Articles by Herschel Smith

That’s its formal title.

U.S. Rep. Suzanne Bonamici on Tuesday co-sponsored House Resolution 308, Large Capacity Ammunition Feeding Devices Act, following the horrific shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Clackamas Mall last week.

“The loss of so many promising lives to gun violence last week was a call to action that we cannot ignore,” said Bonamici.

“As a first step, this legislation will help to keep ammunition clips like those used in the recent massacres out of public circulation. My colleagues and I will continue to explore additional policy options for ending gun violence in all communities and addressing our mental health crisis, but this commonsense bill is a step to protect American families from the unimaginable horror and grief that follows the mass shootings that have become too common in recent years.”

The Large Capacity Ammunition Feeding Devices Act, introduced by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy of New York and co-sponsored by 113 members of Congress, is modeled on provisions in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that was signed into law in 1994. The bill will prohibit the possession, transfer, or import of large ammunition clips manufactured after the date of enactment. It includes exemptions for law enforcement and public safety.

Mike Vanderboegh (correctly) says that Speaker Boehner is a liability.  Chance Ballew gives us three reasons gun control isn’t going to happen.  Boehner can stop this from ever coming to a vote.  Will he?  Does he have the spine?

Either way, fight House Resolution 308.  It increases the power and control of the federal government, and doesn’t add a single thing to your safety.

According to one of the “experts.”  Here is his brief resume.

Thomas Nolan, a lecturer at Tufts, spent 27 years as a Boston police officer before earning an Ed.D. from Boston University. When he was with the Boston Police Department, Nolan was a member of the elite mobile operations patrol unit and worked in the Youth Violence Strike Force. He ended his law enforcement career as a lieutenant and shift commander in the patrol division. He taught criminal justice at Boston University from 2004 to 2011, and then was a senior policy and program analyst at the Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in Washington, D.C. This fall he taught a course in the Experimental College called Forensic Behavioral Analysis.

Ooooo .  He’s an expert, so let’s hear him in his own words, inteview format.

Tufts Now: What was your experience with guns as a police officer?

Thomas Nolan: If you are hired as a police officer in Massachusetts, you cannot carry a gun until you have at least 80 hours of training and have fired 1,000 rounds, so you have become intimately acquainted with that weapon. But for the general public in most of the country, no training is required. I can sell you a gun at a gun shop, and I have no idea if you can shoot it or what you want to do with it. It’s like selling someone an iPod.

[ … ]

What about the rest of the country?

When I worked for the Department of Homeland Security and traveled to many places around the country, when the topic of guns came up, I would ask trainees how many did not have a gun and no hands went up. In many places, people seem to feel there is an obligation that you have to protect yourself against some kind of attack from intruders, whoever they think that might be. And some people who are extremists have the mindset that this is the only way we have to protect ourselves from the federal government coming into our lives and communities and taking over everything, including their guns. Of course, that’s a crazy, irrational thought. But don’t be surprised to see a rush on buying weapons soon, because the topic will come up in Congress and people fear there will be a ban.

Some say if more people had guns, they could prevent such mass murders as occurred in Newtown or in the Aurora movie theater shootings, because an armed person could kill the murderer.

If we armed people, the carnage would increase exponentially. Take the Aurora movie theater shootings, for example. If we had people in the audience who were armed, it’s safe to assume there would be an exchange of gunfire, but it would not necessarily result in the death of the shooter, who in this case had on body armor.

So let’s stop and examine what he has said.  First of all, the shooter in Colorado was not wearing body armor.  Period.  He is communicating myth that he has heard over news networks.  The shooter was wearing a tactical vest, but it didn’t include soft armor or hard plates.  And if he had been, how does it make the police more qualified to deal with it anyway?

Oh yea.  There’s the issue of training.  You know, only the police are qualified enough with their firearm to be competent to carry one.  They have fired 1000 rounds with their issued weapon.  Except that I have fired many more than 1000 rounds with every one of my weapons.  So according to Nolan, it’s better if a moviegoer simply sits in his chair and hopes that he isn’t shot!  Literally, it’s better to allow a shooter to pick off people like ducks in a shooting gallery than it is to attempt to stop him by an armed citizen.  Leave the shooter alone, says he.

But we’ve dealt with this before, although with statistics.

I am not willing to concede at all that a concealed carrier would be so ineffective against someone trying to take his life.  But for the sake of argument, let’s stipulate his case, or worse.  Let’s assume that a law enforcement officer would be 30% effective against a shooter, that a shooter in a crowded place would be no more than 25% effective with his shot placement, and worst of all, that a concealed carrier would be no more than 20% effective.

Terry’s argument is this: I am willing to subject my family to a shooter at 25% effectiveness for the duration of time it takes a LEO (at 30% effectiveness) to arrive on the scene, usually 10 – 15 minutes, rather than have a concealed carrier attempt to deal with the shooter at 20% effectiveness, because of the fact that a concealed carrier might also harm me or my family just like the police might harm me or my family.

It’s worse than nonsense.  It’s irresponsible nonsense.  But hey, whoever said that I am not easy to get along with.  If I’m ever in this situation with Terry’s family and I have gotten my own out of harm’s way, I will oblige Terry’s edict.  I’ll leave the shooter alone for Terry to deal with unarmed.  As they say … as you wish.

Finally, Mr. Nolan is only saying that the threat of home invasions is crazy and irrational because it’s never happened to him or his family.  And because he hasn’t read my articles, where I detailed some six and then nineteen home invasions that were easily found over the course of several minutes of searching.  And … Mr. Nolan is only saying what he is about home invasions because he doesn’t care about the safety of you or your family, caring more about his own ideological and political views.  That’s how the entire article should be studied, if you study it at all.  In fact, that’s the way you should treat all such diatribes.  These guys aren’t experts.  They’re just political hacks masquerading as researchers, and so are the people who print this piffle.

As if you didn’t know it was coming.

President Obama on Wednesday urged Congress to vote on measures banning the sale of assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines and requiring background checks before any firearm sale, part of an emerging White House response to a massacre last week at a Connecticut elementary school.

[ … ]

In an effort to demonstrate the shift in political thinking since the Newtown shooting, Democrats have tapped Rep. Mike Thompson (Calif.), a lifelong hunter and gun rights activist, to lead their gun-related efforts. Thompson said Wednesday that several Democratic proposals “certainly make sense,” including the ban on high-capacity magazines.

“I’ve been a hunter all my life, and there’s no reason to have a magazine that holds 30 shells,” Thompson said.

I don’t care that he is alleged to have been a hunter his whole life.  That brings with it absolutely no authority to me.  He is a nobody.  And he is no gun rights activist.  But I guess no one who is hunting really does need 30 rounds in a single magazine if you’re hunting regulated game such as deer.  If you’re hunting feral hogs you want as many rounds as you can get,  and if you are defending yourself against a home invasion, you want the best weapon suited for the purpose, including a high capacity magazine, just like Mr. Stephen Bayezes who saved his life with one.

Here is a prediction.  The majority of shooters who are intent on harming people choose multiple firearms (including a mix of guns), or in the future will choose to fabricate their own high capacity magazine if they want it for their nefarious aims.  This ban won’t affect the level of gun violence in the least.  It will, however, increase the power and control of the federal government, and that’s its purpose.

David Codrea has an interesting post on police and their view of assault weapons.

State Police Supt. Col. Steven G. O’Donnell said Monday they’d like to see a reinstatement of the ban on the sale of assault weapons…O’Donnell said assault weapons have one purpose, to kill people in war. He says civilians should not have assault weapons. [More]

So that’s why you guys have them, Steve? To have your standing army make war on and kill “civilians”?

Yet another indication of this elitism is seen up North.

We’ve landed on a revelation concerning Chris Christie.

“What role does the media play in terms of the violence we see on television and the movies? And the violent video games that I think desensitize our children to the real effects of violence. So I think we have to have a national discussion,” said Christie on New Jersey 101.5fm’s “Ask the Governor,” a monthly call in show.

When asked if gun control was an issue as well, Christie said “gun control absolutely has to be part of that discussion too.”

Christie said New Jersey has the second toughest gun laws in the nation, behind New York. “I’ve been a supporter of that as governor and will continue to be,” he said.

Jumping on the bandwagon, is he?  Or not.

In his first campaign for elective office in 1995, Christie based his bid for the state Assembly on supporting New Jersey’s assault-weapons ban.

Christie is a gun-grabber from way back.  He has Presidential aspirations.  But he will never be President because he doesn’t believe in the second amendment.  Well, in addition to the fact that he is a loud mouth blowhard.

We’ve discussed the notion that guns are evil.  Silly idea, that is.  Larry Pratt goes on the record on this very idea with Piers Morgan.

On the heels of the tragic Newtown, Conn. school shooting which left 26 people dead, this evening “Piers Morgan Tonight” invited Larry Pratt to the program to share his strong perspective on the firearm debate.

“Since we have concealed carry laws in all of our country now, people can get a concealed firearm. And yet, we have laws that say not in schools,” the Executive Director of Gun Owners of America said. “And so in the very places that have been sought out by monsters such as the murderer of these adults and children, we’re saying, ‘no, we don’t want you to be able to defend yourself. It’s better that you just sit there and wait to be killed.’ And we find that morally incomprehensible.”

Pratt says he’s deeply disturbed by the anti-gun supporters. It’s “deeply disturbing, that the desire to defend life has been so cast aside. And to whatever political correctness views guns as the ultimate evil. Evil’s in our hearts. Not in the guns.”

The staunch defendant of the Second Amendment tried to explain that the gun problems in America occur solely where guns aren’t allowed. “The problem occurs, sir, in those areas precisely where we have said no guns. The problem doesn’t occur where the guns are allowed freely to be carried to be used by people. There we have very low murder rates.”

Well, of course.  Gun free zones are anything but that to the criminals.  Pratt is to be commended for going on the record with an ignorant, preening, self-righteous douchebag like Morgan.  And as if directly on cue, we learn today that the shooter in Connecticut was a devil-worshipper (from a British newspaper, no less, because American newspapers don’t report the news any more).

The NRA wants to contribute and be helpful in the national conversation, apparently.  Listen carefully.  Negotiation and vacillation have never brought law-abiding believers in the second amendment any good whatsoever.  Like it or not, Pratt is telling the truth.

Opening The Nation’s article on Five Assault Rifles You Can Pick Up At Walmart, I expected to be entertained just a bit over the fact that they aren’t really assault rifles.  It was even better than I had expected.  I was treated to this.

I guess you learn something every day, huh?

Glenn Reynolds links to (what should be) an embarrassing blunder concerning Howard Kurtz discussing a “high magazine clip.”  This is reminiscent of Carolyn McCarthy’s blunder that is still a favorite over at reddit/guns.

From a pitifully inept and incomplete blog post by Andrew Rosenthal of the NYT:

This country has a history of facing tragedy and becoming better for it.

Where “gun violence is a serious problem,” as Justice Scalia said it is in the U.S., the courts must be very cautious about extending the individual right to own a gun.

Other nations have suffered similar rampages, but they have reacted quickly to impose new and stricter gun laws.

First of all, the Supreme Court cannot “extend” rights that are already ours (although everyone treats it that way, including them).  The rights outlined in the constitution are merely recognized, and ultimately granted by God.  Second, these laws that Rosenthal wants (e.g., assault weapons ban) won’t have any effect on crime.  Assault weapons are used in only 2% of crimes nationally.

But I don’t know why I would expect anything better by the NYT.

According to Mark.

Guns are, socially and ethically, devastating. Worthless. They add nothing of positive, intrinsic value to a culture, a people, a country. They only diminish, destroy, display an awesome sense of malformed ego and disastrously warped humanity.

Too much? Too far? Not really. I’m sure you already sense that all those cartoonish action movies, thuggish hip-hop songs, clunky old westerns, ultra-violent video games and the racks of high-caliber weaponry over at Cabela sporting goods and the local gun show – all of which we’ve been led to believe are so essential to our national identity – none of them offer anything of deep worth to the culture; no authentic masculinity, no real patriotism, no genuine power or strength or class. Heart, soul or integrity? Don’t be absurd.

It’s all a vulgar illusion, Hollywood glitter-bombing, manufactured mythology in service of shameless capitalism and a false, bloody American ideology that’s never served us well and only made us the ugly, violence-drunk stepchild of the civilized world. Don’t you already know?

Here is the truth: Guns are pain. Guns are impotence masquerading as virility, shame masquerading as valor, the devil disguised as an outrageously misinterpreted chunk of the Constitution that was never meant to suffer what the fat lords of the gun lobbies have made it suffer.

Do you wish to speak of false gods? Things virulently anti-Christian? The antithesis of everything a peaceful, advanced country is ideally supposed to be founded on? Because guns are all that and more. Jesus would be disgusted.

Mark is just confused.  Objects are something that the theologians call adiaphorous, neither good nor bad.  They can be used for either.  They can be used for home defense, and when a family remains alive after they have defended themselves from a home invasion, they have been used for good.  If they are used to slaughter innocents, they have been used for evil.

Mark wants to find negative ethical value in something that cannot possibly sustain such weight, any more than automobiles can be evil if someone perishes from them.  As for what Jesus thinks of guns, the founding fathers, who knew Jesus much better than Mark does, carried theirs to worship and were required to practice with them on Sundays, as well as introduce their children to them at a very young age.

Mark is just being hysterical, like the rest of the anti-firearm lobby.  Come to Jesus, Mark.