Archive for the 'Gun Control' Category

Standard-Examiner:

In the fictional world of television police dramas, a few quick clicks on a computer lead investigators to the owner of a gun recovered at a bloody crime scene. Before the first commercial, the TV detectives are on the trail of the suspect.

Reality is a world away. There is no national database of guns. Not of who owns them, how many are sold annually or even how many exist.

[ … ]

When police want to trace a gun, it’s a decidedly low-tech process.

“It’s not CSI and it’s not a sophisticated computer system,” said Charles J. Houser, who runs the ATF’s National Tracing Center in Martinsburg, W. Va.

When police trace a gun, the search starts by sending all the information they have about the gun – including the manufacturer and model – to an office worker in a low-slung brick building just off the Appalachian Trial in rural West Virginia, about 90 miles northwest of Washington.

ATF officials first call the manufacturer, who reveals which wholesaler the company used. That may lead to a call to a second distributor before investigators can pinpoint the retail gun dealer who first sold the weapon. Gun dealers are required to keep a copy of federal forms that detail who buys what gun and a log for guns sold. They are required to share that information with the ATF if a gun turns up at a crime scene and authorities want it traced. Often, gun shops fax the paperwork to the ATF.

That’s where the paper trail ends.

In about 30 percent of cases, one or all of those folks have gone out of business and ATF tracers are left to sort through potentially thousands of out-of-business records forwarded to the ATF and stored at the office building that more closely resembles a remote call center than a law enforcement operation.

The records are stored as digital pictures that can only be searched one image at a time. Two shifts of contractors spend their days taking staples out of papers, sorting through thousands of pages and scanning or taking pictures of the records.

“Those records come in all different shapes and forms. We have to digitally image them, we literally take a picture of it,” Houser said. “We have had rolls of toilet paper or paper towels … because they (dealers) did not like the requirement to keep records.”

The tracing center receives about a million out-of-business records every month and Houser runs the center’s sorting and imaging operations from 6 a.m. to midnight, five days a week. The images are stored on old-school microfilm reels or as digital images. But there’s no way to search the records, other than to scroll through one picture of a page at a time.

“We are … prohibited from amassing the records of active dealers,” Houser said. “It means that if a dealer is in business he maintains his records.”

Good.  This is the way I want it kept.  Any further collating, storing, amassing, categorizing or any other kind of analysis means that the federal government would have a national gun registry.  And that would be unconstitutional … and immoral.

The Bible does contain a few direct references to weapons control. There were many times throughout Israel’s history that it rebelled against God (in fact, it happened all the time). To mock His people back into submission to His Law, the Lord would often use wicked neighbors to punish Israel’s rebellion. Most notable were the Philistines and the Babylonians. 1 Samuel 13:19-22 relates the story: “Not a blacksmith could be found in the whole land of Israel, because the Philistines had said, “Otherwise the Hebrews will make swords or spears!” So all Israel went down to the Philistines to have their plowshares, mattocks, axes, and sickles sharpened…So on the day of battle not a soldier with Saul and Jonathan had a sword or spear in this hand; only Saul and his son Jonathan had them.” Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon also removed all of the craftsmen from Israel during the Babylonian captivity (2 Kings 24:14). Both of these administrations were considered exceedingly wicked including their acts of weapons control.

As I said.  Gun control is the action of wicked governments.  A national gun registry grants the government too much power, too much information, and too much control.

The current focus by the politicians in their quest for social and human factors solutions to gun violence appears to be two-fold.  First, there is a call for universal background checks.  Even the NRA has indicated potential approval of this approach (while there is still vacillation and equivocation within the ranks of the NRA on this issue).  While this is tempting, it won’t solve any problems, and instead it will lead to a national gun registry.

But if there is vacillation on the issue of universal background checks, there appears to be growing consistency in the call for more intrusive and comprehensive mental health checks for firearms ownership.  Progressive and conservative alike, from politician to random interviewee on the street, casting aspersions on mentally troubled people and pointing to mental health screenings as the problem and solution, respectively, is the one area of agreement.

Walter Russell Mead weighs in in the affirmative on this problem – solution coupling:

Love it or loathe it, legislative gun control is unlikely to have much impact on violence American style. But there is another door to progress: taking care of America’s mentally ill. The good people at Mother Jones recently compiled a study, revealing that of the 62 mass shootings since 1982, 38 were carried out by a person suffering from mental illness (mostly men). Most had displayed signs of paranoia, depression, and other issues with mental health well before reaching for a weapon.

While most of the gun violence in America is committed by the clinically sane, the most horrific massacres are often the work of deranged people whose problems had come to the attention of family, neighbors or work associates.

I have shared before that I have a concealed handgun permit in my county, and in order to get permitted like this, one of the requirements is to sign over authority to examine your medical records to the county Sheriff.  Any admissions to one of five or six regional hospitals for mental health or substance abuse issues would have been reason to have denied my permit.  But I have often wondered, what if I had a recorded admission for some matter in one of the above two categories?  What would that have proven?  Little to nothing, as we will see.

What about the logical contraposition?  I am in a fitness for duty program because I have unescorted access to nuclear power plants.  Does that make me mentally stable?  How about law enforcement officers, since they are in a similar kind of program?  Anecdotal cases demonstrate problems.

Reports of Metro Police Lt. Hans Walters underscore the mental health component of the current gun control debate. Walters shot and killed his wife, a former police officer, and his son and then set fire to their Boulder City home before taking his own life.

Most would agree police departments conduct exhaustive background checks, screening tests, training and safety procedures before authorizing officers to carry and deploy a number of firearms. Yet a former colleague comments to the Las Vegas Review-Journal that Walters “didn’t seem out of the ordinary at all,” adding that “Cops are pretty intuitive. They can tell when something’s wrong with someone. He seemed totally fine.”

Beyond the anecdotal level, there are problems with diagnosis and with the very nature of psychology.  One clinician weighs in this way.

Clinicians treating patients hear their fears, anger, sadness, fantasies and hopes, in a protected space of privacy and confidentiality, which is guaranteed by federal and state laws. Mental health professionals are legally obligated to break this confidentiality when a patient “threatens violence to self or others.” But clinicians rarely report unless the threat is immediate, clear and overt.

Mental health professionals understand that, despite our intimate knowledge of the thoughts of our patients, we are not very good at predicting what people will do. Our knowledge is always incomplete and conditional, and we do not have the methods to objectively predict future behavior. Tendencies, yes; specific actions, no. To think that we can read a person’s brain the way a scanner in airport security is used to detect weapons is a gross misunderstanding of psychological science, and very far from the nuanced but uncertain grasp clinicians have on patients’ state of mind.

What about diagnoses?

If mental health professionals were required to report severe mental illness (such as paranoid schizophrenia) to state authorities, it would have an immediate chilling effect on the willingness of people to disclose sensitive information, and would discourage many people from seeking treatment. What about depression, bipolar disorder, substance abuse or post-traumatic stress disorder, along with other types of mental illness that have some link to self-harm and impulsive action? The scope of disclosure that the government could legally compel might end up very wide, without any real gain in predictive accuracy.

Diagnosis is an inexact and constantly evolving effort, and it is contentious within the profession. To use a diagnosis as the basis of reporting the possibility of violence to the authorities would make the effort of accurate evaluation much more fraught. And what of the families and friends of the mentally ill? Should their weapons purchases be restricted as well? A little reflection shows how unworkable in practice any screening by diagnosis would be.

And more clinicians weigh in similarly:

“We’re not likely to catch very many potentially violent people” with laws like the one in New York, says Barry Rosenfeld, a professor of psychology at Fordham University in The Bronx….

A study of experienced psychiatrists at a major urban psychiatric facility found that they were wrong about which patients would become violent about 30 percent of the time.

That’s a much higher error rate than with most medical tests, says Alan Teo, a psychiatrist at the University of Michigan and an author of the study.

One reason even experienced psychiatrists are often wrong is that there are only a few clear signs that a person with a mental illness is likely to act violently, says Steven Hoge, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. These include a history of violence and a current threat to commit violence….

The next problem is that even if the science was capable of sustaining the load that we want to place it under, it still wouldn’t have the desired effect:

Perhaps most important, although people with serious mental illness have committed a large percentage of high-profile crimes, the mentally ill represent a very small percentage of the perpetrators of violent crime overall. Researchers estimate that if mental illness could be eliminated as a factor in violent crime, the overall rate would be reduced by only 4 percent. That means 96 percent of violent crimes—defined by the FBI as murders, robberies, rapes, and aggravated assaults—are committed by people without any mental-health problems at all. Solutions that focus on reducing crimes by the mentally ill will make only a small dent in the nation’s rate of gun-related murders, ranging from mass killings to shootings that claim a single victim.  It’s not just that the mentally ill represent a minority of the country’s population; it’s also that the overlap between mental illness and violent behavior is poor.

Finally, it isn’t just anecdotal evidence that calls into question the whole notion that mental health professionals can bear the weight of societal violence, or even the warnings of mental health professionals themselves.  Evidence doesn’t substantiate the current emphasis on mental health as the answer.

President Obama has called for stricter federal gun laws to combat recent shooting rampages, but a review of recent state laws by The Washington Times shows no discernible correlation between stricter rules and lower gun-crime rates in the states.

States that ranked high in terms of making records available to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System also tended to have tighter gun laws — but their gun-crime rates ranged widely. The same was true for states that ranked poorly on disclosure and were deemed to have much less stringent gun-possession laws.

For example, New York, even before it approved the strictest gun-control measures in the country last week, was ranked fourth among the states in strength of gun laws by the Brady Campaign to End Gun Violence, but was also in the top 10 in firearm homicide rates in 2011, according to the FBI.

Meanwhile, North Dakota was near the bottom in its firearm homicide, firearm robbery and firearm assault rates, but also had some of the loosest gun laws and worst compliance with turning over mental health records to the background check system.

[ … ]

The Times analysis looked at the Brady Campaign’s rankings for strength of each state’s gun laws and at Mayors Against Illegal Guns’ rankings for how states perform in disclosing mental health data to the background check system. That information was then matched against the FBI’s 2011 gun-crime rankings for homicides, robberies and assaults.

The results showed no correlation among the strength of laws and disclosure and the crime rates.

For example, Maryland and New Jersey — both of them populous states with large metropolitan areas — have tight gun laws but poor mental health disclosure. But New Jersey’s gun-crime rate was in the middle of the pack, while Maryland ranked sixth-highest in homicides involving guns and second-highest in robberies with guns.

Delaware and Virginia, which both ranked high in mental health disclosure and ranked 18th and 19th in the Brady tally of tough gun laws, also had divergent crime rates.

Delaware ranked among the top 10 in number of gun robberies and gun assaults, while Virginia was in the middle of the pack on its measures.

My own view is somewhat more pedestrian and pragmatic.  New programs to empower the government rarely avoid abuse, and man’s evil propensities always tend towards totalitarianism and excessive control.  The innocent who get swept up in the mental health screenings and refused means of self defense will be considered the price to pay for government control.  With the right administration, simply wanting means of self defense will be justifiable cause for denying such.

With so little good that can come from this emphasis, coupled with such a large chance for abuse, mental health isn’t the answer that the politicians tout it to be.  As I have previously noted, the common element in the high profile gun violence cases (theater, schools, churches and malls) is that they’re all gun free zones.  Glenn Reynolds points out that this causes a false sense of security.  “Policies making areas “gun free” provide a sense of safety to those who engage in magical thinking, but in practice, of course, killers aren’t stopped by gun-free zones. As always, it’s the honest people — the very ones you want to be armed — who tend to obey the law.”

This is, as it were, the low hanging fruit.  Tackle the easy things and leave the questionable ones behind.

Prior Featured:

What To Expect On Gun Control In The Coming Months

The War To Disarm America

Christians, The Second Amendment And The Duty Of Self Defense

Do We Have A Constitutional Right To Own An AR?

U.N. Arms Treaty: Dreams Of International Gun Control

From Joseph Farah:

Are private firearms really necessary in society run by representative government?

After all, the police are there to protect us from criminals. And the politicians serve the interests of the people.

Right.

A small-scale example of how so-called “representative government” and the rule of law broke down took place in 1946 at what became known as “The Battle of Athens.”

For a decade before World War II and afterward, a corrupt political machine ran the town. But veterans returning from the war didn’t like what they found in their hometown. So they fielded opposition candidates for sheriff and state senate.

But the machine politicians seized the ballot boxes to ensure they would not be ousted by a popular political vote.

The vets grabbed what today would be called “assault weapons” – you know, the kind that shoot one round at a time while another round enters the chamber, just like 90 percent of today’s firearms.

They surrounded the town jail where the ballot boxes were being secured. When the machine politicians refused to turn over the ballot boxes, the veterans blew up the jail and took possession of the ballots.

Not surprisingly, they found the challengers had won the election fair and square.

Right here in the good old USA, firearms proved necessary in toppling a local tyranny in McMinn, Tenn., just 67 years ago.

That’s the real reason the Founding Fathers enshrined in the Bill of Rights a guarantee of the unalienable right to bear arms. It wasn’t about hunting. It wasn’t just about defending one’s life, liberty and property from run-of-the-mill criminals. It was also, first and foremost, a guarantee against liberty being hijacked by criminal government.

There isn’t anything wrong with pointing out the usefulness of firearms for hunting, for self defense and for the shooting sports.  I do it all the time.  But it’s necessary from time to time to point out that the Congressional and/or Department of Justice (ATF) “sporting purposes test” is an unconstitutional fabrication of men who want to forget that they have a propensity to evil totalitarianism, and need the ubiquitous threat of armed resistance from those whom they rule.

I had previously said “Universal background checks have nothing whatsoever to do with keeping weapons out of the hands of criminals, or a reduction in violence of any sort.  The system, if set up, is a predecessor and necessary prerequisite to a national gun registry.”

Feinstein’s proposals:

The bill will exempt firearms used for hunting and will grandfather in guns and magazines owned before the law’s potential enactment. However, the grandfathered weapons will be logged in a national registry.

A national gun registry – it’s one of the touchstones of success for the statists.  And universal background checks and a national gun registry go together like a hand in a glove.  When they make laws they are looking long term.  In fact, take note of one part of her legislation.

The legislation being pushed by Feinstein — who has long history of calling for gun bans — would prohibit the sale, transfer, importation and manufacture of certain firearms.

Neocon Charles Krauthammer (no friend to the second amendment) theorized the approach for them.

It is simply crazy for a country as modern, industrial, advanced and now crowded as the United States to carry on its frontier infatuation with guns. Yes, we are a young country but the frontier has been closed for 100 years.

Ultimately, a civilized society must disarm its citizenry if it is to have a modicum of domestic tranquility of the kind enjoyed in sister democracies like Canada and Britain. Given the frontier history and individualist ideology of the United States, however, this will not come easily. It certainly cannot be done radically.

It will probably take one, maybe two generations. It might be 50 years before the United States gets to where Britain is today.

Passing a law like the assault weapons ban is a symbolic – purely symbolic – move in that direction. Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation. Its purpose is to spark debate, highlight the issue, make the case that the arms race between criminals and citizens is as dangerous as it is pointless.

De-escalation begins with a change in mentality. And that change in mentality starts with the symbolic yielding of certain types of weapons. The real steps, like the banning of handguns, will never occur unless this one is taken first, and even then not for decades.

What needs to happen before this change in mentality can occur? What must occur first – and this is where liberals are fighting the gun control issue from the wrong end – is a decrease in crime. So long as crime is ubiquitous, so long as Americans cannot entrust their personal safety to the authorities, they will never agree to disarm. There will be no gun control before there is real crime control.

Universal background checks and assault weapon bans are mere window dressing.  The goal is to desensitize the public and cause this to occur over one or two generations.  You can keep the rifle you just purchased.  But you must register it with the federal government and you cannot bequeath it to your children or grandchildren.  Thus do they wish to accomplish confiscation by means other than sending SWAT teams into your home.  The question is, will you let them?

Silly choice, it is.

As Sen. Dianne Feinstein D-Calif. opened her press conference on gun control today, she invited Dean of the National Cathedral Rev. Canon Gary Hall to offer a prayer.

Hall spoke briefly before the prayer, calling for Washington lawmakers to stop fearing the gun lobby and fulfill their “moral duty” to restrict guns.

“Everyone in this city seems to live in terror of the gun lobby,” Hall said. “But I believe that the gun lobby is no match for the cross lobby.”

Hall said that he could no longer justify a society that allowed ordinary citizens to keep and bear “assault weapons.”

“No longer justify” assault weapons.  Could you ever, Mr. Hall?  If so, why?  What was your reasoning back then when you could justify assault weapons?  Were you wrong then or are you wrong now?  Perhaps you could answer within the context of the Christian duty of self defense because of being created in God’s image.  Then tell me.  Do you really believe anything at all, or have you always been a political hack and sniveling lackey for those in power, willing to modify your beliefs based on the popular sentiment of the moment?

Prior:

Guns And Religion

When Christians Discuss Guns

Christians, The Second Amendment And They Duty Of Self Defense

Yesterday when the most recent shooting occurred in Texas, I remarked to a co-worker:

What’s the common element in all of these mass shootings?  Think about it.  A mall, schools, movie theaters and churches.  These are all “gun free” zones.  But they aren’t really gun free, because only the law-abiding citizens obey the law, and if you’re going to commit mass murder you are by the very definition NOT a law abiding citizen.  Laws stipulating gun free zones are by their very nature ineffective and impotent.  Get rid of the gun free zones and the calculus will change.

So David Codrea weighs in on this as well.

A shooting at a Houston college has left at least three people injured and at least one suspect in custody, The New York Times and other media sources reported today.

“Officials at the North Harris campus of Lone Star College announced an evacuation at 12:52 p.m. on its Web site, citing an incident involving ‘a couple of armed suspects,’” the report elaborated.

The suspects were in violation of Lone Star College policy and the law.

It is the policy of this System to prohibit the carrying of firearms, knives and clubs onto any of the System’s facilities,” the college’s weapons policy states. “The possession of firearms, illegal knives and prohibited knives on System facilities including parking areas and publicly accessed facilities is a violation of criminal law and Board policies. This prohibition includes licensed concealed handguns except as otherwise allowed by state law.

“Persons who violate the law and these policies will be subject to serious consequences, including referral for criminal prosecution, dismissal from school or discharge of employment,” the policy warns.

Read the rest of his report at Examiner.  Chance Ballew also weighs in with his characteristically accurate single line summary.

Kurt Hofmann:

Back in December, St. Louis Gun Rights Examiner predicted that a private sales ban is the most likely federal infringement on that which shall not be infringed–far easier to pass than banning so-called “assault weapons” (gun banner-speak for “regime change rifles“) or “high capacity” magazines (gun banner-speak for “standard capacity magazines”) will be.

If anything about that assessment has changed, the difference is that it looks still more accurate now. In that article, we noted that even many supposedly “pro-gun” Republicans have historically supported private sales bans even before the Sandy Hook atrocity created an anti-gun feeding frenzy that has terrified many of gun rights advocates’ less stalwart “allies” in Congress.

Since then, NRA president David Keene has made clear that the NRA is quite willing to trade Americans’ right to privately buy and sell firearms for . . . well, really for nothing but perhaps a bit of a delay before the gun prohibitionists renew their push to eviscerate every other aspect of the Constitutionally guaranteed, fundamental human right of the individual to keep and bear arms. The Hill, in an article titled “NRA chief ‘generally supportive’ of strong background checks” has video of Keene appearing on CBS This Morning, where he discussed the NRA’s surrender terms:

Read the rest at Examiner.  No, no, no, and a thousand times no.  The NRA cannot cave on this issue.  Ignore the claptrap about “caring for the children” and “making sure that weapons don’t fall into the hands of criminals.”  It’s all a ruse designed by the anti-gun lobby.  Universal background checks have nothing whatsoever to do with keeping weapons out of the hands of criminals, or a reduction in violence of any sort.  The system, if set up, is a predecessor and necessary prerequisite to a national gun registry.  This is evil to its very core.

So the next time you hear this claptrap, if it comes from ignorant people, educate them.  If it comes from people who know better, call them a liar.  If it comes from the NRA, tell them that they’re cowards and do not represent your interests.  And then tell them that you want to see them thrown out on their heads so that they can be replaced with people who honor the second amendment.

No surrender, no retreat.  Not … one … inch.

Prior: Against Universal Background Checks

Jay Carney:

Addressing President Obama’s planned announcement on measures to reduce gun violence tomorrow, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney made a comment that raised some eyebrows both inside the briefing room and on Twitter.

Carney pushed the president’s plan for action over the status quo, paraphrasing a comment Obama made at his press conference yesterday as “if even one child’s life can be saved by actions taken in Washington, we must take these actions.”

Veteran CBS News Washington Correspondent Mark Knoller was the first to quote Carney’s statement on Twitter and it quickly garnered a barrage of outrage from conservatives who took exception.

Then came the demands to ban football, cars, and so on.  The twitter posts briefly point out what a hypocritical fake that whole argument is (along with the people who make it).

If a child’s life (or an adult’s life) is worth regulation and disarmament, then disarm the police.  After all, poor Mr. Eurie Stamps was killed by a SWAT officer who stumbled over his prone body while (the officer’s) finger was on the trigger of his weapon, causing sympathetic muscle reflex to shoot his weapon, thus killing innocent Mr. Stamps.  Mr. Stamps isn’t the only innocent human victim who has been killed by police.  Dogs also die by the score in SWAT raids across America as a routine practice by police.  They simply couldn’t care less.

Oh, you say, but it has to be different for law enforcement officers?

Those kinds of guns are made to kill people, and no one should be killing people, except in the line of duty.

But why should anyone kill anyone else in the line of duty?  Has this author read the Supreme Court decision in Tennessee versus Garner?  Law enforcement officers can only shoot in self defense, i.e., to save their lives.  Use of weapons to enforce the law isn’t allowed.

So the author is only allowing shooting in the line of duty, and duty only includes self defense.  Does that mean that it applies to me too?  I see self defense as my religious duty.  God requires it of me.

In reality, following their arguments to their logical conclusions isn’t in the game plan. They aren’t interest in your safety.  That argument is fake, and they quickly give it up when challenged.  They’re only interested in allowing government-sanctioned violence.  They don’t want to admit it, but they’re Fascists.  So the next time you read another advocacy commentary for gun control in the name of your safety, make a mental note of that person as a complete fraud and dismiss it as another Fascist attempt to fake his way through the issue.

So as we have been discussing, Texas is considering a proposal to imprison federal agents who enforce new gun regulations.

A Texas lawmaker says he plans to file the Firearms Protection Act, which would make any federal laws that may be passed by Congress or imposed by Presidential order which would ban or restrict ownership of semi-automatic firearms or limit the size of gun magazines illegal in the state, 1200 WOAI news reports.

Republican Rep. Steve Toth says his measure also calls for felony criminal charges to be filed against any federal official who tries to enforce the rule in the state.

“If a federal official comes into the state of Texas to enforce the federal executive order, that person is subject to criminal prosecution,” Toth told 1200 WOAI’s Joe Pags Tuesday.  He says his bill would make attempting to enforce a federal gun ban in Texas punishable by a $50,000 fine and up to five years in prison.

Toth says he will file his measure after speaking with the state’s Repubicans Attorney General, Greg Abbott, who has already vowed to fight any federal measures which call for restrictions on weapons possession.

Toth concedes that he would welcome a legal fight over his proposals.

At some point there needs to be a showdown between the states and the federal government over the Supremacy Clause,” he said.

We need more than talk.  One or more of these state bills needs to pass in order to be a legitimate threat to the power of the federal agencies.