Category: Gun Rights

Police Shouldn’t Receive Special Treatment

Being a victim is all the rage these days. Because there is no real war on cops some officers have been posting sob stories of people acting rude to them in what appears to be a pathetic attempt to generate some sympathy. Not too long ago an office whined because a Dunkin’ Donuts employee wrote “#blacklivesmatter” on his coffee cup (which that was certainly unprofessional it was also so minor that I, were I in the officer’s position, would have entirely ignored it). A few days ago a police officer claimed he was told to leave Olive Garden because he was carrying a gun:

The staff at an Olive Garden in Kansas City asked a police officer to leave during his own birthday lunch on Sunday. According to KMBC, officer Michael Holsworth was waiting for his family to arrive at the restaurant, dressed in full uniform and with his gun because he was on duty. While he was sitting inside of the Olive Garden, a staff member allegedly asked him to leave, telling the officer they do “not allow guns inside the restaurant.”

The supposed actions of the Olive Garden employee aren’t really newsworthy to me. In fact they shouldn’t have been an issue to the officer since the employee was “just following orders.” What is newsworthy to me is the general sentiment amongst a lot of conservatives. To them the real problem isn’t the establishment haven’t a gun prohibition but that the gun prohibition was enforced against a man with a shiny liability shield pinned to his chest.

Police officers aren’t special and there’s no reason they should expect special treatment. If Olive Garden has a prohibition against carrying firearms in the restaurant then there is no reason an officer should expect to be exempt from it. There is also no reason anybody else should expect officers to be exempt from it. Enforcing the prohibition against an officer is no different than enforcing it against anybody else.

A large contributor to the breakdown of trust in police officers is the immense amount special treatment they enjoy. When they unlawfully shoot somebody it’s not uncommon for them to be fired and receive no further punishment whereas an average individual will usually find themselves in prison. Officers can kidnap people without facing charges even if the kidnapping is later found to be unwarranted by a court. Civil forfeiture laws allow officers to confiscate anybody’s property so long as they can explain why they thought it could be involved in some way to a drug crime.

Conservatives have been decrying the public’s dwindling trust in law enforcement officers and their response has basically been to get on their hands and knees and lick the boots of officers. That is not an effective way to address the problem. And every instance of outrage over rules being applied to police officers specifically just further erodes the public’s trust.

I Wouldn’t Allow A Liability Into My Establishment Either

I have a confession to make. Most of these “patriot” organizations annoy me. It’s not just because I’m not a patriot (in fact I find the entire concept of patriotism perplexing) but also because a lot of members of these groups tend to be knee-jerk reactionaries.

A couple of people I know were sharing a story about a guardsman being kicked out of Waffle House because he was carrying a gun. This upset quite a few self-proclaimed patriots because guardsmen are apparently even better than you so when they’re booted from an establishment for carrying it’s doubleplus ungood. As it turns out, the guardsman wasn’t kicked out for carrying a gun. He was kicked out because he was carrying a gun after being involved in a fight in the establishment:

The Waffle House franchise owner told Eater that Welch, the National Guardsman, had been kicked out of the restaurant for fighting a couple of weeks prior to being asked to leave his gun outside.

A representative of the Oath Keepers, one of those “patriot” organizations that tend to get on my nerves, said the claim was completely fabricated. It could be but I would find it strange for a franchise owner to make such a claim since it could be considered slanderous.

Working on the assumption the franchise owner was telling the truth (mostly to make a point), had I been in his position I would have also supported my employee’s decision to kick the guardsman out. If you’ve been involved in a fight in my establishment you’re not getting back in. Period. And if I had a leave of my sense and decided to let you back in I certainly wouldn’t let you bring a weapon in with you. Once you’ve proven yourself to be a liability I, as a business owner, and going to take whatever steps are necessary to protect myself, my employees, my property, and my customers.

Let us remember the saloons of the Old West. A lot of people carried guns in those days. Saloon owners recognized the combination of alcohol and firearms was really bad. To protect themselves and their patrons from the known hazards of combining alcohol and firearms the bartender often required patrons to surrender their arms if they wanted to drink. The situation the same if you have a patron who is known to be violent.

As a gun owner you should have a right to carry a firearm. Property owners should also have the right to determine who and who cannot be on their property. If they don’t want to allow armed individuals onto their property their desire should be respected (it’s their loss anyways). The key for gun owners is not to be a dick and therefore hopefully be welcome in most establishments.

The Fragility Of Control

I’m a fan of the concept of defense in depth, which is one reason why I hate any solution that is dependent on everybody acting in a particular way. Prohibitions are just such a solution. Gun control advocates like to point to countries such as Japan as proof that control works. Of course gun control relies on everybody in society being unarmed so as soon as one person breaks the prohibition the entire solution falls to pieces. Even though manufacturing firearms is verboten in Japan, at least for the serfs, one Japanese man managed to build numerous firearms in his home:

A 60 year old man in Japan was recently arrested for building homemade guns of his own design. According to him it was his hobby for the last 40 years. He used scrap anvils as a source of hardened steel and crafted his own ammunition using toy caps and casted lead bullets.

In this case the man was merely building firearms as a hobby and no evidence exists that he meant to sell them to nefarious sorts. Although they’re a bit rough overall the firearms actually look pretty well made. More importantly, due to Japan’s strict firearm restrictions, the man was probably one of the more heavily armed individuals in the country. Had he decided to either use or sell his firearms nefarious purposes it would have left the general population at a severe disadvantage.

No solution that depends on everybody in a society to act in a specific way can succeed because there will always people that act outside of those specifications. That’s why I prefer solutions that can be decentralized. Restricting access to firearms only works so long as everybody is unarmed. Allowing individuals to arm themselves reduces the overall advantage a firearm provides to a single individuals. Arming individuals is a better solutions to gun violence than restricting gun ownership precisely because it relies on hardening individuals instead of expecting them to act in a specific manner.

Sometimes I Forgot How Ignorant Of Guns Non-Gun People Are

Sometimes I forget just how ignorant of guns most gun control advocates are. Maybe this is because most of my friends are either gun people or have no interest in guns whatsoever. In the case of the former they know their shit and in the case of the latter the subject almost never comes up. But I was involved in a conversation with somebody who doesn’t know the technical aspects of guns but has a very strong opinion, which they express loudly, about what regulations are needed.

Although the entire conversation was comedy gold the thing that really hit my funny bone was his claim that assault rifles shoot assault bullets. What the fuck are assault bullets? Bullets that are larger than pistol bullets and smaller than rifle bullets. And, of course, they need to be banned because they’re, like, super dangerous and stuff.

This is probably why I don’t get along with gun control advocates very well. It’s not just that I disagree with them but it’s that they’re entirely ignorant of the very thing they want regulated. Why does anybody expect their opinion on something to be taken seriously when they don’t know jack shit about that thing?

Rights Are Privileges, Right?

I wasn’t going for a theme with my titles today but the opportunity presented itself so I seized the moment. There are a lot of authors who write about guns that I respect. Bob Owens isn’t one of them. Although I won’t go so far as to call him a racist I will say that every time his writings touch on the subject of race he comes off sounding racist. That doesn’t sit well with me. Another thing that doesn’t sit well with me is his belief that gun ownership is a privilege that should be rightfully curtailed by the State.

This isn’t an idea he uniquely holds. Many self-proclaimed supporters of gun rights actually view gun ownership as a privilege. They only differ from the anti-gun crowd in what restrictions they believe should be put on gun ownership. Owens’ latest article is an example of a restriction that many supposed gun rights activists support:

A recent decision by the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that says illegal aliens—what the left likes to call “undocumented immigrants”—enjoy a Second Amendment right to bear arms, even if their presence in this nation is criminal.

[…]

My basic, over-riding belief on the Second Amendment is that any case involving the right to keep and bear arms should be held to the legal standard of strict scrutiny, and that all law-abiding citizens and legal resident aliens should have the right to keep and bear arms.

Anybody who has been reading this blog for a while knows what I’m going to reference. When the list of crimes is so expansive that the average working professional commits three felonies a day the term law-abiding loses any meaning. Taken to its logical conclusion arguing that the right to bear arms is dependent on an individual being law-abiding is an argument that nobody should be allowed to own firearms.

As with most supposed defenders of gun rights, Owens felt the best way to support his argument for restriction was to summon the spirit of the most holy Founding Fathers:

Call me a “butter” if you want, but I don’t think for a second that the Founding Fathers would support the concept of granting criminal invaders the same legal status as legal immigrants, legal resident aliens, and citizens. Let’s hope that when this case makes it to the Supreme Court that the justices with the Fourth, Fifth, and Eighth circuit courts.

Praise be to the Founding Fathers!

This paragraph is laughable on so many levels. The most obvious is that the Founding Fathers were criminal invaders themselves. After tossing out the British and solidifying their power the Founding Fathers returned their attention to slaughtering the American Indian population.

Another reason it’s laughable is the way immigration was handled by the Founding Fathers. When they penned the Constitution they effective left the question of immigration entirely to Congress. It wasn’t until 1790 that Congress decided to write a law involving immigration. The Naturalization Act of 1790 established rules that allowed an immigrant to become a United States citizen. One of the more notable restrictions placed on naturalization by Congress was race. The restricted naturalization to “free white persons.” But I digress. While the act established rules for foreigners to become citizens it did not establish rules for deporting non-citizens. It wasn’t until 1882 that Congress got around to restricting immigration in some manner. It seems the Founding Fathers had little or not concept of legal or illegal immigration nor did Congress members of the time.

Just to be thorough it’s probably worth noting the Bill of Rights doesn’t mention a stipulation of citizenship anywhere. It makes reference to “the people” but not “citizens of the United States.” Setting aside the Founding Fathers’ views on race I think the wording of the Bill of Rights implies that it applies to all people within the United States, not just citizens.

I’m not of the opinion that the Bill of Rights grants rights. My definition of a right is an act not inhibited by a coercive hierarchy. If gun ownership, for example, is a right then it must be practicable by everybody, not just a handful selected by the State. The view expressed by Owens, and those who agree with him, would lead to an Orwellian dystopia where due process could be denied to somebody who wasn’t a citizen. I’m certainly not comfortable denying somebody accused of a crime a jury trial simply because they’re not a citizen.

If you call an act a right then list a bunch of stipulations that you believe should be placed on that act you’re arguing it’s a privilege, not a right.

Correlation And Causality Are The Same Thing, Right?

Opponents of self-defense are becoming more desperate as they become more irrelevant. Advocates of self-defense have thoroughly crushed the claims of their ideological opposites over the years so you would think the issue would be put to rest. But it isn’t. Instead opponents of self-defense have been busily massaging data until it fits their narrative. Their latest exercise in massaging data was to look at the rate of firearm ownership and the number of officers killed per state:

Using a regression statistical analysis, the authors found that occupational homicide for law enforcement was correlated with higher rates of firearm ownership. The analysis controlled for the violent crime rate, which indicated that these higher rates of homicide couldn’t simply be attributed to more frequent violent crimes occurring in states with higher rates of gun ownership. Instead, higher rates of law enforcement homicides were associated with more frequent encounters with violent criminals and with more frequent exposure to situations where privately owned firearms were present.

However, there were limitations to this study related to the gun ownership rates. There is no standard measure of annual firearm ownership rates—while the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System is widely considered to be the best measure available, questions about gun ownership were only included in the survey for three years: 2001, 2002, and 2004.

I think the first thing worth pointing out is there’s no way to know how accurate the study is because there is no standard measure of firearm ownership. The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System is a survey so the answers are based on the information voluntarily divulged by participants. Firearm ownership, which the study has asked directly about, is something people are more likely to not volunteer information about.

The second thing that needs to be pointed out is that this study established a correlation:

The authors conclude that higher levels of private firearm ownership increase the likelihood that law enforcement officers will face life-threatening situations on the job. The authors state that a 10 percent increase in firearm ownership at the state level correlated to 10 additional law enforcement homicides over the 15-year period that was examined in this study.

Apparently the authors don’t understand that correlation does not imply causality. Correlation justifies further study of a phenomenon that appear related. But you shouldn’t state a conclusion based on a correlation. There are other possible explanations for a correlation between firearm ownership and the number of officers killed on the job. For example, officers being killed on the job may convince people to purchase firearms for self-defense. In that case a higher number of officer deaths could lead to a higher rate of firearm ownership.

So today’s lessons are, one, studies based on data of an unknown quality are questionable at best and, two, correlation does not imply causality.

More Permit Holders, No Blood In The Streets

When Minnesota’s permit to carry law was liberalized in 2003 the anti-self-defense crowd screamed there would be blood in the streets. Here we are 11 years latter and the number of permit holders in the state is way up but the violence permit holders were supposed to perpetuate is almost entirely nonexistent:

A gun safety instructor, shown in 2012, for a course that is required to have a concealed carry permit in Minnesota. A record 200,000 Minnesotans now have permits to carry handguns.

A record 200,000 Minnesotans now have permits to carry handguns, an increasingly diverse group that includes two men who recently made split-second, life-altering decisions to fire their weapons.

[…]

Opponents had feared that the law would lead to a surge in shootings and gun deaths. But Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension data show that fatalities involving permit holders are rare. In the past five years, there have been five deadly or nonlethal instances of justifiable use of a firearm by permit holders.

How can this be? Simple. Most people want to carry a firearm for self-defense, not to perpetuate violence. When it comes to carrying a firearm in Minnesota there are two options: legal or illegal. Carrying a gun illegally requires nothing more than carrying a gun but carrying a gun legally requires spending money and jumping through hoops. To legally carry a gun in Minnesota you have to take a class, apply for a permit, and hand your local Sheriff a payoff (often called a fee). Permit holders jump through those hoops because they want to avoid being harassed by the police. For that same reason most permit holders go out of their way to avoid violent situations.

What we have here in Minnesota are 200,000 people who want a means to defend themselves without worrying about police harassment.

Professionally Built Illicit Firearms

As an advocate of self-defense and an agorist I always enjoy stories that involve both. Opponents of self-defense have worked hard to put laws in place that restrict access to firearms. But laws are mere words on pieces of paper and cannot stop human action. We’ve seen countless examples of illicitly manufactured firearms but they generally appear to be rather crude. Now a mystery manufacturer appears to be illegally producing professionally built firearms and distributing them in Europe:

Pictured is an unknown 9mm machine pistol which has been seized in the Netherlands and more recently in the UK. ‘R9-Arms Corp USA’ appears to be a fictional company, suggesting it has been manufactured illicitly. The model is made to a very professional standard with a milled receiver and slide, perhaps even produced in a former legitimate arms factory in a country such as Croatia. It appears to accept an Uzi type magazine and can fire semi or fully automatically.

The ATF in the USA were consulted on its origin and apparently had no matches on record.

Manufacturing a firearm isn’t rocket science. Firearms are pretty simple mechanical devices and the tooling needed to manufacture one is already fairly affordable and only becoming more so every day. But manufacturing them on a large scale without getting caught still requires skill and it appears Europe has somebody with the necessary skills.

In addition to providing a means of self-defense outside of the state’s control the act of illegally manufacturing and distributing firearms also ensures taxes aren’t siphoned to the very beast that attempts to hinder people’s access to self-defense tools. It’s a win-win. Hopefully we will see more mystery firearm manufacturers in the coming years.

Seattle City Council Used Fear To Enrich Themselves

Gun violence is one of those phrases spoken by politicians who want to drum up fear in the general public. Although it’s no different than any other form of violence the idea of gun violence tends to be scarier to most people than, say, knife violence (which is kind of strange because I’d far prefer to be shot than stabbed) so it lends itself better expanding the surveillance state. The Seattle City Council took things a step further though. Instead of using gun violence as an excuse to expand the surveillance state it used it to directly enrich itself:

The Seattle City Council gave its unanimous approval Monday afternoon to a plan that slaps a $25 tax on each gun sale and 5 cents on each bullet sold in the city limits.

The proposal, introduced last month by Council President Tim Burgess, is billed as the city’s solution to the $17 million in medical costs from 253 gunshot victims at Harborview Medical Center last year, which Seattle underwrites with public funds.

How will this new tax solve the problem of gun violence? It won’t because it doesn’t impact people who are actually committing acts of violence with firearms (you know, the ones who generally acquire their firearms through theft). The only people this tax will impact are non-violent gun owners who aren’t part of the problem. In fact this tax doesn’t even address the root of the city’s $17 million medical bill, which is violence. But this tax will rake in more cash for the city government, which is the point. After all, how else will the City Council vote itself a raise if it’s not finding new revenue sources?

Once again we get to witness the lie of government solutions. Governments have no motivation to fix problems because the existence of problems allows it to further cement its power and enrich its members.

Gun Control Is Still Synonymous With Establishing A Surveillance State

Anti-gunners claim gun control is about reducing gun violence (but only non-state gun violence since they still need armed state goons to enforce gun control). To the state it’s really about, and I honestly think anti-gunners are completely ignorant of this, having another excuse to establish a surveillance state. Background checks, for example, are the currently darling child of the gun control movement but implementing them requires allowing the state to collected and store a ton of personal information on every American. Sometimes the surveillance aspect of gun control isn’t so abstract. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) has taken surveillance to a new level by placing cameras around Seattle under the guise of finding violators of gun control laws:

The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) confirmed Thursday that they have placed video cameras throughout Seattle to, according to Special Agent Brian Bennett, “support an ongoing federal criminal investigation.” This comes in response to questions regarding a camera installed on 23rd Avenue and S. Jackson St. The location of other cameras is unclear.

ATF is the lead agency of the Puget Sound Regional Crime Gun Task Force – a partnership to reduce gun violence that includes the Seattle Police Department, Washington State Patrol and the Washington State Department of Corrections.

Gun control isn’t unique in this manner. The state preys on the public’s fear of all crimes and uses that fear to justify surveillance. Whether it’s muggers, rapists, gun runners, murders, or terrorists the solution is always the same: more spying on the people.

Another thing worth noting about this story is that the goal of reducing gun violence has no set goal, which means it can be used to justify leaving these cameras in place forever. When it talks of reducing crime the state never gives concrete cutoffs. It’s a nice way to continue justifying surveillance even when crime has dropped in an area. Any time the state expresses a non-specific goal the people should be concerned because that means it’s justifying a permanent power for itself.