Archive for the 'Firearms' Category

According to the WSJ, yes.  According to the Baltimore Sun, no.

The Wall Street Journal over the weekend used Baltimore and the world-renowned Maryland Shock Trauma Center as the setting for a story saying hospital statistics show gun violence nationwide was “soaring,” and that a continuing national decline in homicides in spite of this trend was improved trauma care.

The article doesn’t go into city-specific data. But at least in Baltimore, those findings go against most every measure of crime available, and indeed Shock Trauma’s own statistics.

[ … ]

Dr. Thomas Scalea, the physician-in-chief at Shock Trauma, allowed the Journal access to the unit, where 24 people were admitted before the sun rose, including five people shot or stabbed. “Violence down?” Scalea told a reporter. “I don’t think so.”

This is not the first time Scalea has been on record questioning whether violence is down. “The violence is getting worse, in my opinion; it’s not getting substantially better,” Scalea said during an appearance on the television show “Square Off.” “The guns on the street are more deadly, and it’s every day for us.”

In fiscal year 2009, which is how the trauma center collects data, there were 414 people from the region treated there for gunshot wounds that were the result of assaults, according to internal demographics reports. That declined to 347 in 2009-2010, and 306 in 2011-2012. That’s a drop of 26 percent.

In comparison, during the 2008 to 2011 calendar years, police statistics show total shootings declined 29 percent — within the margin of error of Shock Trauma’s data.

The Wall Street Journal also said that the national percentage of people who died after being shot has declined two percentage points since 2007 to 2010, to 13.96 percent. Scalea told the Journal that the mortality rate for gunshot wounds at Shock Trauma is about 4 percent, including the patients who are dead on arrival.

In Baltimore, where trauma victims are likely to be taken to Shock Trauma or Johns Hopkins Hospital, police statistics show that of the total number of people shot in 2000, 203 died — about 21 percent. In 2011, 149 homicide victims had been shot, representing 28 percent of all shooting victims.

So here is the narrative.  Gun violence is getting worse, so the “experts” say.  In case you want to trot out statistics, they have some anecdotal evidence of their own.  National trends showing a decrease in homicides are merely due to better trauma care.  They’re sure of it.

Got that?  But the data in Baltimore, the very subject of the WSJ article, doesn’t support the narrative.  Gun violence is down, and just in case you were wondering, the Baltimore Sun shows you that the trauma care is about the same or a little worse, and that the actual number of people who died as a result of gun shots actually went up as a percentage of those who were shot.  So in other words, better trauma care isn’t the reason for the decreasing national gun violence trend.

The truth.  Destroying the gun control myths and turning the “experts” into liars at every turn.

From The Daily Beast:

David Hemenway, the author of this debunking, traces the overstatement of defensive gun uses to an inherent statistical problem: with very rare events (like defensive gun use), seemingly small sampling errors can lead to very large overstatements of incidence.

Say that survey findings are a 1% overestimate of the true incidence. If the true incidence were 40%, estimating it at 41% might not be a problem. But if the true incidence were .2%, measuring it as 1.2% would be six times higher than the true rate, and if the true incidence were .1%, measuring it at 1.1% would be a teen fold overestimate.

How might this work in practice? Hemenway offers a funny example.

In May 1994, ABC News and The Washington Post conducted a national random-digit-dial telephone survey of over 1,500 adults. One question asked: “Have you yourself ever seen anything that you believe was a spacecraft from another planet?” Ten percent of respondents answered in the affirmative. These 150 individuals were then asked, “Have you personally ever been in contact with aliens from another planet or not?” and 6% answered “Yes.”

Extrapolating to the U.S. population as a whole, we might conclude that 20 million Americans have seen an alien spacecraft, and 1.2 million have been in actual contact with beings from other planets.

Frum then goes on to undercut his case.  He says “I wouldn’t want to suggest that defensive gun use against real dangers (i.e, not carrying a shotgun to investigate raccoons rooting through the trash) is quite so rare as contact with extra-terrestrials. But it’s rare enough that conscientious people should think very hard about exposing themselves, their children, and their loved ones to the large and amply documented dangers of a weapon in the house.”

“Real dangers,” he says.  A Raccoon isn’t the animal that would have immediately come to mind.  Frum lives a sheltered life.  I have chased many of them away myself, and although I have multiple guns, I live in an area where discharging firearms into the yard is illegal.  I just went for a baseball bat.  Some other animals might be bears, wolves, hogs (and more hogs), mountain lions, or maybe gangsters in the inner cities of Detroit, Chicago or L.A.  My own son was hired to kill coyotes by a church in Anderson, S.C., because the animals were so aggressive that the congregants couldn’t even get into the building to attend worship.  He used … here it is … guns.

Frum also behaves as if guns are dangerous even to the trained person.  It’s as if he should be opposed to the use of cars because people cannot be taught to drive.

Over-sampling statistically insignificant data is the problem according to Frum.  Here’s what I think.  We’ve oversampled Frum’s brain and we’ve reached the very end of its usefulness a long time ago.  His experiment into progressive ideology has caused him to be even more puerile than he was before.

Long-time suppliers tend to lose control over QA.  I don’t know if this has affected Colt’s proposals for the new M4s, but I do know that even though my former Marine son, Daniel, was a SAW gunner, of course he had to shoot and qualify on the M16 and M4.  After shooting my Rock River Arms rifle, he was very impressed at its quality.  I believe he had some complaints about the rifles with which he qualified.

So Colt has lost the contract for the next generation M4s, and here is the rest of the story.

Colt recently filed another complaint with the Government Accountability Office in further attempts to block competing vendors from supplying the US Army with new rifles. They do not want to lose their position as the primary M4 supplier to the Army, and they’re pulling out all the stops to prevent being undercut by the competition.

Shortly after signing Remington to the US Army’s $84 million M4 contract, Colt filed a complaint with the GAO, claiming that the contract did not properly calculate the royalties owed to Colt for each rifle. The GAO agreed, and the Army re-opened the bidding for the contract to supply them with much-needed M4A1 carbines.

Colt since filed a second complaint with the GAO, and while the details of their filing are unknown, it matters little as the GAO has denied their second claim.

Vendors will continue on with the current bidding schedule, and hopefully get back on track to supplying the military with the M4A1s they need to replace their aging M4s and M16s still in service starting in 2013. In order to keep things fair, all vendors have had to make their first bids public, acknowledging the fact that Remington’s bid was revealed by the GAO inquiry.

The plan to roll out new rifles dates back to 2008 when the Army started looking into ways to improve or possibly replace the M4. That could have been Colt’s intent all along, in order to be able to come in for less than all of the competing vendors.

The M4 Product Improvement Plan eventually settled on updating the M4A1 and fielding it to all troops. Although the M4A1 is more than a few years old it’s also extremely well-established in the military, and replacing existing rifles with it means no additional training requirements nor any teething issues rolling out a new main infantry small arm. Also, it’s very cost-effective. The cost per rifle Remington originally contracted for was just $673.

[ … ]

The main advantage of the M4A1 is that it fires in full-auto rather than in a three-round burst. On AR-type firearms, the way the three-round burst mode works is with a ratchet that, on ever third shot, engages with the disconnector halting continued fire. This effectively gives the trigger two different pulls, one when the disconnector is in the stop notch and one when it isn’t. Even though a mil-spec trigger isn’t the best in the world, it’s still better than two different mil-spec trigger pulls.

Absurd.  The Marines are dumping the M249 in favor of the ridiculous IAR, about which my son said this.

This is sad. The reason we went with the SAW was because the BAR and its associated concept were inadequate.  At times in combat in Iraq, we had all nine SAW gunners firing during engagements, and I’m glad that we did.  We needed the fire power.  In the thousands of rounds I put down range stateside and Iraq, I never had a single problem … never … had … a … single … problem, with my SAW.  I kept it clean.  This change to the IAR is a testimony to laziness.  What do Marines want to do – take someone out on a date?  What else do they have to do when they’re deployed?  What’s the problem with cleaning weapons?  Mine worked because I maintained it right.  All this has done is make the Marines weaker.  It may be that this IAR could be used for select circumstances like room clearing, but the death of the SAW will bring nothing good.

So we’re dumping our only true stand-off area suppression fire system for the fire team and squad, adding full auto machine guns back to the fire team, and essentially returning to the days of Vietnam where everyone has a machine gun, the fire team is homogenous and the members don’t have different functions, and they waste ammunition.  Great.

And the complaint that Colt filed?  It rested on this charge.

The issue? Colt has a five percent royalty agreement with the Army for its rights to the M-4 rifle model. A royalty is a payment to the owner of the “intellectual property,” White said.

Colt argued in May its royalty wasn’t factored into the other manufacturers’ total prices and questioned the Army’s assessment of Remington’s past performance and production capability, according to a July decision issued by the Government Accountability Office.

While the decision dismissed the challenge of the assessment to Remington’s past performance and production capability, it was agreed the instructions on how the royalty was determined were not clear because the Army didn’t notify Colt or the competing manufacturers the royalty would be subject only to parts of the product.

And so Colt protested again in August, arguing this was inconsistent with the agreement, but in mid-November that was dismissed, and the accountability office determined it would not resolve a dispute involving the specifics of the agreement.
This is something that must be settled between the Army and Colt.

Seriously?  Royalty?  To Colt?  For the M4 design?  Seriously?  How about this.  Ditch royalties to Colt, find the surviving members of the Eugene Stoner family, and give the money to them.  Eugene Stoner was a genius.  Colt is being a bunch of snots.  And if the Army isn’t getting a Rock River Arms rifle, they aren’t getting the best.  Sorry. Story over.

That’s the plea, of course, when gun control advocates wax on concerning their views about how to save the world, one gun at a time.  The articles written with this meme are too numerous to cite, but one recent commentary stands out as particularly bad.  The author inveighs at the end:

Perhaps now is a good time for a reminder that the flood of guns onto our streets and in our homes is a hazard to all of us. Our cultural tolerance of ubiquitous guns is killing us. If nothing else, perhaps one memorial we might offer for the memory of Kassandra Perkins is to begin to talk about guns in our culture, and what we can do to change things.

Exactly how there is a “flood” of guns on the street we don’t learn, and why it’s a hazard to us all isn’t explained.  I handle my firearms in a safe manner, as do most of the owners I know.  Furthermore, in spite of the sweeping net they wish to cast for all gun owners, I have never even once felt the urge to shoot any loved ones.  If the author or her commenters have felt this urge, they shouldn’t purchase a gun, and I support their right not to purchase a gun.  As I’ve said before, “Crime is a moral decision, value judgment and social and cultural phenomenon.  It isn’t related to the existence of guns, and if guns weren’t available, they will use hammers.  Gun control laws cannot raise children to believe in values.”

But while there isn’t time to address all of the awful arguments in this commentary, the comments are most interesting, and a few different types seem to appear.  First, there is the argument from ignorance.  Ann Olivier says “nobody needs an AK 4(7) for self defense. They should be outlawed.”  Of course, Ann knows no such thing.  She doesn’t know anything about what response to a home invasion is required of the homeowner in order to stay alive.

Don’t forget that I have documented 2-, 3-, 4- and 5-man home invasions all over the country that could have been stopped with weapons and high capacity magazines.  Perhaps the most remarkable case came with Mr. Stephen Bayezes.  In order to survive the attack by three home invaders, he emptied a 30-round magazine and then had to retreat to his bedroom and grab another.  Mr. Bayezes needed a rifle and high capacity magazine, and it’s likely that in order to survive, Ann would too.

Analogous to the argument from ignorance is the argument from fantasy.  Tom Blackburn has this silly daydream.

He is sitting at a table in the bar when a gunman, armed to the teeth, starts shooting up the place. Our hero turns over his table and reaches for his own gun. Unfortunately, the table leg catches in the hem on his pants, and he can’t get his weapon out of his pocket. The gunman sprays his part of the room and our hero notices the table is not stopping the bullets. He rolls to his right, freeing up his pistol, which goes off, shooting a hole in his pants. Suddenly he is deafened by a fusillade fired by another armed self-defender, which attracts the gunman’s attention to his side of the room. He rolls further to his right to a spot behind the end of the bar, pulls himself up on one knee and draws a bead on the gunman. He fires just as a police officer, responding to the shots, steps in the way and wounds the officer. His fellow cops put down heavy fire on our self-defending citizen, hitting him in several places, while the gunman makes his escape.

Tom ends his fantasy with the notion that this gun owner “saw the light” and advocated “sensible” gun control policies, but the general thrust of the story has already been set.

While we don’t know the color of the sky in Tom’s world, we do know that it isn’t the same as the real one.  In Tom’s world, the police aren’t really ten to fifteen minutes away, there are right around the corner ready to respond to his every whim.  They are concerned most about his safety rather than their own, and thus they won’t wait on the SWAT team to arrive.  They will charge ahead into gun fire to save Tom.

And in Tom’s world, the NYC police department doesn’t discharge 84 rounds at a single shooter, missing with 70 of them.  The police are perfect shots, and they perfectly respond to all situations regardless of the level of stress.

In Tom’s world, those who carry firearms are just goobers who cannot tie their shoes correctly, much less be trusted to defend their own lives with a firearm.  In Tom’s world, they would much rather leave the shooter alone, duck behind chairs and pray that the shooter doesn’t aim for them than have some law abiding citizen respond to stop the carnage.  Tom would rather risk your life and the lives of your loved ones than allow you to carry a weapon to stop the death.  Tom doesn’t care about you.

It’s difficult to respond to this sort of pathology because it is based on irrational fear, bigotry and fantasy.  But rest assured, it is indeed based on fantasy.  The facts show that shootings are best stopped by individuals carrying weapons than by the police.  Tom is unaware that the Supreme Court has decidedly ruled that police are under no obligation to assist you or even to stop crimes during their commission.  They are obligated to respond once the crimes have been committed (past tense).

Another observation is that while this publication is ostensibly a Christian publication, it’s remarkable how few Christians have developed a consistently and holistically Christian world and life view.  The gospel becomes social work, soteriology becomes bettering mankind by laws and regulations (ironically, a distinctly Islamic view), and Christ was a passive doormat upon whom people could walk.  These things aren’t true, and a good starting point for understanding what the second amendment is about can be found in my own Christians, The Second Amendment And The Duty Of Self Defense.

Finally, back to the meme of the article, I’ve seen this same appeal almost every day for the last year.  And I’ve written on guns for just as long, as have most of the gun bloggers in my own blogging community.  Lisa Fullam, the author, wants to have “the conversation about guns.”  Lisa has apparently been absent for the last year.  We’ve been having this conversation, again, and again, and again, and again.  It isn’t that we’re not having it.  We disagree, and what Lisa and her ilk want is for us to agree with them.  And their real complaint isn’t that we’re not having the conversation, but that second amendment advocates are winning it.

We’re all familiar with the fact that one week ago, Jovan Belcher perished by his own hand after killing his girlfriend.  Blame the gun, Bob did.  No apologies.  In fact, there is continued discussion of it, and it is seen as a societal problem, or a problem particularly for the NFL, that some 70% of the players own guns.  The same conversation is going on in baseball.  The Padres general manager worries over his players “involved with guns.”

San Diego Padres general manager Josh Byrnes, who lost one of his top pitchers, Andrew Cashner, for up to six months after a hunting accident last week, worries about the rash of baseball players who are involved with guns and hunting in the offseason.

“As a GM, I am concerned,” Byrnes said. “You’re dealing with young guys, and obviously, we can control things on the job, but away from it, we hope they make the right decisions.

“I don’t know if athletes are predisposed to guns or not, but it’s certainly something that concerns you.”

So over the week there were other poor decisions made among players in the NFL.  A Dallas Cowboys player drove drunk and ended up killing a fellow player in a single car accident.

Costas inveighed again on Sunday night football concerning this week’s incident (it isn’t clear why he believes his opinion to be important).  He remarked how strange it is that this sort of thing could happen when it is so easy to avoid the tragedy.  Any player can call any time they feel that they are too impaired to drive.

And I suppose that this is analogous to the fact that any player can call for assistance when they feel that they are about to commit acts of violence.  So why is the gun to blame for the death of Jovan Belcher and his girlfriend, but alcohol to blame for the death of Jerry Brown?

The NFL or the team could prohibit players from driving and send chauffeurs to pick them up when transportation is required.  How many NFL players own cars, Bob?  How did you decide to blame the gun and not the car?

Prior:

Hi, I’m A Man And I Condone Wanton Violence

Does Bob Costas Really Know What His Problem Is?

Frankly, the objections to guns being trotted out by Bob Costas are disjointed and difficult to categorize.  As we’ve already seen, his initial objections had to do with guns in general.  He cited Jason Whitlock, and indicated that if Jovan Belcher had not had access to guns, he and his girlfriend would still be alive today.

But not long after those comments, he amended his stance to the following.  “Why do you need a semiautomatic weapon? What possible use is there for a citizen to have a semiautomatic weapon?”  Costas also inveighed that “he thinks there should be reasonable gun control so that people don’t…can’t go on line and build an arsenal of guns and put in their basement.”  I replied that I couldn’t help but think of the fact that Mr. Stephen Bayezes saved his life with a semi-automatic weapon and high capacity magazine.  And what exactly is the problem with more than one gun, located in the basement?  All it took for Belcher’s girlfriend to die was a single gun.  How is the issue of multiple firearms related to his initial diatribe?

Now the stipulations and qualifications grow and expand to include this set of issues.

Costas acknowledged that drugs, alcohol, and the debilitating mental and physical effects of football all could have contributed to Belcher’s breakdown, but explained that due to time limitations he focused on one particular aspect of the tragedy: guns.

From there he made pains to distinguish between the simple existence of guns and what he calls “gun culture.”

“I never mentioned the 2nd Amendment, I never used the words ‘gun control.’ People inferred that. Now, do I believe that we need more comprehensive and more sensible gun-control legislation? Yes I do. That doesn’t mean repeal the 2nd Amendment. That doesn’t mean a prohibition on someone having a gun to protect their home and their family,” Costas said.

But he also argued that, even if guns were harder to obtain, the most intractable problem facing the country is pervasive gun culture, which manifests itself in “the Wild West, Dirty Harry mentality” of people who believe that if only everyone carried firearms, mass shooters like James Holmes would be stopped in their tracks.

He also expressed concern over the specific popularity of guns among professional athletes. Recounting a story told to him by former Colts coach Tony Dungy, who was startled to discover that 65 of 80 players at training camp owned firearms, Costas asserted, “You can’t have 65 guys in their 20s and 30s, aggressive young men subject to impulses, without something bad happening.”

He continued: “Give me one example of an athlete – I know it’s happened in society – but give me one example of a professional athlete who by virtue of his having a gun, took a dangerous situation and turned it around for the better. I can’t think of a single one. But sadly, I can think of dozens where by virtue of having a gun, a professional athlete wound up in a tragic situation.”

So we have in order the following problems: (1) guns, (2) semi-automatic guns, (3) too many guns, (4) guns in basements, (5) the “gun culture” (whatever that is), (6) guns among professional athletes (given that they are a large proportion black, this sounds oddly racist to me).

It’s difficult to tell what to address with Costas.  His objections are a moving target, and he uses changing props, from Belcher, to the Colorado shooter, to the general culture and violence in young men.  If Costas settles down and makes himself clear and logical, we can address his concerns.  Unfortunately, I don’t think that he is disposed to clear, logical thinking, so his objections will have to remain a moving target.  Costas should stick to football and leave the policy to us.

Prior: Hi, I’m A Man And I Condone Wanton Violence

They say that it’s the first step to healing.  But before we get down to that, let’s briefly rehearse the weekend.  I dropped by Allen Arms in Greenville, S.C., to pay my next installment on my new Auto Ordnance M1 Carbine (beautiful Walnut stock) with my oldest son, Joshua, and then not three miles down the road, we stopped in at the brand new Sharpshooters Gun Club and Indoor Range to check it out.  It was nice.  I’ll be visiting there again, and often, and I’ll be buying guns from Wayne.

At least, that’s how I felt until I was upbraided by Bob Costas concerning the death of Jovan Belcher and his girlfriend.

“Our current gun culture,” Whitlock wrote, “ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead.”

“Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments, and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions, and their possible connection to football will be analyzed. Who knows?”

“But here,” wrote Jason Whitlock, “is what I believe. If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.”

Actually, I’ve never been that impressed by Costas, and have always dismissed him as a childish, self-important narcissist.  But then I rethought his views when I read Caryn Riswold writing at Feminismxianity.

These are the kinds of things I want to hear more men saying about guns and masculinity …

I’m glad Costas said what he said, when he said it, and where he said it.  Surely it’s the NFL audience (men men men) who didn’t want to hear it, but they are the ones who perhaps most need to hear it. And really, they need more than 90 seconds.

While reminding us that we shouldn’t forget about Kasandra Perkins, the first victim in this tragedy, Kevin Powell writes over at CNN.com that our constructs of what it means to be a man are part of the culture problem that we have got to solve:

Be tough, men do not cry, man up — these are the things I’ve heard my entire life, and I now cringe when I hear this relayed to boys or younger men by teachers, coaches, fathers, mentors and leaders …

I’ve seen the tragic pattern across our nation of men who, in the heat of rage, have killed their girlfriends, wives or lovers, as if they had no other vocabulary or emotion to deal with the disagreement or the break-up.

More men need to have more honest conversations about guns and interpersonal violence.

So they say that confession is the first step to healing.  I am a man, and therefore, according to Ms. Riswold, I condone wanton violence and have no language with which to deal with all sorts of emotions – I know not what they are – and need to get more in touch with my feminine side, or something like that.

But now that there is this new-found freedom and honesty, I have so many unanswered questions.  For instance, if guns lead to so much violence, then why doesn’t the data back up this hypothesis?  Why do I and all of my gun-carrying friends work so hard to avoid confrontation if we can just win the argument by the pull of a trigger?

Ms. Riswold and I worship a very different god and see things through much different theological eyes.  Upon her evolutionary view of human nature, why is it evil to like wanton violence?  Isn’t this just an evolutionary adaptation to propel me to the top of the species?  Whence cometh this supposition of the heart of darkness in man?

Costas, reading word-for-word Whitlock’s angsty tract to the rapt millions, seemed to think that the world of American gun owners can be reduced to “convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car [leaving] more teenage boys bloodied and dead.”

And if this heart of darkness obtains, then what am I to make of my felt need to defend my family from it?  Should I expect my attackers to seek their more feminine side too?  How would I cause this to come about, seeing as I had previously believed that:

Crime is a moral decision, value judgment and social and cultural phenomenon.  It isn’t related to the existence of guns, and if guns weren’t available, they will use hammers.  Gun control laws cannot raise children to believe in values.

Costas then continued his diatribe in a different venue.  Costas inveighed, “Why do you need a semiautomatic weapon? What possible use is there for a citizen to have a semiautomatic weapon?”  But what about Mr. Stephen Bayezes, who saved his life with a semi-automatic weapon and high capacity magazine, I thought?

Why does Costas drive a car, since automobiles cause four times the number of deaths in America that guns do?  After all, we don’t have to listen to Costas wax on about sports, do we?  He could just stay home.

But I’m sure that Ms. Riswold’s god can give us the answers if we pose these questions to him (er … excuse me, her).  But since I have this new found freedom and boldness, I’ve decided that I’ll only engage Ms. Riswold on this issue if she supports me in my mission to ban assault hammers because of the violence they perpetrate.  I expect to hear from Ms. Riswold soon on this, and we can skip to nirvana together.

UPDATE: You see, David, this is exactly the kind of reaction that makes the goddess unhappy.

Briefly, recall what I said about the data from Virginia in which we learned that gun sales had soared, while crime had dropped.

Second amendment advocates aren’t making the case, generally speaking, that increased gun sales equals decreased crime.  As an anecdotal note, my own home might be safer with weapons, but that’s a different conversation. The case that must be made belongs to the gun control advocates, not us.  They must make the case that the increased availability of weapons causes an increase of crime.  Otherwise, what’s all this silly argumentation about the “scourge of guns” across our inner cities, and the “rivers of blood” caused by the “easy availability of illegal firearms,” and so on ad nauseam?  Their national conversation with us makes no sense whatsoever if they cannot trot out the data to make it meaningful.

In fact, they cannot.  It is the lack of this data that is remarkable.  The gun control advocates and their ideas fail at every point, and this is the reason behind Chicago being the crime capital of the U.S. in spite of the stringent gun control.  Crime is a moral decision, value judgment and social and cultural phenomenon.  It isn’t related to the existence of guns, and if guns weren’t available, they will use hammers.  Gun control laws cannot raise children to believe in values.

I don’t have to demonstrate that the exercise of my constitutional rights doesn’t affect anyone else in order to legitimize such exercise (think here the first amendment as a case study).  Nor do I have to demonstrate that the public good – whatever that is (it sounds too utilitarian for my tastes) – is served by said right in order to justify its existence.  But what does indeed have to happen is in order for the national conversation the gun control advocates want to have to make any sense whatsoever, they must demonstrate that there is data to justify their claims.

This is important to recall as we examine a recent article by Jeffrey Goldberg entitled The Case For More Guns (And More Gun Control).  Jeffrey makes a few errors of fact, such as the claim that the Colorado shooter was wearing body armor.  He wasn’t.  He was wearing a tactical vest, and that vest had neither soft armor nor hard plates.  Not, of course, that it is a problem to have body armor if someone wants to have it and can afford it, but it is an error of fact anyway.  There are other slight or moderate problems like this throughout the piece.  The Brady Campaign wants to come off as oh-so-sensible in their admission that we do actually have constitutional rights to own and bear arms, but in fact as anyone who has followed their activities can attest, this is disingenuous.  One remarkable element in Goldberg’s interviews is the tacet (if unintentional) admission by progressives and behaviorists as to the existence of evil, and the possibility that a gun wielding concealed carrier will just blow his top and begin shooting when he gets into a heated argument.  Not good form, unforgivable, and the society of humanists might just have to evict them for this outrage.

But on the whole the article is very interesting if for no other reason than Goldberg finds gems here and there and discusses this issue with enough people (including gun control advocates) that one gets a good sense of their arguments.  For me, the money quote is this:

In 2004, the Ohio legislature passed a law allowing private citizens to apply for permits to carry firearms outside the home. The decision to allow concealed carry was, of course, a controversial one. Law-enforcement organizations, among others, argued that an armed population would create chaos in the streets. In 2003, John Gilchrist, the legislative counsel for the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police, testified, “If 200,000 to 300,000 citizens begin carrying a concealed weapon, common sense tells us that accidents will become a daily event.”

When I called Gilchrist recently, he told me that events since the state’s concealed-carry law took effect have proved his point. “Talking to the chiefs, I know that there is more gun violence and accidents involving guns,” he said. “I think there’s more gun violence now because there are more guns. People are using guns in the heat of arguments, and there wouldn’t be as much gun violence if we didn’t have people carrying weapons. If you’ve got people walking around in a bad mood—or in a divorce, they’ve lost their job—and they get into a confrontation, this could result in the use of a gun. If you talk to emergency-room physicians in the state, [they] see more and more people with gunshot wounds.”

Gilchrist said he did not know the exact statistics on gun-related incidents (or on incidents concerning concealed-carry permit holders specifically, because the state keeps the names of permit holders confidential). He says, however, that he tracks gun usage anecdotally. “You can look in the newspaper. I consciously look for stories that deal with guns. There are more and more articles in The Columbus Dispatch about people using guns inappropriately.”

Ooooh.  Sounds ominous, no?  Sounds as if Goldberg has landed on someone who has authority and backbone  to go after the evil gun lobby and the data to back it all up.  But wait.  This little issue of tracking “gun usage anecdotally” seems like it might be a bit problematic.  Goldberg has the scoop.

Gilchrist’s argument would be convincing but for one thing: the firearm crime rate in Ohio remained steady after the concealed-carry law passed in 2004.

Well there you have it.  The gun control lobby’s case remains stillborn, and thus their national conversation with us remains self referential and nonsensical.  It is a myth, a phantom, and they believe their case in spite of – not because of – the facts.  Since there is no real case, they turn to this wonderfully emotional appeal at the end of the article.

“In a fundamental way, isn’t this a question about the kind of society we want to live in?” Do we want to live in one “in which the answer to violence is more violence, where the answer to guns is more guns?”

Note the construction of the phrases to achieve maximum effect.  I have a different way of expressing the same question.  In a fundamental way, isn’t this question about what kind of society we want to live in?  Do we want to live in a society in which we are able to defend ourselves against the designs of criminals and those who would wish us harm, or do we want to be defenseless against their acts?

I know what kind of society I want.  I don’t think it’s the same one as the gun control lobby.

Oh dear.  Someone named Peter Galuszka waxes on about the Virginia gun statistics we briefly discussed.

Virginians have been buying more firearms than ever, even though crime has been steadily falling. Why?

Last year, 420,829 firearms were bought through licensed gun dealers in the state. That’s a 73 percent increase over 2006. Leading the list were pistols (175,717), followed by rifles (135,495). According to the Richmond Times Dispatch, central Virginians packed more heat than anyone else, followed closely by Northern Virginians.

And yet, as more firearms are sold, the crime rate has continued to drop. From 2006 to 2011, the number violent crimes committed with handguns fell from 4,040 to 3,154, about 25 percent, the newspaper reported.

Is there a correlation between increased gun sales and decreasing crime?

Indeed, some believe that hardened criminals are less likely to threaten victims if they know there’s a chance they could end up looking down the barrel of a 9 mm. Glock, or perhaps something that fits more easily into a lady’s handbag, such as a Ruger LCP 380 Ultra Compact Pistol. And by some accounts, women as well as men are flocking to training courses and firing ranges operated by gun stores.

At first glance, “the data is pretty overwhelming,” Thomas R. Baker, a criminologist at Virginia Commonwealth University, told the Richmond newspaper.

When you take a longer view, however, this thinking starts to fall apart. According to FBI reports, violent crime has been on a fairly steady downward trend since the early 1990s – much earlier than 2006, when Virginians started buying guns like crazy. The Economist magazine says the violent crime rate is at its lowest in 40 years and that the murder rate is less than it was a half a century ago.

It’s anyone’s guess why crime has continually dropped. Theories include demographic shifts resulting in fewer of the younger, inner-city men who tend to be involved in violent crime. Better community-based police work could be a cause. Some even say it’s because of large numbers of abortions by low-income women.

This last sentence is disturbing, and betrays a gross moral failing on his part.  But wait!  Peter has thought of something no one else has stopped to ponder.  Really.  Does correlation equal causation?  Peter is alone in the world.  No one else is smart enough to raise that particular question.

Or maybe not.  Go over even pro-gun web sites such as reddit/r/guns and and post a statement that this proves that guns decrease crime and you’ll get eaten alive.  Everyone knows that correlation isn’t equivalent to causation, and no one … no one … is making this argument.  That isn’t what’s being said.

So what is being said?  Recall what I said earlier.

Here the point isn’t about correlation and causation.  In order to demonstrate that gun control achieves its “purported” purpose, one must find evidence that it reduces crime, and it is the absence of this evidence that is remarkable

So let’s extend this a bit.  Second amendment advocates aren’t making the case, generally speaking, that increased gun sales equals decreased crime.  As an anecdotal note, my own home might be safer with weapons, but that’s a different conversation. The case that must be made belongs to the gun control advocates, not us.  They must make the case that the increased availability of weapons causes an increase of crime.  Otherwise, what’s all this silly argumentation about the “scourge of guns” across our inner cities, and the “rivers of blood” caused by the “easy availability of illegal firearms,” and so on ad nauseam?  Their national conversation with us makes no sense whatsoever if they cannot trot out the data to make it meaningful.

In fact, they cannot.  It is the lack of this data that is remarkable.  The gun control advocates and their ideas fail at every point, and this is the reason behind Chicago being the crime capital of the U.S. in spite of the stringent gun control.  Crime is a moral decision, value judgment and social and cultural phenomenon.  It isn’t related to the existence of guns, and if guns weren’t available, they will use hammers.  Gun control laws cannot raise children to believe in values.

So there.  Peter may stop wringing his hands now, and worrying over issues that only he ponders.  Others have thought of these things as well, and Peter isn’t alone.  I’m glad to have helped.   As for Peter’s irrational fear of firearms, I can help with that too, but Peter must be willing to listen and participate.

I’m available Peter.  Give me a call and we can go shooting.

From NY Daily News:

A federal Court of Appeals panel has rejected a constitutional challenge to New York’s handgun licensing law, a ruling state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is hailing as a major victory for public safety.

In Kachalsky, et al. v. Cacace, et al, five people from Westchester and The Second Amendment Foundation argued that the state’s gun laws — which require a demonstration of “proper cause” to obtain a concealed-carry permit — violated Second Amendment protections. To qualify under New York’s licensing laws, the applicant has to show “a special need for self protection distinguishable from that of the general community or of persons engaged in the same profession.”

In the case, one plaintiff simply argued the Second Amendment entitled him to carry his weapon without restrictions, in part because “[W]e live in a world where sporadic random violence might at any moment place one in a position where one needs to defend onself or possibly others.”

Two others said they were entitled to the permits because they were gainfully employed citizens in good standing, while another cited his status as a federal law enforcement officer with the U.S. Coast Guard.

The final plaintiff “attempted show a special need for self-protection by asserting that as a transgender female, she is more likely to be the victim of violence.”

The three-judge panel of the court’s Second Circuit, noting that “New York’s efforts in regulating the possession and use of firearms predate the Constitution” and continued with the 1911 Sullivan Law, said none of the plaintiffs demonstrated a qualifying need for self-protection beyond that of any other member of the public.

“As the parties agree, New York has substantial, indeed compelling, governmental interests in public safety and crime prevention,” the ruling says. “The only question then is whether the proper cause requirement is substantially related to these interests. We conclude that it is.”

Schneiderman called the unanimous decision “a victory for New York State law, the United States Constitution, and families across New York who are rightly concerned about the scourge of gun violence that all too often plagues our communities.”

Here is the decision.  This has nothing whatsoever to do with a “scourge of gun violence,” and they know it.  What we know is that there is this nice little summary statement at the end of the decision that looks quite a bit like presupposing the consequent.

… we decline Plaintiffs’ invitation to strike down New York’s one-hundred-year-old law and call into question the state’s traditional authority to extensively regulate handgun possession in public.

Ignoring the split-infinitive in the sentence, they began with the idea that New York could legitimately “extensively regulate handgun possession in public,” and unsurprisingly, that’s exactly where they ended, after paying due homage to New York’s “one-hundred-year-old law,” as if the age of the law has anything to do with its constitutionality.

This is a setback in the march towards recognition of our God-given rights, and unfortunately, fully expected from a New York court.

UPDATE: I had forgotten that Alan Gura was attorney in this case.

Alan Gura, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said: “We’re evaluating our options. I’m confident at some point the Supreme Court will weigh in on the issue.”

“The courts, like this court, have offered that they need more guidance from the Supreme Court,” he said, referring to a passage in the ruling that the Heller decision “raises more questions than it answers.”

Which is what I’ve always said about Heller.  To me the second amendment is clear, and Heller only muddled it.  I guess we’ll have to continue the fight in perpetuity, no?