Quote of the day—Robert J. Avrech

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If only the government and its various agencies possess weapons than the Right to Free Speech becomes an empty promise.

We then live in Orwell’s 1984.

That’s why both Hitler and Stalin passed laws that forbade the private ownership of gun.

Robert J. Avrech
October 25, 2017
Jews With and Without Guns
[I once watched a movie where only the police and the military had guns. It was called Schindler’s List (I forget where I stole this line from).

Also, via Nomen Nescio, “As the old Soviet joke went, everybody in the USSR had freedom of speech, but the law never guaranteed freedom after speech.”

And finally, from Joseph Stalin, “Ideas are far more powerful than guns. We don’t let our people have guns. Why should we let them have ideas?—Joe]

It doesn’t get much cuter than this

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Anti-gun researcher does some straight shooting

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Philip Cook (see also here), is no friend of gun owners. But in this article he comes across as in touch with reality:

While criminals typically do not buy their guns at a store, all but a tiny fraction of those in circulation in the United States are first sold at retail by a gun dealer – including the guns that eventually end up in the hands of criminals.

That first retail sale was most likely legal, in that the clerk followed federal and state requirements for documentation, a background check and record-keeping. While there are scofflaw dealers who sometimes make under-the-counter deals, that is by no means the norm.

If a gun ends up in criminal use, it is usually after several more transactions. The average age of guns taken from Chicago gangs is over 11 years.

The gun at that point has been diverted from legal commerce. In this respect, the supply chain for guns is similar to that for other products that have a large legal market but are subject to diversion.

In the case of guns, diversion from licit possession and exchange can occur in a variety of ways: theft, purchase at a gun show by an interstate trafficker, private sales where no questions are asked, straw purchases by girlfriends and so forth.

What appears to be true is that there are few big operators in this domain. The typical trafficker or underground broker is not making a living that way but rather just making a few dollars on the side. The supply chain for guns used in crime bears little relationship to the supply chain for heroin or cocaine and is much more akin to that for cigarettes and beer that are diverted to underage teenagers.

In essence the criminal market for guns is crowd sourced. Which means it is far more challenging for law enforcement to “close the loopholes” than if were were organized criminal organizations. The allocation of scarce resources to investigate, prosecute, and incarcerate people who sold a single “crime gun” is far better spent on going after violent criminals instead of those involved in victimless crimes of straw man purchases.

There are about 500,000 violent crimes committed with a gun each year. If the average number of times that an offender commits a robbery or assault with a particular gun is twice, then (assuming patterns of criminal gun use remain constant) the total number of transactions of concern is 250,000 per year.

Actually, no one knows the average number of times a specific gun is used by an offender who uses it at least once. If it is more than twice, then there are even fewer relevant transactions.

That compares with total sales volume by licensed dealers, which is upwards of 20 million per year.

And this doesn’t include private transaction in the used gun market. But it does tell us that nearly 99%, if not far more, of each year’s gun transfers between owners don’t involve violent criminal activity.

Why spend resources on investigation of activities where 99+% of the actions are harmless, and there are no motivated witnesses to the “crime”, when you could spend those same resources investigating known activities which have a 99+% chance of there being a true victim and people motived to cooperate with law enforcement?

Update: See also this post about other aspects of background checks.

Gun Rights are Women’s Rights

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Via Robert J. Avrech:

Some of the comments regarding the video are pretty good:

Feminism doesn’t want women to be safe. They tell women to ignore safety tips to avoid rape because it “blames the victim”, discourages women from arming themselves with mace, pepper spray or even a Taser, telling them that it’s men that should be taught to stop rape instead of them being responsible for their own safety.

N¡ghtshade

feminism like liberalism needs victims.

invidcyborg

Adventure fiction interlude

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For those who like adventure/fantasy fiction with an emphasis on action and daring-do (a la Conan), I’m posting a new short series on my writing blog. Another “Jispin the barbarian” blurb. First segment.

Serious long range record

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A new long range record has been set by an American.

Using a .408 Tejas ( modified .408 Chey Tac), he nailed a 40″ (1.016 meter) target at 5000 yards (4572 meters), for about .8 MOA.

h/t to Paul K

Quote of the day—Helen Thomas

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If a person buys guns legally it doesn’t matter how many they have. If the police come to my house to see how many guns I have and I ask what organizations I belong to I’m telling them to go to hell.

Helen Thomas
October 10, 2017
Comment to Tucker vs. Lawyer on Gun Purchases: ‘How Many Should Trigger a Police Visit?’
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]

Quote of the day—John R. Lott Jr.

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Last month, the prestigious, bipartisan Texas Lyceum invited me to debate gun control issues. They asked Everytown, the Brady Campaign and the Violence Policy Center if they would participate. Once again, they refused.

Mr. Bloomberg and his groups are unwilling because they don’t want viewers to see their inaccurate information being challenged. They would rather people just take their falsehoods at face value.

John R. Lott Jr.
April 27, 2017
Challenging inaccurate information about guns—A fair debate on the issue is needed, but liberal lobbying groups refuse to participate
[Of course. The truth is toxic to their agenda.—Joe]

Quote of the day—Scott Adams

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The way private gun ownership protects citizens is by being a credible threat against all the civilians who might be in any way associated with a hypothetical tyrannical leader who uses the military against citizens. Citizens probably can’t get close to the leaders in such a scenario, but it would take about an hour to round up their families, and the families of supporters.

That would do it.

America is unconquerable.

Scott Adams
October 6, 2017
The Worst Gun Control Arguments
[About an hour? He must be thinking the lists with addresses are already compiled.—Joe]

The latest interrogation technique

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Fascinating stuff. The scientists persuading terrorists to spill their secrets:

Each interview had to be minutely analysed according to an intricate taxonomy of interrogation behaviours, developed by the Alisons. Every aspect of the interaction between interviewee and interviewer (or interviewers – sometimes there are two) was classified and scored. They included the counter-interrogation tactics employed by the suspects (complete silence? humming?), the manner in which the interviewer asked questions (confrontational? authoritative? passive?), the demeanour of the interviewee (dominating? disengaged?), and the amount and quality of information yielded. Data was gathered on 150 different variables in all.

Watching and coding all the interviews took eight months. When the process was complete, Laurence passed on the data to Paul Christiansen, a colleague at Liverpool University, who performed a statistical analysis of the results. The most important relationship he measured was between “yield” – information elicited from the suspect – and “rapport” – the quality of the relationship between interviewer and interviewee. For the first time, a secure, empirical basis was established for what had, until then, been something between a hypothesis and an insider secret: rapport is the closest thing interrogators have to a truth serum.

The psychologists observed and coded the actions of the “interviewer” (interrogators) in thousands of hours of interviews from hundreds of real-world interviews with terrorists suspected of serious crimes. From this they distilled a process which appears to work better than any other interrogation technique.

I’m reminded of other things I have read such as Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. Also books on the Crusades (from both sides of the conflicts), the Soviet Union, criminals, and terrorists. People who do things far out of social norms need to justify their actions and thoughts to themselves. They almost never think of themselves as evil. And when outside of the bubble of their peers (if any) they feel a need to proselytize and convert the non-believers and make people understand why they were justified in their actions. If the interviewer gives the suspect a “safe place” to tell their story to an apparently receptive audience they are likely to do so.

This has application to other situations as well. From the same article:

Miller argued that counsellors were having precisely the wrong kind of conversation with their clients. Addicts were caught between a desire to change and a desire to maintain their habit. As soon as they felt themselves being judged or instructed, they produced all the reasons they did not want to change. That isn’t a pathology, Miller argued, it’s human nature: the more we feel someone trying to persuade us to do something, the more we dwell on the reasons we should not. By insisting on change, the counsellor was making himself feel better, while reinforcing the addict’s determination to carry on.

Miller argued that rather than instigating confrontation, counsellors should focus on building a relationship of trust and mutual understanding, enabling the patient to talk through his experiences without feeling the need to defend himself. Eventually, and with the counsellor gently shaping the dialogue, the part of the patient that wanted to get better would overcome the part that did not, and he would make the arguments for change himself. Having done so, he would be motivated to follow through on them. Miller called this approach “motivational interviewing” (MI).

I’m wondering if “interviewing” an anti-gun person in a similar manner might yield results as well. The bottom line is that both (honest) sides of the gun debate want to increase public safety. Interview the anti-gun person in a nonconfrontational manner and “let” them explain the details of how things will work. Let them realize, for themselves, their solutions cannot possibly achieve their desired goals. In essence, The Socratic Method. Might they, in the end, realize they were advocating for that which cannot deliver the desired results and instead results in a decrease in public safety?

And:

The premise of interpersonal psychology is that in any conversation, the participants are asking for status – to feel respected and listened to – and communion – to feel liked and understood. “Power, love,” says Laurence. “The fundamental elements of all human behaviour.” Conversations only go well when both parties feel they are getting their fair share of each.

A father who opens the door to his daughter when she comes home late might adopt a confrontational style, implicitly inviting a contrite response. But his daughter, feeling her agency being denied, pushes back, which provokes her father’s anger. A power struggle ensues, until the conversation terminates with one or both stomping off to their bedroom. If the father had emphasised his love for his daughter, a conversation about acceptable norms might have developed. But doing so isn’t easy, partly because children know exactly which buttons to press. “I tell (the police), if you can deal with teenagers you can deal with terrorists,” says Laurence.

I saw evidence supporting this when dealing with my teenage daughters.

Good stuff.

Quote of the day—Sebastian

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On the other side of the argument are the folks on our side who think just shouting “no” very loudly is a legislative strategy. How much impact do you think Ron Paul had on the overall direction of Congress? Because that’s effectively what he did for his whole career. People who do that in deliberative bodies get ignored, and worked around. For these people, the question is this: would you rather sulk in the corner and take solace in the fact that you believe you’re right and righteous as you lose one thing after another, or do you want to actually play the game and win? The latter is what you’re seeing now.

Sebastian
October 25, 2017
What’s Going on With Bump Stocks?
[Principles are, at best, merely guidelines when you are involved in the dirty business of politics.—Joe]

Working from “home”

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I was a tiny bit short on vacation when Barb and I left on our cruise so I “worked from home” when there wasn’t much else of interest to do. Here are a couple of my work environments:

WP_20171004_15_05_24_ProAdjustedAt sea from deck 13.

20171011_084659 (1)AdjustedAcapulco from our balcony (photo by Barb).

Too bad they don’t understand numbers

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We often notice anti-gun people have problems understanding numbers, arithmetic is beyond them and math is totally alien. Last weekend I came across some numbers that, while simple and illuminating, would scare the crap out of them if they could only comprehend them.

I was at the WWII museum in New Orleans and took this picture of a wall:

WP_20171021_10_46_29_Pro

The numbers shown are the total number of items produced by the U.S. for use in World War II.

Compare that number of machine guns, 2,680,000, to the number of machine guns owned by U.S. citizens—490,664. Even though they are heavily restricted and no new machine guns have entered the private citizen market since May of 1986 we have nearly 20% the number of machine guns the U.S. military used to help defeat the Axis powers of Nazi Germany, Italy, and Japan.

That should give them the chills, if they understood numbers.

There is another number on that wall of even greater interest and applicability to the discussion they don’t want to have. The U.S. produced 41,500,000,000 rounds of ammunition for the military in WWII. A typical year of U.S. civilian consumption is on the order of 10->12 billion rounds. Hence, during the nearly four years the U.S. was actively fighting the Axis powers, on average, they used about the same number of rounds each year that U.S. civilians use recreationally each year. Tell your anti-gun antagonist we use as much ammunition each year practicing for the next civil war as the U.S. used each year in fighting WWII.

See also my Boots on the ground post for more numbers of interest.

Too bad the antigun people don’t really understand numbers. If they did they would probably just curly up into a fetal position and whimper instead of annoying us. In the mean time, just tell them molṑn labé and then carry on as usual.

Quote of the day—Peter Gillespie

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Get back to the basics. Scrap the outdated constitution. Just a document writted by politicians and the cause of many of the problems in the US.

Peter Gillespie
October 15, 2017
Comment to Tucker vs. Lawyer on Gun Purchases: ‘How Many Should Trigger a Police Visit?’
[How refreshing! A brief flash of honesty and an admission of guilt about his intended goals.

I look forward to his trial.—Joe]

And the winners are…

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The cruise Barb and I went on is called a “repositioning cruise”. During the summer the ship was based in Seattle and was making trips to Alaska. In September it was sailed to Los Angeles, we and a couple thousand other people boarded, and we then made a few stops in Mexico, a stop in Costa Rica, passed through the Panama Canal (the main draw for us), a stop in Columbia, and finally we got off in New Orleans. In between the days at port in the various countries and the passage through the canal there are many days at sea. Land is generally 100+ miles away, completely out of sight, and time aboard the ship can be a little bit boring. The crew and ship does provide some entertainment. There is tennis, rock climbing, swimming, basketball, a library, live music, live comedy shows, movies, bingo, chess, bridge, shuffleboard, and classes on various things like “Advanced Napkin Folding” (seriously!).

Yeah, things can get more than a little boring unless to put a little effort into it.

Since the ship was in the tropics the air was warm and the pool area was quite popular and they held other activities there. One of the activities was a “Mr. Sexy Legs” contest. Barb asked me if I was going to participate. I didn’t really feel comfortable doing this but Barb sort of nudged me a few times anyway. I decided no, I wasn’t going to do it and she dropped it.

The afternoon of the Mr. Sexy Legs contest I was on the deck above and aft of the pool far enough away that I could read without the noise disturbing me. Barb was exercising or something and was going to join me soon.

As I was reading I heard the cruise director repeatedly call for people to participate in the Mister Sexy Legs contest. It sounded as if they were having trouble getting enough guys to participate. No surprise, I thought. Then I heard them announce, “Rick from Colorado”. Barb and I had met Rick and Dedra on the ship a few days earlier and this had to be him. If Rick can do this, so can I, I decided. So I rushed down and was the last contestant to enter.

It was a such a cliché, Joe, from Seattle, won the Mr. White Legs prize:

MrSexyLegsWinners

Rick won Mr. Chicken Legs.

Barb was disappointed to have missed out on the show, but was thrilled Rick and I won prizes.

A few days later Barb had a plan for participating in the Miss Norwegian Pearl contest. She dressed for it and planned to least check it out at 1:00. We met some friends for lunch at 12:00 and the food was rather slow getting to our table. Our friends and I encouraged her to go on ahead or we could all take our food out to the pool area. But Barb didn’t really want to do that. We finished eating a few minutes after 1:00 and hurried to the pool area to watch the contest.

Barb didn’t want to go through with it but I saw the array of contestants and told her she would blow the competition away. There was absolutely no one in her class. She was still reluctant. I offered to walk up there with her and help her make a late entry. “Okay”, she finally agreed.

I was right about the outcome:

MissNorwegianPearl

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Photo by Steve.

Quote of the day—L. Neil Smith

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America was born in a struggle about private weapons. Let them pass—or ratify—any legislation they please.

Americans have obeyed their last gun law.

L. Neil Smith
January 27, 2015
Americans Have Obeyed Their Last Gun Law
[It’s a lot like the laws against marijuana, prohibition of alcohol, and oral sex. Nearly everyone knows they are stupid laws and eventually the laws will go away. In the mean time there are occasions where token compliance is made for appearance sake and to avoid hassles. And of course we have to put up with the whining of self appointed busybodies.

But, yeah, most of the gun laws are so ridiculous most people I know just go about their business and ignore the stupid.—Joe]

Overheard on the cruise

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Barb and I were on a cruise the last few weeks (Los Angles to New Orleans through the Panama Canal). I checked the web site (Norwegian Cruise Lines) before we left and, no surprise, guns were not allowed but knives with blades less than four inches long were acceptable (curiously, laser pointers are not allowed either). Never mind that steak knives on the ship were probably going to be longer than four inches, but whatever. I brought along the two Spyderco Delicas I carry in my pockets whenever it is legal to do so. I got them on the ship just fine. I got off the ship at our first stop then got back on just fine. Security even examined them and measured the blade length. At the second stop shore security took them from me when we tried to get back on the ship. I got a receipt and they told me to talk to ship security. I talked to guest services about the knives and they promised to contact security for me and they would get back to me. After about a day and a half I talked to guest services again. They said security would come out to talk to me about the knives. After about 20 minutes two security people showed up. I greeted them warming and introduced myself and shook their hands. Security Officer Judd Hinchliffe was the one that did all the talking:

Norwegian Pearl Security Officer. October 2017.

The following is a close approximation of the conversation. My thoughts which I dared not express are in [brackets].

Hinchliffe: I have your knives but these are not allowed on the ship.

Joe: I checked the website before we got on the ship and it says knives with blades less than four inches are acceptable.

Hinchliffe: Yes. But these knives are what we call lock blade knives.

Joe: I didn’t see anything on the website about lock blade knives.

Hinchliffe: It doesn’t but in the U.K., where I’m from, these are banned. We not in the U.K. but these are banned for a reason. With a normal knife if you try to stab someone with them the blade may fold on your hand. A locking blade knife is much more dangerous. These are what we call lock blade knives.

Joe: [Are you saying that U.K. law is incorporated into Norwegian Cruise rules while we are sailing in international waters off the west coasts of the United States and Mexico? Why not incorporate U.S. law which says you are infringing upon my right to keep and bear arms? That’s a felony by the way.
That’s the second time you told me they were lock blade knives. I knew that before you ever said so about these knives and I heard you the first time. In my defensive knife classes they taught us to use slicing motions, so the locking feature isn’t really going to make a difference if I need to use the knife on someone.]  If I were ever to go to the U.K. [not bloody likely until you fix your idiotic anti-self defense laws] I wouldn’t bring my knives.

Hinchliffe: I know this isn’t the U.K. but I’m in charge of security and I need to make sure everyone is safe. Why do you carry knives?

Joe: I grew up on a farm. When I was in the first grade the teacher gave all the boys in the class a knife for Christmas. I have carried a knife ever since then. [So… if someone attacks Barb or I and we are unable to defend ourselves because you took away our knifes you would be held responsible for the attack?]

Hinchliffe: Look around us. Does this look like a farm?
Joe: No. [It doesn’t look like the U.K. either. What does it matter?] Of course not.

Hinchliffe: In the U.K. we have a knife culture since we don’t have gun culture like in the U.S.

Joe: [You say “gun culture” like it’s a bad thing. If you would have let me bring my guns on board I would have been happy enough to leave my knives at home so you could indulged your prejudice against knife ownership without causing me any grief. As it is I’m probably going to lose the callouses on my hands from shooting 500 to 1000 rounds a week in practice. I’m then going to have to start practicing at drastically reduced levels to avoid blisters.] Yes, I know. I read about it sometimes.

Hinchliffe: What do you use a knife for?

Joe: I use them for all kinds of things. Cutting apples, opening boxes, most recently on this cruise I cut the labels off of some new clothes for my wife.

Hinchliffe: How are you getting along with your wife?

Joe: We get along great! In fact while we were waiting in line over there someone asked us if we were newlyweds. [Seriously?!! You want to get into couples counseling? If I were inclined to hurt her there are many options other than one of these knives. Let me see, I haven’t thought about this before. What would be my options? Push her overboard, push her down the stairs, hands, fists, feet, elbows, knees, a metal water bottle, a pillow while she sleeps, the metal chairs on our balcony, I could burn her with the hot hair dryer in our cabin, hmm… I could go on for quite some time like this…]

Hinchliffe: Why do you carry two knives?

Joe: [What difference does that make? Norwegian Cruise rules don’t put a limit on the number of knives only on the length of the blade. According to the rules I can have 10, 100, or 1000 knives. But you don’t care about the written rules, do you?

Do you think I’m twice as dangerous with two knives? How about if I had ten knives? Do you think I want to sell them to other passengers?] I have one in each pocket so I can easily reach one or the other if one hand is holding something.

Hinchliffe: I can’t let you have these knives in public. If someone saw you with them it would frighten them.

Joe: [Really? Even though the rules don’t prohibit it? Oh, yes, the rules don’t matter to you. What matters to you is that you get to exercise your prejudice against people who carry knives.

Perhaps the ship has a mental health professional on board who could help people with irrational fear of knives. Have you considered seeking some help yourself?] Well, I don’t need to have them in public.

Hinchliffe: You seem like a reasonable fellow so I’m inclined to let you have the knives back. But you will have to put them in your luggage so they can’t be seen by your steward when they are cleaning your room.

Joe: That sounds fair enough to me. I’m very much a rule following person. If I had known locking knives were a problem I would have left them at home but the website didn’t say anything about them. [So small pocket knives, which meet the your website criteria, sitting on a shelf in our cabin are going to frighten your crew? If this is really true it sounds to me like you need have higher standards for crew selection. I know! If they fire you and raise the standards for your position the problem will be solved for everyone!]

Hinchliffe: I’m going to escort you back to your cabin and you can put them away while I watch.

Joe: Okay. That works for me. [How does this help? If I wasn’t going to do that if you gave me the knives now, what makes you think I will leave them hidden away the minute after you leave the cabin?*]

Hinchliffe: [As we walk to my cabin.] I still don’t understand why you have two knives.

Joe: [That’s not a question so I don’t have to say anything now. I’m just going to walk back to the cabin, get my knives, thank him, and enjoy the rest of the cruise. I’m sure there are lot of things this guy doesn’t understand in his life and I don’t think there is anything anyone can do to help him with that.]

* It’s possible he visited our cabin once or more times when we were on shore or at a meal and checked to make sure the knives remained where he saw me stash them. I was tempted to put them in the safe or hide them at the bottom of my dirty laundry bag just to mess with him, but decided I had better things to do on the cruise than play mind games with the head security officer.

Quote of the day—The Wildebeest @wildebeest4160

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the only infringement from taking your AR 15 is your penis shrinking

The Wildebeest @wildebeest4160
Tweeted on October 20, 2017
[It’s another Markley’s Law Monday!

It’s very telling that our opposition resorts to childish insults and we have Supreme Court decisions.

Via a tweet from BFD @BigFatDave —Joe]

Quote of the day—Bruce Schneier

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The market can’t fix this. Markets work because buyers choose between sellers, and sellers compete for buyers. In case you didn’t notice, you’re not Equifax’s customer. You’re its product.

Bruce Schneier
September 13, 2017
On the Equifax Data Breach
[I agree with his astute observation but not his conclusion (government legislation is required).

If someone is harmed by the carelessness of another the careless person can, and rightly so, be sued for damages. How is this any different?—Joe]

Quote of the day—Ryan Born

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When conservatives appeal to “free speech,” it is actually a calculated political move, designed to open up avenues of political discourse while shaming others from moving in active political opposition. I argue that when conservatives resort to this move, they can be safely ignored, as they are appealing to a right that does not exist. In my belief, when conservative ideas are opposed, there is no right that is being infringed.

Ryan Born
September 25, 2017
Speech is free
[At first I though Born was setting up a straw man with “it is actually a calculated political move….”. But that hypothesis was blow away in the following sentence.

Born needs to retake a junior high class on U.S. government and receive a passing grade before attempting to have a conversation with adults. In the mean time don’t ever forget this is what many people on the political left think of specific enumerated rights.—Joe]