Archive for the 'Guns' Category

Forbes:

Random gun violence is a terrifying fact of American life, because of both the violence and the randomness. Terror bred by violence does not really require comment; they are twinned. But terror bred by randomness does, especially when it leads people to accept as true a reasonable story that is false, when a myth functions as an explanation. And that is what is happening with the way we talk about mental illness and random gun violence. Thankfully, a just published report in the Annals of Epidemiology pulls together the facts we need to consider if we really want to adopt evidence-based policies to reduce random gun violence.

The article, “Mental illness and reduction of gun violence and suicide: bringing epidemiologic research to policy,” is a comprehensive, critical survey of the available data (and it is surprisingly accessible and  well-written for an academic treatise). It concludes that “most violent behavior is due to factors other than mental illness.”

[ … ]

Jeffrey W. Swanson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine and lead author of the article in Annals of Epidemiology was quoted in the UCLA Newsroom saying ”but even if schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression were cured, our society’s problem of violence would diminish by only about 4 percent.”

That is not very much. When people with mental illness do act violently it is typically for the same reasons that people without mental illness act violently.

In other words, advocacy for mental health checks and blame of the “mentally ill” for violence in the U.S. is not only unfair, it is a ruse intended to hide the real reasons for the advocacy, which is to intrude on civil rights and the moral duty of self defense.

It’s nice to see the recapitulation of things already said about this issue, in fact things I have cataloged.

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.

“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 ….

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.

Whether folks engage in myth-telling because they believe in myths, or just want to mislead, the result is the same.  Communicating lies is both hurtful and sinful.  We are required to tell the truth, and the truth is that there is little to no correlation between mental health, whatever that is, and violence.

David Codrea:

In a peculiar combination of a “Catch-22” contradiction along with Soviet-style psychiatric controls, expect the desire to own guns to be proof of a mental disability. Especially if they’re the “non-sporting” kind and accompanied by a belief that keeping and bearing them is “necessary to the security of a free State.”

Kurt Hofmann:

[citing a gun controller] … but there must be plenty of people among the eight million Americans now holding Concealed Carry (CCW) privileges who don’t have the physical or mental dexterity that handling a lethal weapon requires.

Then advocate taking them off the road first, since automobiles are the most lethal weapon in America.  Let’s hear it.  I want to hear this weasel advocate taking cars away from people who need transportation.  Until then, he’s just a wind bag full of hot air.

 Via Mike Vanderboegh, Kevin Williamson:

Is there something magical about Albion’s seed — Protestantism? the English language itself? the combination of the two in the King James Bible? — that inoculates the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand against the European intellectual disease? That disease mutates every 20 years, but the primordial strain of the virus is always identifiable: more power, centralized power, consolidated power.

Yes, and to the degree which it wanes, totalitarianism will wax strong.  It’s called the philosophical problem of the one and the many, which totalitarian societies answer favoring the former, while anarchy answers favoring the later.  Only historical Christianity gets it right, with the balance of institutions – government, family and church – all answerable to God.

Via Uncle … oh my.  Just … oh my!

David Codrea:

A recently promoted and parroted monopoly of violence cult talking point appears to be that women wouldn’t “need” guns if men were all good. And if wishes were fishes we’d all cast nets, or if “ifs” and “buts” were candy and nuts, we’d all have a Merry Christmas.

Ain’t that something? It seems like James Madison, someone who had more than a passing interest in the Second Amendment, expressed related thoughts in The Federalist #51: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

David also discusses Alinsky Rule 5 ridicule centered around penises.  No joke.  Stop by and see what he’s talking about.  And many thanks to David for the attention at Examiner.

I’m reminded of a visit I took with my second son, Joseph, to King’s Mountain military park a while back.  While public school kids today are learning (through common core) about how cool Islamist jihadists are, the only other ones I saw at King’s Mountain that day were home schoolers (Joseph is grown, but we both learned a lot at the park).

One of the British commanders remarked in his letters that he had never seen men such as he was fighting at King’s Mountain.  They would ride on horseback by moonlight for weeks, he said, without food or provisions, just to kill a single man, and then turn around and go home – if they lived.  As word went out across the mountains about the British intentions, men would prepare to ride to the battle, with women in the trails and streets of their townships urging them on and singing hymns of blessing upon them and beseeching God’s grace on them.

Where are these sturdy women of today?  Men need you.

Via WRSA, Louis Awerbuck has passed away.  In honor of his life, I am posting these two training videos.

I find that Louis was a very good teacher, making use of repeat instruction to help the student and without any attitude or condescension at all.  This is the mark of a wise instructor.

As for his recommendations for use of pistol and tactical light in opposing hands, I no longer do that unless I have to.  I had to perform room clearing on a house recently, involving a lot of rooms, and as you know I shoot .45 ACP and I happened to be holding an XDm .45 with double stack 13 round magazine (my 1911 would have been even heavier because of the frame and 5.25 inch barrel).

By the time I was finished, I noticed that my single hand holding the pistol was exhausted (I was gripping the pistol in one hand, tactical light in the other).  Additionally, by using one hand you give up the stability of the two-handed grip.  I now use an attached tactical light when I can (although this also had disadvantages such as the need to use a holster that can carry both).

Kurt Hofmann:

What Perlstein doesn’t mention, but undoubtedly knows, is that if the armed federal muscle had not backed off, the only other option would have been a bloody battle. Killing in wholesale numbers, over a dispute about where cows eat. This guy wants the government to go into combat against American citizens, very possibly igniting civil war, and has the audacity to claim that it’s the “gun nuts” who “are terrorizing America.”

I don’t think the collectivists have thought through this point.  They have assumed that any advance by government forces would have brought capitulation by the folks at the ranch.  This simply isn’t true, and we’ve discussed the legality and morality of shooting back at the ranch should government forces fire the first shot.  The same lack of thought afflicts the suggestion that because the government has tanks and nuclear weapons, a citizenry cannot hold tyranny accountable – as if the government would, or should, wage conventional and nuclear war on its citizens!  As for that matter, these collectivists who believe that owning tanks assures their perpetuity don’t understand 4GW.

A good guy with a gun …

To be effective with a gun in a crisis situation requires not just instinct but training. Police officers and military forces go through extensive instruction for good reason. It isn’t enough to knock a few beer cans off a fencepost or to accurately line up a deer in a rifle sight.

A friend who is a former Captain with the [very large] Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department once told me that we both knew more about guns and tactics than most cops on the force, who shoot their weapons only when they qualify once a year at the range.  She believes the myth.  And let me tell you something lady.  I notice that you insulted boys with hunting rifles and scopes who hunt deer.  Don’t you mess with those boys.  They’ll put a hurting on you, in the woods or anywhere else.

You want to know why Thad Conchran won in Mississippi?  Mike Vanderboegh has the scoop.

Make sure to read David Codrea on Ted Cruz, Ronald Reagan, politics and guns.  The results may surprise you.  I find the positions held by Ted Cruz to my liking, regardless of what his wife does for a living.  As for his wife, I’ll hold judgment – well, no I won’t.  And I want to hear Ted on gun rights.

Finally, this is a note I sent to the webmaster of the Louisiana National Guard (because that was the only email address I could find on the site).

Sir,
 
I see no other way on your web site to contact command of Louisiana National Guard concerning my questions, so I am reaching out to you to forward this note to your superiors.  This is the first of several questions I have concerning Lousiana National Guard actions during Katrina, but we may as well start with the first one.  I would like to have a traceable paper trail for all of my communications, and if necessary I will fill out the requisite paperwork for FOI request.  Let’s hope that it doesn’t come to that.
 
My first question concerns whether LNG soldiers were armed (with rounds in magazines and/or chambered) during your response to Katrina.  I would like a PDF copy of your arming orders for this if so.  Your CO will know what I refer to when I say “arming orders.”
 
Thank you,
 
Herschel Smith
http://www.captainsjournal.com/

I think you see where I’m going with this.  I don’t expect it to be easy or quick.

WTNH.com:

14 months ago there were about 200.

“After the law was passed, unfortunately, it did nothing to make the state safer and in fact it hurt jobs in the state of Connecticut so unfortunately now we’re down to about 150 employees,” Malkowski said.

For Malkowski that was very hard because he says it was the first time he had to layoff employees in the eleven years he has run ‘Stag Arms.’

As for the years ahead … and if his company does see any growth again what will he do?

“Any future expansion we do for business we will look to other states,” he said, adding, “just because of how difficult it is to operate in the state of Connecticut but for right now we’re going to be operating here.”

He says that he has lost some regular customers, as several smaller gun shops have closed around the state and some out of state customers are unhappy that he continues to operate here.

He says, “they would rather see us in a different place.”

Maybe they will hang on until they are out of business entirely.  They could choose to move to a free state and repair their image, but apparently that’s too difficult for them.  I do understand the trauma of relocation and move of a business, including all of the employees.  But the alternative seems to be death of the company.

These are hard choices, and Stag Arms didn’t choose to be in this position.  Nonetheless, they are here and must act wisely.  Seldom do we get to choose our circumstances.  We only choose how to respond.  That’s what defines our character.

The Scary Reason Some Men Like Guns Better Than Women:

I have been lucky enough not to know too many violent men in my life. And even though I grew up in a part of the country where hunting and gun shows are common, and gun laws are relatively lax, I didn’t know many gun enthusiasts, either. The landlord’s list rattled me. I thought of that scene in Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, where the drill sergeant barks, “You will give your rifle a girl’s name, because this is the only pussy you people are going to get.”

The rest of Ann Friedman’s article is more of the same.  She says, with approbation, “Paradoxically, the NRA also actively courts female members. “Come explore, connect, celebrate and unite with the women of NRA,” beckons the NRA Women’s channel, alongside clips with names like “Armed and Fabulous” and “Love at First Shot.” (They’re “stories of empowered women like you,” per the site.) Companies offering products like pink rifles and bra holsters promise to help women “look feminine, look good, and still feel safe.”

It’s sickening to her that a woman would have such a thing, and yet she is the one who conflates why we advocate that women be armed, i.e., exactly so that no one does them harm.  If men are such abusers, the real paradox Ann doesn’t address is why we would advocate that women arm themselves?  But the best is yet to come.  Ann has put the ball in play, but the scoring drive is capped off with this comment.

Males are born narcissists and are needier as children. They have to be taught early in childhood to care about something and someone other than themselves. If not taught young that the world doesn’t revolve around them, that extreme weakness for self-absorption edges over into either the weird or dangerous in adolescence, sometimes both and certainly an inability to successfully navigate life outside their own door in adulthood. The desire to control others because of an inability to control oneself is a pathology. To do so with violence is sociopathy and in the extreme psychopathy.

As my oldest son Josh remarked when he read that comment, “This was written by a person who has never raised children.”  To his point, the notion that man is a tabula rasa doesn’t survive the first child (and I know, as I have four children and he has three, two girls and one boy).  As a Christian, I have an answer as to why both girls and boys are like this.  It’s called federal headship.  We’re all born with a sinful nature.  If you’re not a Christian, you’re on your on to explain evil.  I can’t help you.

Or if she is talking about the fact that boys like machines and things that go boom, this certainly isn’t something to lament.  We should be celebrating the differences in genders.  Guns, like anything else, can be used for evil, or they can help bring out the best innate characteristics in men to protect and serve their familes.

In the end, on a serious note this is a sad commentary on the degree to which Ann Friedman and her commenters don’t really understand what they think they do.  On a slightly more whimsical note, I suspect that the men in Ann’s life have abused her, or that she is married to or dating a confused, effete man who loathes himself and all manhood.  Or both.

Either way, Ann should buy a gun and demand that the men in her life learn how to use it.  It may help change how she sees men and the world around her.

Via David Codrea, Dave Workman:

Yesterday, Seattle Mayor Ed Murray’s hand-picked police chief, Kathleen O’Toole, was sworn in to lead the beleaguered department, and tomorrow at 1 p.m. he will hold a special meeting with the city council to address “gun violence,” which could be a learning experience for one and all.

O’Toole has been in and out of law enforcement in Massachusetts and recently in Ireland, but she’s yet to walk a beat west of the Mississippi or north of the Columbia and when – not “if” – the mayor starts talking about gun control, she’ll be facing something not found in the Bay State. Gun owners in Washington State don’t need permission from police or politicians to exercise their rights, and they know it. Local governments can’t set their own firearms policies, and gun owners know that, too.

Ah.  It’s always nice to see the reaction of communists when they land in a free state.  During the DNC when so many cops from around the nation were in Charlotte assisting the “Federal Protection Police” to keep Obama safe, local news reported that the Chicago [and other] cops – during their off time – had found a new favorite place to hang out: Hyatt Gun Shop.  Not coincidentally, I like Hyatt too, and I know Larry on a first name basis.  Hyatt Gun Shop, if you’ll recall, was the store that sold $1 million worth of AR-15s in a single day just prior to Christmas several years ago.  Perhaps the cops had never seen so many law abiding citizens buying and carrying weapons.  To Ms. O’Toole, welcome to freedom.  Don’t expect to change it.  You’ll fail.

David Codrea:

“We are at present two peoples, two countries really, living within a common border and sharing (mostly) a common language but divided upon the answer to this question: does the government serve the people or do the people serve the government?” Vanderboegh elaborated. “This is not a question that the answer can be finessed, negotiated or ignored. It is one or the other, that of individual liberty as the Founders intended or of collectivist power in service to a few.”  “Yet we shrink from the honest conclusion,” he continued. “And that conclusion is that such mutually exclusive worldviews cannot long coexist without one or the other winning out.

David is covering Mike, and Mike is telling hard truths.  We won’t vote our way out of this mess.  Upon my last (and only visit) to New York, I remarked to my son that although I share a common language with them, I hardly even consider them to be fellow countrymen.  We have almost nothing else in common.  If I publish on labor unions and Remington (as I have), I make enemies of even the most ardent gun rights advocates in the North.  I mean no disrespect to my Northern readers, but if there is one day a rebirth of America, it will include you or not, but you will get to make that call.  Right now, I have my doubts about your willingness to participate.  There are good folks in Connecticut and New York, but we may be approaching the time when you need to get out.  The die may have been cast in your home states.

Mike Vanderboegh has a link to The Soldier’s Load.  It’s a good and educated study.  Drop by and read it, and then take a turn into history and recall what I said here about combat load, and then here concerning the ability to live and function in your environment.

Kurt Hofmann:

Any restriction on guns, ammunition and accessories justified by their failure to meet the government’s idea of “sporting purposes” is very clearly a violation of the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment, as the court ruling in Pennsylvania helps illustrate.

Sean Linnane has an article up entitled Operation Zero Footprint on Benghazi.  It is absolutely must read for those who care about the badness that is the current U.S. government.

As I’ve said before concerning gun rights and favorable statistical outcomes:

… what happens to society at the macroscopic level is immaterial.  My rights involve me and my family, and don’t depend on being able to demonstrate that the general health effects in society are not a corollary to or adversely affected by the free exercise of them.

It’s insidious and even dangerous to argue gun rights as a part of crime prevention based on statistics because it presupposes what the social planners to, i.e., that I’m part of the collective.

Kurt Hofmann has weighed in with an affirmative vote for my position here and here.  This is [partly] why I don’t give John Lott the time of day (there are other reasons).  But occasionally it pays to examine the anti-gunner’s data and show them up for the poor scientists they are.  One such example comes to us from The Washington Post.  The author waxes knowledgeable about school shootings, and then presents this map.

What the author doesn’t tell you is this.  Savannah State, historically black college; South Carolina State University, historically black college; Paine College, historically black; Stillman College, historically black; Grambling State, black college; Stevens, inner city St. Louis, majority black; Elizabeth City State University, historically black college; North Carolina A&T, black college; and Tennessee State, black college.

Chris Conover also upbraids the anti-gunner statistics at Forbes.  The lesson is that they anti-gunners see what they want to, and when they [inadvertently] land on a meaningful social and cultural observation concerning black-on-black crime, they don’t turn it into a full blown commentary or analysis.

Because it doesn’t fit the narrative of collective responsibility.

Presbyterian Church (USA) on guns:

Among other things, the Assembly’s action calls for:

• formation of support, healing and advocacy groups for those who have experienced gun violence in their families;
• opposition to legislation that exempts gun manufacturers and marketers from legal liability and/or financial accountability for the medical and security costs of predictable gun misuse and availability to criminals, the unstable, and the self-destructive;
• opposition to “stand your ground” and other legislation that may entitle gun owners to shoot before taking alternative measures (such as relying on law enforcement and/or other de-escalation techniques) in perceived defense of persons or property;
• encouraging church sessions and PC(USA) entities that own property to declare their particular premises and gatherings to be gun-free zones;
• raising the age for handgun ownership to 21;
• supporting legislation to ban semiautomatic assault weapons, armor-piercing handgun ammunition and .50-caliber rifles; and
• advocacy in support of state and federal legislation to regulate ammunition.

I’m not part of the PCUSA, but having attended Reformed Theological Seminary, I know something about the history of Presbyterianism in the U.S.  The problem started with the Auburn Affirmation, and even before then from the theological liberalism that led directly to that abomination.

Notice that the denomination doesn’t just engage in tactical blundering and hot air.  To be sure, there’s plenty of that to go around.  Reliance on LEOs during period of peril to your life or the lives of your loved ones means that the fight is over by the time (8 – 15 minutes) a LEO arrives.

They go beyond their tactical incompetence and recommend bankruptcy of gun manufacturers when their weapons are misused (similar recommendations for Stanley, Kobalt, Craftsman and other manufacturers of hammers probably won’t be forthcoming when crimes are committed with hammers).  And if that’s not good enough, they recommend new laws that would end with confiscation and civil war when SWAT teams are sent to the doors of patriotic Americans who won’t allow their means of self defense to be confiscated.  So the PCUSA recommends what would inevitably become a bloody mess with cops laying dead in the streets and innocent citizens laying dead in their doorways.

In the mean time, they leave men and women undefended because of their turn to politics to address the theological problems of mankind.  We’ve discussed God’s views of the requirement to defend your loved ones.  The simplest case for killing those who would bring harm to your family lies in the decalogue.

God’s law requires [us] to be able to defend the children and helpless.  “Relying on Matthew Henry, John Calvin and the Westminster standards, we’ve observed that all Biblical law forbids the contrary of what it enjoins, and enjoins the contrary of what it forbids.”  I’ve tried to put this in the most visceral terms I can find.

God has laid the expectations at the feet of heads of families that they protect, provide for and defend their families and protect and defend their countries.  Little ones cannot do so, and rely solely on those who bore them.  God no more loves the willing neglect of their safety than He loves child abuse.  He no more appreciates the willingness to ignore the sanctity of our own lives than He approves of the abuse of our own bodies and souls.  God hasn’t called us to save the society by sacrificing our children or ourselves to robbers, home invaders, rapists or murderers. Self defense – and defense of the little ones – goes well beyond a right.  It is a duty based on the idea that man is made in God’s image.  It is His expectation that we do the utmost to preserve and defend ourselves when in danger, for it is He who is sovereign and who gives life, and He doesn’t expect us to be dismissive or cavalier about its loss.

So while you claim to be a lover of the children, you actually advocate abuse of children because you would disarm the very people with the sworn duty to protect, nurture and provide for them.

The PCUSA is directing its people to run their lives contrary to God’s law, while trying to implement warmed over, washed up hippie ideology as a solution to what ails mankind.  Thus goes perishing denominations.