the return to the historical lack of privacy that has been the normal human condition for thousands of years.

You can’t fight it any more than the RIAA or MPAA can fight file sharing.  Better to start thinking how we’re going to adapt to everyone knowing everything.

In regards to his first point, it’s more like millions of years but that doesn’t distract from the validity of his observation. What is different now is that we don’t have a small homogenous tribe. We have an exceedingly diverse population with a powerful government.

In regards to his second point I’m not entirely convinced it is possible create an environment where “everyone knows everything”. And as long as an imbalance of knowledge exists there are “issues”. I am convinced that he is right about the analogy with the RIAA and MPAA. The “privacy gene” is not only “out of the bottle” the bottle has evaporated.

Sebastian posted (three+ years ago):

But in an information based society government will be able to know a lot about its citizens.  Our government probably knows more about its citizens than any other government in history.  There won’t be much means to avoid that.  Conversely though, information technology also makes it possible to know more about our government than any other people in history.  I would encourage and recommend anyone who’s interested in this topic to read David Brin’s The Transparent Society.

Tam stated (several months ago):

I think David Brin had it mostly right in The Transparent Society: This genie is well and truly out of the bottle, and the only non-Orwellian outcome will be if everybody has access to it.

Sebastian echoes (last night),

One of the sources I look to in this issue is David Brin’s “The Transparent Society”. I don’t think Brin is right about everything, but the fundamental idea that the loss of privacy isn’t such a big deal provided it’s applied equally in society, I think is a reasonable concept.

I responded (three+ years ago) by saying the politicians and government employees should go first and we will see how well that works out. The only thing I think I need to add to that post is that they should add real time location information to the collection of public servant information available to the general public.

We are entering uncharted territory. Never before has their been societies this diverse able to know this much about everyone else. Sure, if you go back far enough (it would not be necessary but just to make the point stick go back to where the family tree branching off of the apes) people didn’t have privacy when they had sex or were defecating let alone where they were or what sort of god(s) they did or did not worship. But in those days, with a much more homogenous society, it may not of mattered.

I say “may” because I wonder if such an open society was almost forced to be homogenous at a communistic lowest common denominator level. Perhaps a capitalistic/competitive society requires certain levels of privacy to function. My hypothesis is that trade secrets, secret contracts, and secret finances are necessary for a competitive society. Stated in the strongest (but perhaps indefensible) terms, if you don’t have privacy you cannot “get ahead”. A corollary that follows (perhaps also indefensible) is that if there is no privacy then society is economically doomed to some sort of tribal communistic system. Did the rise of commerce, technology and industry only come about because various tribes had privacy from one another?

Now there may be at least partial solutions to the economic hazards of a completely open society. Patents, for example, are intended to protect information that cannot be protected by trade secrets. Written agreements can be kept private unless a court order demands otherwise. But there are still many vulnerabilities when facial images or location data of people entering corporate headquarters reveals a connection between two or more companies that didn’t used to be there. Or your employer tracking after hours employee location data discovers a handful of engineers getting together at a bank and checking out empty office buildings together.

Imagine what can happen in political campaigns. Knowing who is talking to who gives someone tremendous information about what sort of issue are going to be important and how much money is going to be involved. Sure that information all comes out eventually but when you have the info weeks in advance it will make a huge difference.

Imagine the implications for stalkers. Anytime they wish to go on the hunt they leave their cell phones 50 miles away and know exactly where their prey settled down for the night.

Imagine the implications for an abused spouse trying to hide from their ex.

On a governmental scale the events are less likely but the consequences are catastrophic. Here is a scenario I heard outlined this morning. Monitoring of your water, electricity, and data (Internet) consumption shows a step increase. Examination of your communication traffic might well show that one or more people had a decrease in traffic therefore they are likely
the new residents in your home. Examination of transportation expenditures could confirm it. This fails my Jews in the Attic Test.

Imagine a scenario where a government is deadly hostile to gays (gun owners, Jews, blacks, Tea Party “terrorists”, Christian Fundamentalists, whoever). Public records (while I support gay marriage I sometimes wonder if it is a greater risk than people realize), blogs, and social networks, are scoured to identify the individuals. The communication traffic is examined and the leaders are easily identified even without knowing the content of the communication. Location information is then used in synchronized snatches at 3:00 AM. The plans for the snatch in any realistic “transparent society” would still be opaque because it would be protected out of concern for “nation security”.

Do you think it couldn’t happen in this country?

If so you have forgotten about the black lists in the 1950s. And the Japanese, German, and Italian internments which held over 100,000, of which about 60% were US citizens, during WWII. And you aren’t familiar with the Palmer Raids. Okay, the Palmer Raids were at 9:00 PM, not 3:00 AM. You have me there.

Those events are just the tip of the iceberg and  without computers. Imagine what a government could do with computers and far, far, more detailed information about our location, habits, and social networks.

Someone in law enforcement once told me that the government has a list of everyone in this country who has training as a sniper and “keeps close track of them” in what sounded like nearly daily updates on their locations and somewhat less frequent updates on their attitudes toward high level government officials. How many high-power rifle shooters also have their names on some list?

In a “transparent society” what does it matter if there are lists like that, right? You can have your lists too! But some lists are scarier than others and will always be secret for “reasons of national security”.

Although some have advocated deliberately adding noise to your digital footprint unless this is automatically done by your own computer at near zero cost per transaction you are soon going to get tired of the game. And if FinCEN can’t pierce the noise they will just make it illegal. And, as a person with a Masters degree in communication theory where we learned to pull signals out of noise, I don’t think it would be that hard to detect the noise, pull out the true signal, and then give greater attention to those people.

A few years ago I mentioned to someone in the banking industry that I did almost all my financial transaction in cash. Checks, credit and debit cards where used far less than most people. I was told that, for certain, put me on a list.

Perhaps my view is biased by reading too many books like Hitler’s Willing Executioners, Plotting Hitler’s Death, and Bloodlands—Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, but I contend a “Transparent Society” is very risky. I still don’t have any good answers short of “dropping off the grid” which just doesn’t scale. I have some possible answers which I would be glad to discuss in private but I just don’t have the time to implement them let alone deploy them on a scale where it could make a material difference even if they were effective and could avoid being declared illegal when detected.

The one method of last resort, a doomsday plan, which appears to be the least distasteful if things get really bad are the Second Amendment remedies. But even without formal gun and/or gun owner registration our society is already transparent enough that a “first strike” on the top 10,000 or so gun owners/activists with follow ups on a few hundred thousand more (remember the numbers from the WWII internment camps?) might be sufficiently effective to neutralize even it.

I’m told I’ll never have to worry about that. I suspect most of the people that tell me that are absolutely correct but for the wrong reason. I’ll be in the “first pass”.

Quote of the day—Democratic aide

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I just remember the question. I sort of think it sort of speaks to a larger issue of guns in society. I guess the question is, if legislation affects people who don’t follow the law. I think, ultimately, more guns on the street isn’t the answer.

I guess the simple answer is, there is no place for them in society. What purpose do they serve?

Democratic aide
March 22, 2011
In response to the question, “How would more legal restrictions on legal gun-owners affect criminals and their illegal possession of firearms.”
Everything you need to know about the most recent gun-control debate (but didn’t have anyone to ask), Part II
[The word “simple” applies—as in “simpleton”.

Their entire world view was balanced on a house of cards and a gentle puff caused their universe to collapse into a black hole. And their response was, “We want to ban them all.”

That is behavior consistent with bullies everywhere. If you show them to be fools they will beat you up and take your property.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Donna Davis

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There are too many guns around already; we don’t need more, and in a public place like that, I’d like to feel safe if I’m going to the park. If there’s a gun there, I don’t want to be there.

Donna Davis
August 4, 2011
Local Governments Have Until Oct. to Remove Gun Control Laws
[And just how many is too many? I suspect all she knows is that there is more than zero and that is too many for her. If that is the case then Ms. Davis needs to move to a different country because in this country what she wants is clearly unconstitutional.

It’s no different than her saying, “There are too many mixed race couples and blacks around already; we don’t need more, and in a public place like that, I’d like to feel safe if I’m going to the park. If there’s a black person there, I don’t want to be there.”

Ms. Davis, since you don’t even know how many guns are “around” yet you spout off like that anyway you must have crap for brains. And since you want to infringe upon a specific enumerated right you should move to some country which doesn’t recognize the natural right to keep and bear arms. You don’t belong here so rather than whine about it just move. We all will be happier for it.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Violence Policy Center

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In the 1980s, a very significant shift in gun design and marketing occurred: high-capacity semiautomatic (firing one round per trigger pull) pistols became the dominant product line. Looking at the United States, the most lucrative civilian handgun market in the world, prior to the 1980s the most popular handgun design was the revolver, most often containing six shots. In 1980, semiautomatic pistols accounted for only 32 percent of the 2.3 million handguns produced in America. The majority were revolvers. By 1991 this number had reversed itself with semiautomatic pistols accounting for 74 percent of the 1.8 million handguns produced that year.

Violence Policy Center
July 25, 2011
The Glock Pistol: A Favorite of Mass Shooters
[I love it when our opponents make our points for us. What this means is that Glock pistols are protected by the Second Amendment because they are “in common use” (see D.C. v. Heller).

If the VPC and the Brady Campaign people want to ban guns and actually have some chance of success what they should to is go after the guns that might not be protected by the Second Amendment. The guns that might not be protected are the flintlocks, matchlocks, and cap and ball firearms of a century or more ago. That would actually make a certain amount of sense because both the organizations and those type of firearms are only of interest from a historical perspective.—Joe]

Illegal guns explained by Tom Diaz

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VPC’s Senior Policy Analyst Tom Diaz explains “illegal guns”. He gets off to a great start with:

The phrase illegal guns really has no value in the way we approach looking at the problem of death and injury in the United States which is from the public health perspective. It’s really sort of a political term that is often used to avoid confronting the bigger problems…

He goes on to explain various ways firearm end up in the hands of those prohibited from owning firearm. He does a pretty good job of it. I really couldn’t find much fault with what he said until the very end when he said the states with lax gun laws needed to have strict gun laws.

What he willfully ignores and fails to mention is that those states with strict gun laws have a strong tendency to have higher rates of violent crime. By myopically only looking at “how did the criminal get a gun” rather than “what firearms policies result in increased public safety” he completely fails at the presumed goal of his organization, The Violence Policy Center. It should be abundantly clear that Tom Diaz is not interested in policies that reduce criminal violence. He is interested in restricting access to firearms. His organization wants to ban firearms and infringe upon the specific enumerated rights of innocent people. It’s shameful the interviewer, “Eight Forty-Eight” only presented the position of an organization which advocates for illegal government acts.

Quote of the day—Carolyn McCarthy

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I don’t understand why people can’t have common sense. Large magazines do not need to be part of it. The large manufacturers, they should even take a moral point of view in not selling them to ordinary citizens through the gun stores. The police and military can still use them. But I just morally think they should not look to sell them to the average citizen.

Carolyn McCarthy
July 28, 2011
Norway shooter: Ammo clips were from U.S.
[Yes, it’s “the shoulder thing that goes up” Carolyn McCarthy demonstrating her ignorance and bigotry again.

“Common sense” is a big issue with these folks isn’t it? It must be because arithmetic is beyond them and/or they know the numbers don’t support their conclusions.

And how does one “morally think”? I’m pretty sure that is one of the same argument used by those opposed to mixed race and homosexual marriages. That’s sure some good company you keep there McCarthy. I’ll bet you and Fred Phelps would get along just fine as long as you both consistently and appropriately swapped the words “gays” and “guns” during the conversation.

The entire article could be a case study in “layers of editorial oversight”. There are things like, “The Norwegian press has written extensively about how Breivik legally acquired his weapons and ammunition, but the mail-order purchase of his ammo from the United States has received little attention in the English-language press.” Apparently the author, Reid J. Epstein, doesn’t know the difference between ammo and “clips”. Although I was surprised that there were two instance where he appropriately used “magazine”.

And McCarthy must be reading the gun blogs because she wasn’t quoted as saying “clips” even once and she is quoted as saying “magazine” twice. Perhaps she is capable of learning. I wonder if someone were to introduce her to the “in common use” part of the Heller decision if she could grok that as well. But probably not. I pretty sure Dorothy Parker had people like her in mind when she explained about horticulture.—Joe]

Unintended consequences

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When possession of firearms is discouraged it is inevitable that familiarity with them decreases. And even firearm safety training is discouraged. Just look at the resistance to the Eddy Eagle program where no guns are even present!

The unintended consequence of this is accidents such as this:

A Banning woman accidentally shot her 12-year-old daughter after pulling the trigger of a miniature revolver she had mistaken for a novelty cigarette lighter, authorities said Thursday.

As soon as children go through puberty they will start experimenting with sex even if their parents keep them isolated and ignorant. There will always be recreational drugs around even if they are banned and there are police knocking down peoples doors in the middle of the night. And there will always be guns around. It is time to admit this and teach them gun safety as a standard part of growing up.

Via email from Donald W.