Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

Unbelievable.

FOR more than 80 years, the United States has enforced a tough and effective gun control law that most Americans have never heard of. It’s a 1934 measure called the National Firearms Act, and it stands as a stark rebuke to the most sacred precepts of the gun lobby and provides a model we should build on.

Leaders of the National Rifle Association rarely talk about the firearms act, and that’s probably because it imposes precisely the kinds of practical — and constitutional — limits on gun ownership, such as registration and background checks, that the N.R.A. regularly insists will lead to the demise of the Second Amendment.

In speeches, publications and a steady stream of fund-raising literature, the N.R.A. rails against gun registration and gun owner databases. In 2008, the organization’s chief executive, Wayne LaPierre, claimed that photographing and fingerprinting gun owners was “the key gun control scheme” of the candidate Barack Obama, who, Mr. LaPierre predicted, would confiscate every gun in America before the end of his first term as president. The N.R.A. now says that the “real goal” of “gun control supporters” like Hillary Clinton is “ gun confiscation.”

But the longstanding National Firearms Act not only already mandated the registration of all owners of machine guns, short-barreled rifles, silencers and other weapons deemed highly dangerous at the time, it created a national database of those gun owners with their mug shots and fingerprints, and a detailed description of each weapon purchased, including its serial number. Purchasers of “N.F.A. weapons,” as they are known, must pass an F.B.I. background check, be approved by the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms and pay a $200 tax. Stolen weapons must be reported to the A.T.F. immediately — the sort of requirement the N.R.A. opposes for other gun thefts.

The National Firearms Act includes much of what the N.R.A. fights against, but the lobbying group hasn’t directly challenged it. That may be because the firearms database, which includes weapons owned by both private citizens and law enforcement agencies, accounts for only a small percentage of the 300 million firearms estimated to be in private hands. Perhaps it should fight against it, though, because the 1934 law makes a good case against the N.R.A. The more than four million weapons inventoried — including machine guns, missiles, hand grenades and mortars — are the best example we have of gun control that works.

The N.F.A. was designed to control what today’s Justice Department calls “dangerous weapons that empower a single individual to take many lives in a single incident.” Millions of firearms now in private hands, including assault rifles designed for use by the military, are just as lethal as weapons covered by the N.F.A. They should be brought under the act.

Jeff Folloder, the executive director of the N.F.A. Trade and Collectors Association, says his members have learned to live with gun registration and lose no sleep worrying about confiscation. “There are still an enormous number of people who think if they register and purchase an N.F.A. weapon, they’re giving A.T.F. permission to come knock on their door at any time, and that’s just not true,” Mr. Folloder told me. “You’re not giving up any rights.”

The author, Alan Berlow, hocks this steaming pile of crap – or something analogous to it – everywhere he goes, from Salon to Politico.  Anyone who is anyone in the progressive community gives him a voice to push his incitement to civil war.

One can always find a tool of the government to bolster his ideas, and this Jeff Folloder character is just that.  I couldn’t be less interested in what he has to say.  But take note that Mr. Berlow doesn’t mention the massive civil disobedience in New York, Connecticut and Oregon from their recent registration and confiscatory schemes.  Neither will the New York Times conduct an investigatory series on that.

For those of us who say “not one more gun control law,” Mr. Berlow is clueless as to the resolve of the patriot community.  If the federal government actually tried to do this, there would be bloodshed and violence, or otherwise simple civil disobedience and refusal to enforce said laws by the law enforcement community because they want to go home to families at the end of the day and not have to look over their shoulder for potential threats at 2300 hours when they take their dog out for the last piss of the night.

It’s sad that the New York Times is so disconnected from the ordinary population that they would give Mr. Berlow yet another opportunity to hock his crap.  The LEOs aren’t going to enforce such a law, the Congress won’t pass such a law, and Mr. Berlow won’t do anything to enforce it himself.  This is just a progressive wet dream – nothing more.

The Sydney Morning Herald:

Australians now own more guns than before the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, according to new research that shows firearm imports hit a record high in 2014-15.

The surge in gun-buying over the past 16 years, which has seen 1.02 million guns brought into the country, has been largely a “gun swap”, according to Philip Alpers, a University of Sydney public health researcher, gun control expert and founding director of GunPolicy.org.

“The proud claim of some Australians that their country has ‘solved the gun problem’ might only be a temporary illusion,” Associate Professor Alpers will write in The Conversation on Thursday, the 20th anniversary of the massacre.

“The million guns destroyed after Port Arthur have been replaced with 1,026,000 new ones. And the surge only shows upward momentum.”

The chart above tracks the steady rise in legal private gun sales since 1999. (New firearms must be imported since firearms are not manufactured in Australia.)

The spike in 1996-97 represents the buying spree triggered by the firearm laws, as banned rapid-fire firearms were replaced with freshly-imported single-shot firearms.

Gun sales in 2014-15 were the highest on record, swelling six-fold compared with 1999, the GunPolicy.org research shows.

With 104,000 guns added last year, the national arsenal is, for the first time in 20 years, bigger than before the 1996 national buyback.

Population growth over the past 20 years means the rate of private gun ownership remains about 23 per cent lower than before the massacre.

Researchers struggle to explain who is buying all these guns and why.

Associate Professor Alpers believes the surge is most likely driven by gun owners increasing their collections, rather than more Australians buying guns.

He points to figures that show the proportion of Australian households with a gun fell by 75 per cent between 1988 and 2005.

“That suggests the people who are buying the guns are people who already have guns. And that fits into the global pattern … [of] a steady and substantial downward trend over the past 30-40 years,” Associate Professor Alpers said.

Psychologist and self-described gun control critic Samara McPhedran, from Griffith University’s Violence Research and Prevention Program, attributes the boom in firearm sales to the rising popularity of shooting sports among a younger demographic.

“I think what the figures show fundamentally is that people are interested in target shooting and hunting, and that interest seems to be growing over time,” she said.

However, others argue the evidence for this is questionable.

One unintended consequence of the post-Port Arthur gun laws was to boost the wealth and widen the influence of shooting clubs, according to Associate Professor Alpers.

The 1996 laws require gun owners to show they have a genuine reason to own a firearm. The easiest way for people in urban areas to do this is through membership in a gun club, Associate Professor Alpers said.

And not just membership but active participation. In NSW, for example, the firearm licensing regulations require members of target shooting clubs to participate at least four times a year. In Victoria, a licensed handgun owner is required to participate in at least 10 shoots a year. The requirements vary by jurisdiction.

“People who never normally went to gun clubs were now going to gun clubs and shooting ranges because the law obliged them to,” Associate Professor Alpers said.

“So the gun lobby has grown in size, political clout and, certainly, in money … as a side-effect of the post-Port Arthur gun laws.”

Such clubs also play a vital role in politicising gun owners and nurturing future ones, Associate Professor Alpers said.

For example, shooters clubs have called for age restrictions on minors firearm licences to be lifted, so children of all ages will be allowed to use weapons while supervised.

“They do that because they’re convinced … that the next generation should love guns as much as they do. It is one of their highest concerns,” Associate Professor Alpers said.

And it’s a strategy aimed at survival. “The single most reliable indicator of gun ownership is whether your father had a gun,” he said.

On the other hand, the link between Australia’s gun-buying surge and gun violence isn’t clear.

After all, rising gun sales are nothing new. “This isn’t a sudden increase. It’s a consistent pattern that we’ve seen over a number of years,” Dr McPhedran said.

“And despite those increases we’ve seen steady declines in firearm misuse.”

It doesn’t fit the narrative, does it?  In Australia, they tried ever so hard to stamp out gun ownership, crime fell, they falsely attributed it to lack of gun ownership, and we know that it is a false attribution because just as soon as they tried to stamp out guns, gun ownership began to rise again while crime fell.  It’s just a nightmare all around for the progressives.

But another very important note should be taken from this report.  In their efforts to stamp out guns, they accidentally aided gun owners in evangelizing and proselytizing non-gun owners.  This is the second – and perhaps most important – progressive failure.

Reader and commenter Fred is fond of saying this.

1. Find young, first time and new shooters. Make sure they have a good time at the range. Explain how hitler/mao/stalin/etc took the guns and killed millions. Offer to help them learn more about shooting and self defense. Rinse, repeat.
2. Make sure reps at all levels know that control/confiscation will not be
tolerated. I’m not afraid to engage my sheriff, local, state and fed reps. I
tell them exactly where I stand. Rinse, repeat.
3. Track, forward and reply to important legislative activities. (see step 2)
4. I personally do not engage the enemy directly. They are illegitimate. I stay on offense, always.

Just so.  Don’t back down one inch.  Work the people, and do it better than the progressives do.  The true gun confiscators are few and far between.  Few people want to enact meaningless bans of magazines, bans they know will bring massive non-compliance, and those monkeys who did the grabbing also don’t want to have to “watch their six” at night when they take their dog out to piss before bed.  They know we might be there in the dark.  But it may not come to this.  The great middle will ultimately decide whether we have to go to fisticuffs over the progressive wet dream of full-orbed statism.  They are leaning our direction.

This is fertile ground.  Plow it, seed it, fertilize it, water it, reap it.

Greg Ellifritz:

I seriously doubt that the writer can name instances where it is legal but against policy and posting to carry weapons, whether an off duty LEO or a CHP holder.  And if it was legal for him to be there with a weapon, why did he have to hide it?  Oh, because they would have thrown him out.  Okay, why?  Because they posted and had corporate policy simply because they can, because it’s their property and not his.

The cop carried concealed, off duty, onto private property where it was against policy [and likely posted] for him to have a weapon.  And until proven to be legal, I assume that this is illegal.  I know of no exceptions that stipulate that it’s legal if you can get away with it.

Hey, I wonder whether this same cop, on duty, would turn his head and let someone go because they carried onto property where it was against policy and posted that no weapons were allowed?  Would this same cop turn a blind eye to the guy who just wanted to be able to protect himself like the cop wanted means of self defense at these concerts?  Or is he willing to risk this only because he is a LEO and gets special consideration?

And so even though he doesn’t specifically say so, he recommends breaking the law, but it’s all okay because he says he isn’t recommending that you break the law.  As for me, I am not weighing in on whether you should carry against policy and posting.  I’m saying that this dual standard turns me off.  It left a very bitter taste with me.  Comments are closed at his article.

Politico:

New York’s junior senator, a passionate Clinton backer and feminist, broke down during an emotional sit-down here for POLITICO’s “Off Message” podcast when I asked her about her own conversion from an upstate House member with a 100 percent NRA rating (who once stored a shotgun under her bed) to an upper-chamber anti-gun crusader.

“I was somebody who was not as focused on this, as I should have been, as a House member. Meeting these families devastated me, broke my heart,” said Gillibrand, when I suggested she switched positions as a matter of political expediency in a deep-blue state where most Democrats favor stringent gun restrictions.

Gillibrand, a 49-year-old mother of two young sons not prone to public expressions of emotion, began to cry in mid-sentence. “It’s so crippling — I mean, I sat down with a mother last week in Brooklyn, and she lost her 4-year-old baby … she took her kid to a park,” she said. “Every mom takes their kid to a park. And she took her kid to a park and the kid was killed, a baby, a 4-year-old. … [Sanders] doesn’t have the sensitivity he needs to the horror that is happening in these families. I just don’t think he’s fully getting how horrible it is for these families.”

[ … ]

Her critics (some of them envious members of the state’s uniformly liberal congressional delegation) suggested her wedding with the gun control movement was of the shotgun variety.

But Gillibrand says her whipsaw transformation was genuine. Her mostly white, semi-rural district outside the state capital closely resembles Sanders’ Vermont, and Gillibrand says she’d simply never seen the impact of guns in big cities. She took her first step away from the NRA by introducing a gun-trafficking bill at the behest of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s police commissioner, Ray Kelly.

Whatever her initial motivations, Gillibrand possesses the zeal of the converted and sees guns as the issue that will allow Clinton to generate the kind of enthusiasm for her candidacy — especially among women — that has thus far been missing from her candidacy. “This debate is relegated to the men. It’s about hunting? It has nothing to do with hunting,” she said. “Nothing in this debate has to do with hunting, and nothing in this debate has to do with the Second Amendment rights. Nothing. … I think — I see the world in the lens of women’s issues. I’m making everything a woman’s issue. I want guns to be a woman’s issue.”

Clinton, who has been campaigning with African-American mothers whose kids were killed in gun crimes, isn’t going quite far enough, Gillibrand says. She wants a “women’s crusade” on the issue, adding that Clinton “might not have made that connection in her own mind. I’ve made that connection.”

The gun control debate has nothing to do with the second amendment.  Nothing.  Because she says so.  It has to do with being a woman, because only if you’re a woman can you appropriately feel the pain of others and understand what needs to be done to bring motherly control into people’s lives.  She says so.  She’s making it that way.  So don’t confuse the issue for her or anyone else.  Don’t bring up that this motherly control doesn’t have any affect on criminals.  It’s simple, and if you can’t understand that it’s simple, then you’re a man and you just don’t care about women’s issues.

That this is self referentially incoherent doesn’t matter.  If you’re a man, shut up, she argues, just because – and anyway she is a woman and you’re not.  It’s that simple.  This is a woman’s issue.  How does the NRA feel about that A rating now?

Hartford Courant:

Superior Court judge has denied a motion to dismiss a lawsuit accusing gun makers and sellers of liability in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, saying the broad immunity granted to the firearms industry does not strip the court of jurisdiction to hear the claim.

While the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act generally insulates gun companies from liability, Judge Barbara Bellis said the law could be used to attack the legal sufficiency of the plaintiffs’ claims, but not to have the case thrown out at this early stage.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs – nine victims’ families and an administrator who was shot and survived – declared the ruling a major win, as victories against firearms companies are extremely rare. But the ruling does not preclude the defendants from reasserting their claims of immunity under federal law in a future motion.

The lawsuit accuses the Remington Arms Co. and other defendants of negligently selling to civilians a weapon the plaintiffs claim is suitable only for the military and law enforcement. At a hearing in February, Bridgeport lawyer Josh Koskoff argued against dismissing the case, saying the lawsuit’s claim of “negligent entrustment” is an exception to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

But Bellis ruled on a narrower issue, agreeing with the plaintiffs that she has jurisdiction to continue with the case, but not ruling on whether the federal law blocks the plaintiffs from pursuing their claim.

“At this juncture,” Bellis wrote, “the court need not and will not consider the merits of the plaintiffs’ negligent entrustment theory.”

Well, there may be a little more to what the judge concluded than that.  According to the AP, she concluded that the law “does not prevent lawyers for the families of Sandy Hook victims from arguing that the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle is a military weapon and should not have been sold to civilians.”  Selling an AR-15 to civilians is their equivalent of “negligent entrustment.”  The judge found that the lawyers may indeed argue that, and that she shouldn’t rule at the present on the appropriateness of said argument.  But since this is all covered by a law, let’s see what the law says.

(5) Businesses in the United States that are engaged in interstate and foreign commerce through the lawful design, manufacture, marketing, distribution, importation, or sale to the public of firearms or ammunition products that have been shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce are not, and should not, be liable for the harm caused by those who criminally or unlawfully misuse firearm products or ammunition products that function as designed and intended.

(6) The possibility of imposing liability on an entire industry for harm that is solely caused by others is an abuse of the legal system, erodes public confidence in our Nation’s laws, threatens the diminution of a basic constitutional right and civil liberty, invites the disassembly and destabilization of other industries and economic sectors lawfully competing in the free enterprise system of the United States, and constitutes an unreasonable burden on interstate and foreign commerce of the United States.

(7) The liability actions commenced or contemplated by the Federal Government, States, municipalities, and private interest groups and others are based on theories without foundation in hundreds of years of the common law and jurisprudence of the United States and do not represent a bona fide expansion of the common law. The possible sustaining of these actions by a maverick judicial officer or petit jury would expand civil liability in a manner never contemplated by the framers of the Constitution, by Congress, or by the legislatures of the several States. Such an expansion of liability would constitute a deprivation of the rights, privileges, and immunities guaranteed to a citizen of the United States under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

(8) The liability actions commenced or contemplated by the Federal Government, States, municipalities, private interest groups and others attempt to use the judicial branch to circumvent the Legislative branch of government to regulate interstate and foreign commerce through judgments and judicial decrees thereby threatening the Separation of Powers doctrine and weakening and undermining important principles of federalism, State sovereignty and comity between the sister States.

It’s difficult to imagine a clearer statement than that.  The Congress intended for all judicial actions against firearms manufacturers to fail, excepting what they called “negligent entrustment.”  Further into the law, one reads just what that means, and it is obviously intended only to apply to known cases of sales to criminals who intended to perpetrate crimes with those weapons, instances where the seller knew or should have known the intent (presumably because he heard it directly from the buyer).

It doesn’t include all sales of certain categories of firearms to certain categories of the population, such as AR-15s sold to civilians.  Additionally, the notion that because one wants to purchase an AR-15 means that he wants to perpetrate some sort of crime is prima facie absurd.  We’ve discussed the fact that there is virtually no distinction between civilian and military firearms.  AR-15s are currently ubiquitous in America, and rarely are they used to perpetrate crimes.  Pistols on the battlefield and in the homes of America look the same because they are the same, unless one wants to point out that most of the time civilians own better weapons.

The U.S. Marine Corps took Benelli shotguns into Now Zad for house clearing, and the same Marine Corps took Remington 700s and Winchester bolt action guns into Iraq as designated marksman and sniper rifles.  Excluding fully automatic crew served weapons (along with the fact that M4s are selective fire), the only firearms I can find still in considerable use among the civilian population that isn’t in use in the military is the revolver, which is a shame given the beautiful wheel guns being made at the Smith & Wesson performance center.

The case is absurd, and the judge should certainly have dismissed it with prejudice.  And take note of one of the very reasons stated by the Congress for protection of firearms manufacturers, i.e., maverick judicial officer[s].  Judge Barbara Bellis is a maverick judicial officer (which I take to include both prosecutors and judges).  She is allowing her political views to cloud her judgment.

Uncle thinks this argument is a losing argument.  I guess I have to disagree.  In a dysfunctional judicial system, anything can happen.  It should be a losing argument.  David French thinks we should watch this one carefully.  I agree.  Right along with impeaching the judge (or if you wish, tar and feathers is a good approach too).

Remember just eight short months ago Senator John Cornyn tried to get his bipartisan guns and mental health bill passed?  Well, the worm is at it again.

The Hill:

The fight over gun control is threatening to scuttle a bipartisan mental health reform effort in the Senate as lawmakers rush to get the issue to the floor.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) is in talks with leaders of the Senate health committee to combine his mental health bill with one that passed the committee last month.

But Democrats object to certain sections of Cornyn’s bill that they say would make it easier for mentally ill people to acquire guns, and the controversial provisions could shatter Democratic support for the bill.

Provisions in Cornyn’s bill would require a full judicial hearing to ban someone from buying guns due to mental illness and would allow people previously committed for mental illness to purchase a gun as soon as a judge’s commitment order expires.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), one of the sponsors of the health committee’s bill, said such provisions would prevent him from supporting the bill.

“We’re still talking to [Cornyn] about whether we can move forward without those provisions,” Murphy said. “Obviously I can’t support a bill on the floor that has those provisions in it.”

Cornyn disagrees with Democrats’ argument, calling the position “unrealistic.” But he said he is open to discussing changes.

“I’m certainly open to discussing it, but I mean this whole idea that we’re not going to have a fulsome discussion about mental health and [the] problems it creates with the criminal justice system, housing and the healthcare field seems kind of unrealistic to me,” Cornyn said.

Still, he added: “I’m more interested in getting a solution and advancing the ball than I am trying to make a point.”

Murphy is one of the Senate’s strongest proponents of gun control, representing the state where the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting took place in 2012.

Asked if Cornyn has been open to dropping the problematic provisions, Murphy indicated the talks are still in an early stage.

“We haven’t gotten there yet,” he said.

Also involved in the talks are Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and health committee leaders Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.).

Both sides are still hopeful that some agreement can be reached. Mental health reform is seen as one of the few issues on which a meaningful bipartisan bill could pass this year.

About one in five adults, or 44 million people, experience a mental illness per year, but the number of available psychiatric beds has declined 14 percent in recent years, and families are often prevented by privacy laws from accessing crucial information to help care for family members with mental illness.

But gun politics has long been an obstacle for mental health reform.

Republicans argue for mental health reform as a response to mass shootings, while Democrats contend that mental health reform, while important in its own right, is no substitute for new gun control laws.

“The two work in tandem, not one as a substitute for the other,” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said at a hearing in February in which he denounced the gun-related sections of Cornyn’s bill. “If we did gun legislation, we’d need mental health legislation with real dollars. If we did mental health legislation with real dollars, we’d need gun legislation.”

One fear is that if Cornyn’s gun-related provisions made it into the final bill, it could spark a back and forth with Democrats putting forward their own gun-control amendments, disintegrating the bipartisan calm that would be crucial to passing the bill in an election year.

Murphy is trying to convince other Democrats not to introduce gun-related amendments of their own.

Even so, a Senate Democratic aide said that moving forward with a clean mental health bill is more likely now than it seemed a few weeks ago.

Murray said in a statement she is proud of the bipartisan bill that passed committee last month.

“I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to move our bill to the floor and continue building on that bipartisan foundation as soon as possible,” she said.

Will the GOP ever learn?  We don’t want any of this.  I don’t care what kind of protections Cornyn has in the bill, or what he claims are protections.  The court system is corrupt, and appeal to mental health professionals is the twenty first century equivalent of appeal to the village witch doctor.  I don’t want bipartisan cooperation.  I don’t want kindness and collegiality.  I don’t want both sides to come to agreement.  And I really, really don’t care if the NRA supports this bill or not.  I want war.  Not one more gun law, not a single one, not even a hint of one.  The only gun legislation that should be passed should be to undo the past obscenities such as the Hughes amendment.

And remember what reader Menckenlite said about psychiatry?

Control freaks love psychiatry, a means of social control with no Due Process protections. It is a system of personal opinion masquerading as science. See, e.g., Boston University Psychology Professor Margaret Hagan’s book, Whores of the Court, to see how arbitrary psychiatric illnesses are. Peter Breggin, Fred Baughman and Thomas Szasz wrote extensively about abuses of psychiatry. Liberals blame guns for violence. Conservatives blame mental illness. Neither have any causal connection to violence. The issue is criminal conduct, crime. Suggesting that persons with legal disabilities are criminals shows the nonsensical argument of this politician and his fellow control freaks. Shame on them.

Mental health, if it can be consistently defined by the village witchdoctor, has no causal bearing on or connection to the perpetration of evil.  The perpetration of evil is done by those with mental maladies and those without alike.  It has to do with federal headship in Adam, the first man, and whether that fallen nature has been redeemed.  Leave the issues of morality and the soul to the doctors of the church, Johnny boy.  Your doctors aren’t good enough and don’t really understand.

WWLTV.com:

“If this opinion in Louisiana is super unpopular,” Payton told USA TODAY Sports in a 33-minute phone conversation on Monday, his first interview since Will Smith’s death, “so be it.”

In the aftermath of the senseless shooting on Saturday night that left former defensive end Smith dead – and Smith’s wife Racquel wounded — amid a beef linked to a traffic accident, the New Orleans Saints coach is pleading for more gun control.

He isn’t merely talking about tighter laws. If Payton had his druthers we’d live in a country without guns.

“Two hundred years from now, they’re going to look back and say, ‘What was that madness about?’ “ Payton said. “The idea that we need them to fend off intruders … people are more apt to draw them (in other situations). That’s some silly stuff we’re hanging onto.”

Payton is still processing the death of a former team captain — who was weeks away from joining the Saints coach staff as an intern — and no one in their right mind can blame him for expressing his raw, human emotion. He wants to get this off his chest, and it hardly matters if Payton is bucking conventional NFL coach speak by coming out strong on a hot-button political issue.

“I’m not an extreme liberal,” Payton said. “I find myself leaning to the right on some issues. But on this issue, I can’t wrap my brain around it.”

Payton, who grew up in suburban Chicago, said that his philosophy was influenced by his father, an insurance claims adjuster whose line of work was filled with tragedies. He also spent six months playing in a British football league during the late 1980s, before launching his coaching career.

“I hate guns,” he said.

Payton said he is trying to remove his anti-gun bias in considering the matter, but even with that he reaches the same conclusion.

“I’ve heard people argue that everybody needs a gun,” he said. “That’s madness. I know there are many kids who grow up in a hunting environment. I get that. But there are places, like England, where even the cops don’t have guns.”

[ … ]

“It was a large caliber gun. A .45,” Payton said. “It was designed back during World War I. And this thing just stops people. It will kill someone within four or five seconds after they are struck. You bleed out. After the first shot (that struck Smith’s torso), he took three more in his back.”

Payton paused, then continued with his theme.

“We could go online and get 10 of them, and have them shipped to our house tomorrow,” he said. “I don’t believe that was the intention when they allowed for the right for citizens to bear arms.”

Hey Sean, I noticed that you went on to talk about the danger in New Orleans and your fears there.  You mentioned that you could go online and have ten pistols shipped to your home tomorrow.  You know that’s a lie, or maybe you don’t.  You have to go through an FFL when you cross state lines, and you certainly do when you buy from a dealer even in your own state.

And perhaps that wasn’t really the intent of the founders after all.  I agree with you.  It should be easier than that to get something to protect your very life.  And getting back to the issue of the danger in New Orleans, I noticed that you talked about cops in England not even carrying guns.  Well, that’s being revisited now in light of the threats posed by Islamists, and some of them do carry guns, but in any case, I also noticed that while you observed that cops in England don’t carry, you didn’t call for the disarming of cops in America.

That’s because this isn’t really about guns to you.  It’s about a monopoly of force.  Only the state should have the power to defend themselves and others.  You said so when you talked about waiting for cops if you get into a fender bender with a hot headed dude.

So you want people to have guns, just your kind of people.  That makes you a hypocrite.  Why don’t you just do your job and coach football and leave the public policy to men who aren’t hypocrites?

Miami Herald:

Morris Copeland runs the Miami-Dade agency in charge of juvenile offenders, and he mostly listened during a Thursday panel discussion about youth and violence and what may be causing so many children to end up either firing fatal shots or dying from them.

After about 40 minutes, Copeland leaned into his microphone and delivered the bluntest theory of the day.

“They have unimpeded access to firearms,” said Copeland, director of the the county Juvenile Services Department, which processes most children arrested in the county. “We have 11-, 12-, 13-year-olds packing heat. I’ve been in this business for 28 years. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“Kids are going to fight. Kids are going to disagree,” he continued during the Youth: Next Generation panel at the State of Black Miami Forum at Florida Memorial University. “A child with firearms is a recipe for disaster.”

Uh huh.  “The bluntest assessment of the day.”  Kids have unimpeded access to firearms.  That’s the problem, is it, Mr. Copeland?  Form 4473 doesn’t stop your kids from getting guns?  The gun store salesman at the counter doesn’t mind selling to a 12 year old?  I’ve seen them refuse people much older.

Oh, you mean those kids break the law to obtain those firearms?  I’ve got it now.  So what you’re really discussing is a moral and cultural problem within the black community, right?  I looked at the picture in Miami Herald.  I saw a lot of black folk, blacks who care deeply about their community.  Don’t get me wrong, I think you’re made in God’s image just like me.  But that’s exactly what makes you accountable before God for fathering families that have fathers, for churching your children, for teaching them about life and the difference between right and wrong, for forcing them to deal with failure by working harder rather than demanding a handout or a promotion up to the next grade level even though they can’t read.

So here’s what we really need from you.  I don’t think your statement was blunt or honest at all.  I think you need to look your own community squarely in the face and do some truth-telling.  Then I would stand up and take notice.  In the mean time, don’t even think of curtailing my rights because of a moral and cultural problem within the black community.  Handle the log in your own eye before you look for the speck of dust in mine.

College students are supposed to be getting world class educations on everything from the STEM courses to liberal arts and rhetoric and logic.  No, I’m just kidding, they really don’t study any of that today, except STEM in some of the more technical universities (thank God for that), but the fees they charge would hint that they must learn something.  Right?

Well, let’s put that to the test.

Imagine yourself sitting in class. It’s been a long day, and you’re not paying attention to your professor. Instead, you’re planning your evening. Maybe you have an exam the next day and you want to go study in the library. Maybe you have to go down to the KAC at 4 for practice. Maybe all you want to do is sit with your friends and eat.

Then you hear gun shots. Not from the shooting range nearby, but on campus. The school goes on lockdown. Your professors instruct you to stay in the classroom, turn off the lights, cover the windows on the doors, lock the doors from the inside and hide. The room is absolutely silent. Eventually, Campus Safety comes to tell you you may all go back to your dorms.

“Were there any casualties?” you ask. “We are not at liberty to discuss that information right now,” the officer replies. You call your parents to tell them you’re OK and then you call all your friends to make sure they are as well. One of them doesn’t pick up. You try again. Still no answer. The next day the president’s office sends out an email explaining the incident and those affected. Your friend is in critical condition.

This hypothetical situtation is similar to what the families and friends of the first graders at Newtown, the high schoolers at Columbine and the college students at Virginia Tech have experienced. I am not willing to allow my school to be added to that list. House Bill 48, Concealed Carry-Affirmative Defenses-Carrying Firearm in Certain Vulnerable Areas, or the “Guns Everywhere Bill,” which is currently in committee in the Ohio State Senate, would allow people to carry weapons on college campuses across the state.

This is a recipe for a disaster. College students are under a tremendous amount of stress, are often impulsive and inevitably have access to alcohol. The combination of these factors would produce a dangerous and potentially disastrous situation if guns were added to the mix. But it is more likely that impulsive students will hurt themselves, rather than their peers.

So her thesis is this.  Students will “inevitably” get access to alcohol.  Inevitably, says she.  And perhaps she’s right.  Prohibition never works.  But she advocates gun control that looks just like prohibition, thinking that rules against them will keep them off of campus if someone really intends to bring one on anyway.  Moreover, she advocates control over peaceable, law abiding students rather than the criminals she purports to control (by the way, more rapes, burglaries and assaults occur on our local campus – UNCC – than anywhere else in the metro area of my home city, that campus being a “gun free zone”).

But she switches midstream in order to move the target.  By the end she advocates all of this under the rubric of safety for students should they get access to guns in a panicked, diminutive or pathological state.  And yet getting access to alcohol and getting behind the wheel of a car doesn’t so much as grab her attention, even though others besides the student stand to be injured or lose their lives in an accident cause by inebriated driving.

She moved the goalposts in order to redirect your demurral, and when she did, she left unaddressed the perfect analogy to guns (in terms of laws of prohibition), simply assuming that such laws won’t and can’t work.  So there you have it.  The current state of scholarship in American universities.