Month: July 2012

Failing to Learn Lessons

I know when we fail to learn from history we doom ourselves to repeat it but you would think we’d still remember the housing bubble since it only burst and caused massive economic damage a few short years ago. Apparently not:

Amid global economic woes and a struggling jobs market lies a silver lining: Mortgage rates have fallen to the lowest level in at least 40 years, giving the housing market a much-needed boost in Minnesota and across the country.

The rate for a 30-year mortgage is 3.62 percent, less than half of the historical average.

For crying out loud the only thing we need is for some shill at Freddie Mac to come out and tell people how great of an opportunity this is… damn it:

“It’s just an incredible opportunity,” said Frank Nothaft, chief economist for Freddie Mac, which tracks national mortgage rates.

So we’re going to do it? We’re going to repeat the same bad economic polices that lead us into the current economic crisis before we’ve even managed to get ourselves out of said crisis? No lessons were learned? The idea that giving cheap money to people in the hopes they’ll buy a home is still considered solid? I guess if something doesn’t work we must try it again, only harder!

By Thor in Valhalla, we’re screwed. If the idiots in charge of economic policies can’t even learn lessons from things that happened a few short years ago there’s no hope.

The Cap and Trade Endgame

Yesterday I wrote about the failure inherit in the idea of carbon taxes. What about carbon rationing, more commonly referred to as cap and trade? If there is a hard set limit to the amount of carbon that can be outputted by an individual or company won’t that solve the problem? Won’t the issue of carbon being emitted into the atmosphere be a thing of the past (also, why to progressive environmentalists spend all of their time focusing on a compound necessary for plant life, I can think of far more dangerous compounds to be concerned about)?

While progressive environmentalists love to parrot political solutions to environmental problems they fail to see the fact that political solutions are never actually solutions, they’re merely mechanisms of plunder. How can a system of hard set limites be used as a mechanism of plunder? Through the punishment wielded against those who surpass their ration. All political solutions have a common problem, enforcement (which isn’t the only problem mind you). Who is going to enforce a carbon ration? Either a currently existing agency or a newly formed agency. My money would be put on the Environmental Plunder Protection Agency (EPA) being given the task of enforcing a carbon rationing scheme in the United States although legislation could create a new Carbon Enforcement Agency. Either way the same point of corruptibility will exist, the desire to plunder.

Government agencies are the same as individuals and businesses in one respect, they want more wealth. Unlike individuals and businesses, government agencies are only able to get more wealth through expropriation. One form of expropriation is taxation, another is through fines. Let’s look at a piece of existing legislation that affects the same realm as a proposed carbon rationing scheme does, the Clean Air Act [PDF]. What happens when an individual or business violates the Clean Air Act? They’re fined:

Section 113 of the Clean Air Act allows EPA to seek penalties of up to $25,000 per day for each violation. EPA may in appropriate cases accept less than the statutory maximum in settlement.

The maximum amount a violator can be fined is $25,000 per infraction per day but the EPA maintains the ability to issue lesser fines. There is an entire section of the document that deals with “calculating a penalty.” Reading through it various criteria exist for determining the penalty issued against a violator including the perceived economic benefit gained by the violator, the gravity of the violation, and the potential for harm. What interesting is that the supposed economic benefit is based on a computer model while the other criteria are determined by enforcement agents. Giving enforcement agents the right to determine the severity of a violation and set a fine according to that set severity opens the doors for cronyism.

Of course we would need a motive for an individual or business to violate a carbon rationing law. For the motivation we need to only look at basic economics, namely supply and demand. Creating a carbon rationing system would create a supply of carbon ration units (CRU) which would be in demand by any entity that emitted carbon. So long as demand remains the same prices have a tendency to increase as supply decreases. Likewise, so long as supply remains the same, prices have a tendency to increase as demand increases. In the case of a carbon rationing system the supply of CRUs would likely remain constant or decrease over time (as the law is trying to discourage emitting carbon into the atmosphere) while the demand would increase (as the demand for electrify and consumer goods increases). Therefore it would make sense that the cost of CRUs would continue to increase with time. Therefore CRUs would become a valuable good (although a fiat one) that holders would have cause to sell while emitters of carbon would have cause to buy.

A third factory of this grand scheme that needs to be looked at is the way CRUs would be distributed. Two methods would likely exist: either those wanting to emit carbon would have to buy CRUs from some government agency or some government agency would grant CRUs based on some kind of formula. Either scheme is likely to favor larger polluters. Let’s consider the first method, companies had to purchase CRUs from a government agency. As stated above, as demand for CRUs increased or supply decreased (or both) the price of CRUs would increase. An increasing price would favor established individuals and businesses that had access to enough excess capital to soak up the additional costs of purchasing CRUs to continue with business as usual. Meanwhile a new barrier to entry has been placed on markets that involved emitting carbon into the atmosphere, the cost of purchasing enough CRUs. Now on top of having a place of business, a method of manufacturing goods, a method of getting those goods into the hands of consumers, the cost of complying with current regulations, etc. a new market actor also has to purchase CRUs. Effectively the established market actors are further shielded from new competition because the bar to enter the market has been raised. If the prices of CRUs continued to increase the bar would be in a constant state if rise, further shielding currently established market actors from potential competitors.

Now I’ll consider the other method of distributing CRUs, a government agency doling them out. The information about the Clean Air Act I linked to earlier demonstrates the problem with allowing government agencies to determine things, they get to determine the criteria their determinations are based upon. A government agency in charge of distributing CRUs would have a plethora of criteria to use including economic need (for example, power plants are necessary for modern life so it would make sense to give power plant holders enough CRUs), economic benefit (a large company can be said to provide more economic benefit since they serve more customers), necessity for the security of the nation (obviously defense contractors would need to be given enough CRUs since they build the weapons that allow the state to plunder foreign countries protect our nation from the terrorists), etc. Such a system would be ripe for cronyism. In fact it would be very possible, and I would even say very likely, that new market actors would not receive enough CRUs to manufacture enough goods to turn a profit. Due to this they would likely be forced to sell their CRUs to already established market actors in order to simply keep the doors open. Since they would be unable to manufacture goods they would be unable to compete with established market actors and the established market actors are once again protected from possible competition by the state. Regardless of the method chosen to distribute CRUs established market actors would have a major advantage over new market actors.

So we have three factors to consider: the mechanism of punishing violators of a carbon rationing scheme, the motivation a business would have to violate a carbon rationing scheme, and the method in which CRUs would be distributed. All of this combines into a nasty system that favors currently established market actors and hinders new market actors.

Going by historical examples it would be likely that violators of a carbon rationing scheme would be fined and the amount of that fine, although capped at a maximum, would be determined by an enforcement agency. The law of supply and demand would likely cause the price of CRUs to increase over time. At some point the price of CRUs is likely to exceed the common, or even maximum, find of violating the carbon rationing scheme. There is when it will be in the best interests of carbon emitters to violate the rationing scheme. In fact such a scenario wouldn’t be dissimilar to one where British Petroleum (BP) was able to buy permission from an environmental enforcement agency to dump more mercury into the Great Lakes. The state doesn’t care if it gets its money through fines or selling permission, and neither do businesses that are able to soak up the additional costs. Unfortunately for new market actors they are unlikely to have the additional capital to pay the fines that would almost certainly be involved in violating the rationing scheme.

Of course the state could just keep increasing the fine, right? Technically yes, although they would be shooting themselves in the foot by doing so. The state exists through theft and is unable to continue existing if they run out of victims to steal from. What motivation would the state have for increasing fines to a point violators couldn’t pay? Doing that would ensure the end of continued payments, effectively it would kill the cash cow. The state, like a tick, only takes what it can get away with without killing its host. A tick that bled a host dry would find itself having to go through the trouble of finding a new host and eventually would fact the harsh reality of having no hosts left to suck blood from. The state is the same way, they don’t want to bleed their cash cows dry, they want to bleed them as much as possible without killing them so they can continue the parasitic process. It’s unfortunate for new market actors that they don’t have enough excess capital for the state to take otherwise they could get in on the scheme.

A carbon cap, like a carbon tax, is a mechanism of plunder. It won’t accomplish the goal of lowering carbon output because the state won’t create a system that will kill its cash cows. All a carbon cap will accomplish is rewarding the state and its cronies at the cost of everybody else. No new competitors will be able to enter the market meaning currently established market actors will be free to increase their prices (don’t forget that any additional costs, such as needing to buy CRUs, will be forwarded onto customers) without concern. Overall quality of life will be reduced as individuals are unable to afford many of the goods and services they normally would if competition forced a lowering of prices (like many state policies this one affects the poor the most). On top of that we probably won’t have any reduction in carbon emissions anyways so the whole point of the system would go unfulfilled.

By demanding a “cap and trade” system progressive environmentalists have once again allowed themselves to be suckered into helping the very people they oppose (namely large polluters).

Rahm Emanuel’s New Gang Fighting Strategy

It appears that Chicago’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel, has a new method of fighting the city’s gang problem, which is to appeal to the gangs’ sense of values:

Heaven’s death is the latest of 253 murders so far this year in what has become a numbing drumbeat of violence. But her killing may be a crescendo. It prompted an angry Mayor Rahm Emanuel to lecture the gangs driving this staggering 38% increase in Chicago homicides.

Asked about this shooting at an economic development event, the mayor said, “This is not about crime. This is about values. Take your gang conflict away from a 7-year-old. Who raised you? You have a 7-year-old selling lemonade. You’re a member of a gang coming to get lemonade and another gang member is driving by. Where were you raised and who raised you?” His voice rising and pointing his finger, he continued sternly, “Stay away from the kids!”

I’m sure this strategy will work, after all gang members are known for their high moral standards. Just because some thugs are willing to murder other individuals over petty turf wars doesn’t mean they can’t be reasoned with, right? That’s been the problem throughout history, people simply haven’t nicely asked violent criminals to stop! It’s almost certain that Chicago’s crime rate is going to drop like a rock now that Emanuel asked the gangs to abide by societal values!

Seriously, what a putz. Violent crime is spiking in Chicago and the best Emanuel can do is ask the gangs to be nicer? He’s still fighting any attempted loosening of Chicago’s almost blanket ban on self-defense because allowing non-violent individuals to defend themselves against violent criminals would obviously be crazy.

The Proper Method of Producing Renewable Energy

There are numerous heated debates regarding which method of energy production from renewable sources is the best one. The debate usually involved hydroelectric dams, wind turbines, and solar panels. What many people in this debate don’t see is that none of them are the best solution, the best solution is not to rely on any single source of energy. While people debate over the best method of renewable energy production some smart individuals at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) actually thought about the problem correctly:

Researchers at MIT have taken a significant step toward battery-free monitoring systems — which could ultimately be used in biomedical devices, environmental sensors in remote locations and gauges in hard-to-reach spots, among other applications.

Previous work from the lab of MIT professor Anantha Chandrakasan has focused on the development of computer and wireless-communication chips that can operate at extremely low power levels, and on a variety of devices that can harness power from natural light, heat and vibrations in the environment. The latest development, carried out with doctoral student Saurav Bandyopadhyay, is a chip that could harness all three of these ambient power sources at once, optimizing power delivery.

Relying on any single source is tempting fate by creating a single point of failure whereas using multiple sources grants a great deal of redundancy. Why rely on just solar panels or just wind turbines when you can use both? After all, solar panels only work when there’s enough sunlight while wind turbines only work when there’s enough wind. Hydroelectric dams work continuously (unless there is a major drought) but the locations where they can be built are very limited.

Let’s learn a lesson from the guys at MIT and stop thinking about a single best solution (this goes for things besides renewable energy production by the way).

If at First You Don’t Succeed Rename the Legislation and Try Again

What happens when you’re a power-hungry state that wants to offer up some terrible piece of legislation but the people keep expressing distate for the legislation? Rename it and try again:

Last week, the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to reject ACTA, striking a major blow to the hopes of supporters who envisioned a landmark agreement that would set a new standard for intellectual property rights enforcement. The European Commission, which negotiates trade deals such as ACTA on behalf of the European Union, has vowed to revive the badly damaged agreement. Its most high-profile move has been to ask the European Court of Justice to rule on ACTA’s compatibility with fundamental European freedoms with the hope that a favourable ruling could allow the European Parliament to reconsider the issue.

While the court referral has attracted the lion share of attention, my weekly technology law column (Toronto Star version, homepage version) reports that there is an alternate secret strategy in which Canada plays a key role. According to recently leaked documents, the EU plans to use the Canada – EU Trade Agreement (CETA), which is nearing its final stages of negotiation, as a backdoor mechanism to implement the ACTA provisions.

The article compares the two proposed treaties and it’s rather amusing to see how similar the language between the two is. Both treaties will effectively implement the same thing but ACTA was shot down so the promoters of the treaty had to do something, and that something was a quick name change with some minor language changes.

It’s nice to see that this kind of behavior isn’t restricted solely to the United States.

How Carbon Taxes will Harm Renewable Energy Production

If there are two things progressive environmentalists love it’s carbon taxes and so-called green energy. What’s ironic about this is that one of those things directly hampers the development of the other. A carbon tax is nothing more than an additional cost for emitting carbon into the atmosphere and almost every form of energy production and many forms of manufacturing emitting carbon into the atmosphere. Effectively carbon taxes increase the cost of energy and manufacturing in one fell swoop.

This cost increase is beneficially to currently established carbon emitters, namely it prevents new competitors from entering their markets. Unlike the already established carbon emitters who can afford to soak up the cost of another tax, new competitors in a market do not enjoy the same excess capital. The picture becomes more clear when we look at the currently established energy producers, namely coal and natural gas facilities. Current coal and natural gas-based power plants need not worry about carbon taxes because they will just forward the cost onto their customers, many of which are manufacturers.

By increasing the current costs of energy carbon taxes increase the cost of manufacturing solar panels and wind mills. Manufacturing solar panels isn’t a zero-sum carbon game either:

In the best case scenario, one square meter of solar cells carries a burden of 75 kilograms of CO2. In the worst case scenario, that becomes 314 kilograms of CO2. With a solar insolation of 1,700 kWh/m²/yr an average household needs 8 to 10 square meters of solar panels, with a solar insolation of 900 kWh/m²/yr this becomes 16 to 20 square meters. Which means that the total CO2 debt of a solar installation is 600 to 3,140 kilograms of CO2 in sunny places, and 1,200 to 6,280 kilograms of CO2 in less sunny regions. These numbers equate to 2 to 20 flights Brussels-Lissabon (up and down, per passenger) – source CO2 emissions Boeing 747.

According to the researchers, producing the same amount of electricity by fossil fuel generates at least 10 times as much greenhouse gasses. Checking different sources, this claim is confirmed: 1 kilowatt-hour of electricity generated by fossil fuels indeed emits 10 times as much CO2 (around 450 grams of CO2 per kWh for gas and 850 for coal). Solar panels might be far from an ideal solution, but they are definitely a better choice compared to electricity generated by fossil fuels. At least if we follow the assumptions chosen by the researchers.

The article then continues on to explain how the amount of carbon produced by generating electricity from solar panels isn’t necessarily lower than producing it by burning fossil fuels. You can continue reading the article if you’re interested but the main point I want to bring up is the fact that producing solar panels comes at a cost of carbon emissions, which will increase costs if carbon taxes are implemented.

Wind generators aren’t free of this issue either [PDF]:

Though CO2 emissions from wind are very small compared to coal, they are still responsible for some emissions. The amount of electricity produced per turbine, which is a factor of the number of years the nacelle operates and the capacity factor (which is a factor of both wind and nacelle availability), has the greatest impact on the CO2 emission factor of wind-generated electricity. The amount of CO2 emitted per GWh of electricity generated has a range of two, but it is still 50-100 times less than coal-generated electricity.

Although the amount of carbon emitted by generating electricity from wind (which includes everything from construction to decommissioning a windmill) is lower than burning coal the companies invested in producing electricity by burning coal are established and thus have the capital required to soak up the cost of any carbon taxes.

Let’s not forget that while “green” energy producers receive buckets of government money so do coal burning power plants [PDF] (man I love the progressive environmentalists’ sources against them):

The United States is the single largest contributor to the World Bank and a major supporter of other international financial institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank and the African Development Bank. The United States also provides subsidized financing internationally through the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and the U.S. Export Import Bank. Together, international financial institutions have helped finance 88 new and expanded coal plants since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change came into effect in 1994, providing more than $137 billion in direct and indirect financial support for new coal-fired power plants.

Obviously owners of coal burning power facilities are in favor with the state.

Carbon taxes will harm all forms of production, including those required for the new wave of “green” energy the progressive environmentalists want to bring in. Such additional costs will, like most taxes, favor currently established market actors (power producers that use fossil fuels) while hampering new market actors (power producers that use renewable sources of energy). If history is any indication we can also assume that the currently established fossil fuel industries will receive other forms of benefits that will hamper the well-connected but not as well-connected “green” energy industries.

When you rely on political solutions to solve your problems you enter a deadly game where victory isn’t determined by facts but by political connections and money. Of course one could increase the costs of polluting, which would increase the costs of generating power by burning fossil fuels, if they supported actual property rights.

How Does that Work

There’s nothing about this story that doesn’t sound fishy:

A woman celebrating the weekend before her 25th birthday was fatally shot Sunday when she hugged an off-duty police officer while dancing at a party, causing the officer’s service weapon to fire, according to police and her mother.

[…]

According to Stephens, the woman “embraced the officer from behind, causing the holstered weapon to accidently discharge.” The bullet punctured Miller’s lung and hit her heart, and she died at a hospital.

I’ve been mulling this over with some of my friends and we’ve come up with a few possibilities. The only way the officer’s story could hold up, as far as my friends and I are concerned, is if the firearm was in a shoulder holster and when the gun was holstered by the officer something got into the trigger guard. Why a shoulder holster? Because the bullet punctured the woman’s heart and thus must have been aimed either up or a chest level.

Occam’s razor states that the simplest explanation is probably the correct one though and the simplest explanations are the cop either had the gun unholstered in a pocket or pulled the weapon out of his holster to mess with it. I really can’t see the officer’s story holding up as most holsters would prevent the trigger from being activated by mere pressure and he was wearing the holster on his hip the gun was either upside down or the bullet perfectly ricocheted off of the ground. At this point I’m not buying the officer’s story, it just doesn’t add up.

FBI Finally Offering a Reward for Information Pertaining to Brian Terry’s Murder

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) are finally offering a reward for information pertaining to Brian Terry’s murderer:

The FBI has offered a $1m (£644,000) reward for information on four suspects wanted over the killing of a US border patrol agent in December 2010.

What the FBI isn’t offering is a reward for the capture of those who allowed Fast and Furious to happen in the first place and have been busily trying to cover it up every since Terry’s murder. If I were the head of the FBI I’d offer a $1 million reward for anybody who could obtain a copy of the documents Eric Holder was granted executive privilege to withhold.

We’re all Terrorists

When it comes to politics there are large perceived divides. One of the most notable today is the apparent divide between the Tea Party and Occupy movements. Members of the Tea Party movement accuse members of the Occupy movement of being godless communists who want to redistribute the country’s wealth. Meanwhile members of the Occupy movement accuse members of the Tea Party movement of being fascists who advocate violent solutions and hate the poor. What could these two organizations have in common? They’re both fall under the state’s criteria for potential terrorist organization [PDF]:

Extreme Right-Wing: groups that believe that one’s personal and/or national “way of life” is under attack and is either already lost or that the threat is imminent (for some the threat is from a specific ethnic, racial, or religious group), and believe in the need to be prepared for an attack either by participating in paramilitary preparations and training or survivalism. Groups may also be fiercely nationalistic (as opposed to universal and international in orientation), anti-global, suspicious of centralized federal authority, reverent of individual liberty, and believe in conspiracy theories that involve grave threat to national sovereignty and/or personal liberty.

Extreme Left-Wing: groups that want to bring about change through violent revolution rather than through established political processes. This category also includes secular left-wing groups that rely heavily on terrorism to overthrow the capitalist system and either establish “a dictatorship of the proletariat” (Marxist-Leninists) or, much more rarely, a decentralized, non-hierarchical political system (anarchists).

Religious: groups that seek to smite the purported enemies of God and other evildoers, impose strict religious tenets or laws on society (fundamentalists), forcibly insert religion into the political sphere (e.g., those who seek to politicize religion, such as Christian Reconstructionists and Islamists), and/or bring about Armageddon (apocalyptic millenarian cults; 2010: 17). For example, Jewish Direct Action, Mormon extremist, Jamaat-al-Fuqra, and Covenant, Sword and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) are included in this category.

Ethno-Nationalist/Separatist: regionally concentrated groups with a history of organized political autonomy with their own state, traditional ruler, or regional government, who are committed to gaining or regaining political independence through any means and who have supported political movements for autonomy at some time since 1945.

Single Issue: groups or individuals that obsessively focus on very specific or narrowly-defined causes (e.g., anti-abortion, anti-Catholic, anti-nuclear, anti-Castro). This category includes groups from all sides of the political spectrum.

One thing is for certain, if you’re not an obedient dog of the state you are a potential terrorist. This is something we all have to realize, it’s not about left versus right or conservatives versus progressives, it’s about us versus the state. According to the state the Tea Party movement are right-wing extremists while the Occupy movement are left-wing extremists. Are you a single issue voter or a member of a single issue organization? Then you’re a potential single issue terrorist. Do you strongly believe in a religion? Then you’re a potential religious terrorist. Are you an advocate for secession? Then you fit the criteria of an ethno-separatist terrorist.

Many people in the gun rights community have raged at the statement about individuals “suspicious of centralized federal authority” and/or “reverent of individual liberty” being a sign of terroristic potential but didn’t seem to bat an eyelash at the other groups. When I read through this document I realized that, according to the state, we’re all terrorists. It doesn’t matter if you’re left-wing or right-wing, a Tea Party member or an Occupy member, an advocate of individual liberty or a believer in collectivism, we’re all enemies in the eyes of the state. Anybody who rocks the boat is a potential enemy. To quote George Carlin:

They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. Thats against their interests.

Thats right. They don’t want people who are smart enough to sit around a kitchen table and think about how badly they’re getting fucked by a system that threw them overboard 30 fucking years ago. They don’t want that!

You know what they want? They want obedient workers. Obedient workers, people who are just smart enough to run the machines and do the paperwork. And just dumb enough to passively accept all these increasingly shitty jobs with the lower pay, the longer hours, the reduced benefits, the end of overtime and vanishing pension that disappears the minute you go to collect it…

That’s what the state wants. Anybody who doesn’t fit their mold is automatically considered a potential threat. What really hurts is that the state is either brilliant, the majority of the human race is incredibly stupid, or both. Instead of fighting those who are currently taking our shit, putting us in cages for disobeying their decrees, and actively killing people they dislike we’re fighting each other. The state has us fighting each other instead of fighting them. They say the enemy of my enemy is my friend, in which case we’re all friends of the state because we’re all enemies of the state. The right accuses the left of wanting to take everybody’s shit while the left accuses the right of wanting to throw the poor out onto the street. While this debate about hypotheticals is waged the state is actively taking everybody’s shit and throwing the poor out onto the street while also convincing both the left and the right that it’s the only thing stopping their opponents from achieving their goals. It should come as no surprise that an entity built entirely upon violence and deception is so exceedingly good at violence and deception.

Perhaps we should stop fighting amongst each other and start fighting our common enemy, the state. One thing we can all agree on whether we’re anarchists, socialists, progressives, or constitutionalists is this: the current state of affairs is unsuitable. So long as the status quo is maintained our debates are hypothetical since we’re not free to enact the plans we believe are best.

One in 40 Minnesota Adults Has a Permit to Carry

On Sunday the Star Tribune, which generally leans collectivist, ran an article on permit holders in Minnesota. While I was expecting anti-gun propaganda I have to admit that the article is actually balanced, another sign that we’re winning. I found the following statistic interesting:

Handgun owners have more freedom now than they’ve had in nearly a century, with every state except Illinois offering average residents the option of getting a carry permit, up from just a few states in the 1970s. In Utah, where gun laws are so liberal public schools can’t even prohibit them, one in nearly seven adults has a permit. In New Jersey, where local authorities have retained the discretion to deny permits, just one in 4,200 adults has one.

This spring, in the wake of the killing of unarmed teen Trayvon Martin in Florida and a vigorous national debate over “Stand Your Ground” laws, Minnesota surpassed 100,000 permits, putting it in the numeric middle of the states, with one in 40 adults now licensed to carry.

What does the Martin case have to do with Minnesota permit holders? Nothing. Why was it brought up? Because the Star Tribune has to put in some kind of slight against permit holders, as I said they lean heavily collectivist. Either way it’s interesting to note that when the state was may-issue there were only 4,200 permit holders and now that the state is shall-issue there are over 100,000 permit holders. This massive increase in the number of permit holders hasn’t lead to an increase in violent crime (the law changed in 2003). It’s also nice to see Wisconsin residents moved in quickly to obtain carry permits after it’s state legally lawful carrying of firearms late last year:

Minnesotans queued up at an average rate of 10,000 a year, swelling the ranks of permit holders from 11,381 in 2002 to 50,777 by 2007. Wisconsin, which in November became one of the last states to pass a carry permit law, reached 100,000 permits in less than six months.

I was pleased that the article author put in a piece that acknowledges the fact that Minnesota allows permit holders to carry openly or concealed:

Rothman says he is among the relatively few state residents who exercise the right under the law to carry openly, his pistol strapped to his left hip.

“Education is the reason,” he said. “Many people don’t know that carrying a gun can be perfectly legal, and [they] emotionally equate guns with illegal violence. When they see a neatly groomed suburban dad innocently shopping with this undeniably adorable young kids, it challenges that preconception.”

I know there is a heated debate between gun rights advocates regarding open carry. Some claim that openly carrying a gun for political reasons is absolutely idiotic but I agree with Rothman’s statement, open carry works as a mechanism of raising awareness. When individuals see an otherwise normal looking individual carrying a gun they are often inclined to ask about it and are then surprised to learn that it is legal for people outside of law enforcement to carry firearms. That individual may then decide to get a carry permit and our numbers increase. My form of carry is based on comfort. Generally I conceal my firearm because it avoids potential headaches I don’t want to deal with but when concealment becomes uncomfortable (when biking for example) I openly carry. Thankfully we hav both options available to us in Minnesota.

The article also managed to get a quote from one of the local anti-gunners that greatly demonstrates the flaw in their rhetoric:

The law “has not been a net benefit to our society in any way,” said Heather Martens, executive director of Protect Minnesota — Working to End Gun Violence. “They promised that if lots of people had guns everybody would be safe. Here just [recently] we had a 5-year-old child killed while sleeping on a couch. I think we were sold a bill of goods.”

I don’t know of a single gun rights advocate that said “if lots of people had guns everybody would be safe.” What those of us who advocate gun rights have said is that having more individuals carrying firearms will not lead to an increase in violent crime and it gives individuals an option if they’re attacked by a violent individuals. The anti-gunner then brings up a case completely unrelated to the story at hand, but it involved a child so the emotional value is very high and anti-gunners prey on emotions. Was the person who shot the 5 year-old a permit holder? Not that I’ve heard. How did the case of the 5 year-old being shot related to a story about permit holders? It didn’t. The flat in the gun control zealots’ cause is that it’s based entirely on emotional appeal instead of factual data. Since they can’t win with facts they try to create an image in the minds of the public that gun owners hate children.