Category: Gun Rights

If a Story Doesn’t Fulfill Your Agenda Editorialize

Advocates of gun control spend time searching high and low for news stories that support their agenda. Unfortunately for them such stories are far and few between so they often have to resort to editorializing in order to shoehorn their agenda into an otherwise unrelated store. Take the recent shooting in Florida that AlterNet was so good to report on. Things are off to a bad start from the beginning:

Michael David Dunn, 45, was in Jacksonville, Fla., this Friday for his son’s wedding, when afterward he decided to stop at a convenience store with his girlfriend. Four unarmed teenagers were in an SUV near where Dunn parked. After Dunn’s girlfriend went into the store to buy a bottle of wine, Dunn made a comment to the teenagers about their music being too loud. An argument ensued, and then Dunn, a gun collector, pulled out his gun and fired at the SUV between eight to nine times. Two shots hit and killed 17-year-old Jordan Davis.

Emphasis mine. No evidence is given that indicates Dunn was a gun collector. He may be a gun collector or he may not be, either way the statement is not backed by any presented evidence and it has nothing to do with the story itself. Whether somebody collects guns or not has no bearing on whether or not a claim of self-defense is legitimate or not. Owning multiple firearms does not suddenly make a self-defense claim legitimate or illegitimate.

The real editorializing doesn’t come into play until the last few paragraphs though:

Davis’s death comes about a week after a Florida task force found that the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law is mostly fine as is and recommended only small changes. Florida governor Rick Scott created the task force after the death of unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in April. The task force made their conclusions despite research that shows “Stand Your Ground” laws actually increase homicides.

Where should I begin? The author managed to slip to Trayvon Martin case into the story. In fact the author not only slipped the name in but also slipped in the implication that Trayvon was unjustly gunned down even though evidence supports Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense. That’s some great emotional heartstring pulling right there.

Let’s consider the second implication that the stand your ground law will allow Dunn to get off. Florida’s stand your ground law states:

776.012 Use of force in defense of person.—

A person is justified in using force, except deadly force, against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the other’s imminent use of unlawful force. However, a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat if:

(1) He or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony; or

(2) Under those circumstances permitted pursuant to s. 776.013.

The legislation clearly states that one must have a reasonable belief that deadly force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm. If the story is accurate Dunn claims to have shot the teenager because he was listening to music that was too loud. It’s pretty unreasonable to believe loud music will cause imminent death or great bodily harm especially consider the fact that the teenagers were in the vehicle and neither dead or suffering great bodily harm.

Finally the story implies that stand your ground laws cause higher homicide rates. This claim confuses me because homicide is a criminal charge. If homicide conviction rates actually increased after the passage of stand your ground laws it would imply that more people were being successfully convicted of homicide which invalidates the claim that stand your ground laws allow people to get away with homicide. Which is it? Do stand your ground laws lead to higher conviction rates of homicide or do such laws allow people to easily get away with murder? Inconsistency from gun control advocates is par for the course.

Once again gun control advocates opt for dancing in the blood by editorializing a story so heavily that the actual story, a shooting supposedly being justified because somebody was playing their music too loud, is almost entirely lost.

What Gun Control Reduces Lawful Individuals To

Gun control is an interesting paradox. Advocates of gun control believe the use of state initiated violence against all gun owners will reduce the amount of violence in society. Truthfully gun control merely makes the lawful unlawful. Deciding to obey a law, like everything else humans do, is based on a cost-benefits analysis. If an individual’s perceived cost of obeying a law exceeds that individual’s perceived benefit then the individual will disobey the law. With the constant increase of violent crimes in Mexico, a state with very strict gun control laws, lawful individuals are finding themselves having to restort to unlawful behavior by arming themselves:

Mexico has some of the toughest gun-control laws in the world, but drug cartels have well-stocked arsenals. For law-abiding citizens, it’s difficult and expensive to apply for a gun permit. It’s why many gun owners decide to defy the law.

People living in Mexico often find themselves subjected to the violent drug cartels. Without a lawful option to defend themselves the people are resorting to unlawful methods. Sure, violating the country’s gun control laws could land somebody on the business end of the state’s gun but being unable to defend one’s self could land them in a coffin.

Gun control creates a vicious circle of unlawfulness. Violent criminals, who disregard the law by definition, will arm themselves whether or not guns are made illegal. Armed with their weapons and the knowledge that the gun control laws have reduced the cost of inflicting violence on other individuals these violent criminals will begin to prey on the general populace. Being faced with the state’s violence and violence brought on by non-state criminals individual will have to make a decision: obey the law and hopefully avoid the state’s wrath or disobey the law and hopefully avoid the wrath of non-state criminals. As the state generally proves to be ineffective at defending the people it claims reign over individual will begin leaning more and more towards disobeying gun control laws in order to defend their lives. At that point previously lawful individuals become unlawful, a necessity brought on by gun control laws.

The Futility of Gun Control

I no longer fear gun control because I recognize its futility. Firearms are relatively simple mechanical devices and home manufacturing capabilities continue to advance. An example of this advancement in home fabrication are 3D printers. Using various materials 3D printers are able to build parts from the ground up. Another person has demonstrated that commonly available 3D printers can be used to manufacture AR-15 lowers. Since lowers are the registered part of the firearm and therefore the only part you need to buy from a federally licensed firearms dealer (unless you live in a state that allows private sales such as Minnesota) you can effectively build an AR-15 that the state has no knowledge of.

Gun control advocates can push for “assault weapon” bans all they want but their efforts are entirely wasted. “Assault weapons,” like any firearm, can be manufactured with readily available tools. Because of this the only way one can even begin to enforce a prohibition against any type of firearm is to perform periodic inspections of every building in the United States (and even that won’t be effective since manufacturers will merely create hidden rooms just as people did during Prohibition to bypass alcohol control laws.

At Least They Didn’t Have Guns

Consider this scenarior:

Robbers armed with axes and bats rode motorbikes into an indoor shopping centre in north London and raided a jewellery store.

Where there’s a will there’s a way. Even though England suffers some of the most draconian gun control laws out there people continue to commit violent crimes. In this case thugs armed with axes rode motorcycles to a mall jewelry store and robbed it. Fortunately nobody was injured by that could have been far different if the axe armed thugs had decided to attack any of the mall goers. Gun control advocates would say, “At least they wouldn’t have guns,” but I’d prefer to be shot than hacked up with an axe. Furthermore the motorcycles these thugs were riding gave them greater speed than anybody else in the mall, meaning running away wouldn’t have been an effective strategy. What could one do in such a situation? Little, unless they had an effective means of self-defense such as a firearm.

Gun control suffers many fallacies, one is the idea that violent crime can somehow be reduced if guns are strictly controlled. Robbery, wielding axes as weapons, and riding motorcycles inside of malls are likely all illegal in England, yet six individuals armed themselves with axes, rode motorcycles into the mall, and robbed a jewelry story. Making something illegal only prevents the lawful from partaking, it does nothing to deter those unconcerned with the law. Disarming those with no criminal intentions in the hope of preventing violent crime is hopeless. It does lower the cost of committing violent acts.

Violent Pro-Government Extremists

Shall Not Be Questioned has a post that links to an article trying to unite the various gun control advocacy groups. The article is an interesting read because I believe the author is completely unaware of the irony of what he penned. Instead of coming up with something new or unique to say about gun control the article parrots the now common anti-government fear mongering that seems to compose a majority of anti-gun statements:

But the truly stunning growth came from anti-government “Patriot”/militia movement that views the government as their primary enemy. These groups formed in the mid-1990′s based on the perception of violent government repression of dissident groups at Ruby Ridge, ID in 1992 and near Waco, TX in 1993. The Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 is attributable to this movement which peaked a year after the incident and then rapidly declined. But the movement was once again energized in 2008 with the economic recession and the appearance of Barack Obama as a presidential candidate. The numbers of these groups rose from 149 in 2008 to 1,274 last year. Of these, 334 were militias. A state by state listing of these groups is provided here. A graph produced by SPLC showing the meteoric growth of such groups is displayed below.

What did the Oklahoma City bombing have to do with gun control? Who knows? Furthermore the article only managed to bring up the three commonly cited examples of violent anti-government actions. Everything else is pure fear mongering.

Let’s consider the other side of the coin. What about pro-government extremists? Democide, that is non-war murders by government, has killed six times more people than wars this century alone. Whether we discuss the gulags of the Soviet Union, the death camps of Nazi Germany, or China’s Great Leap Forward the number of deaths caused by governments is high. Gun control advocates will often stop me here and claim that such atrocities would never happen in the United States. I’m pretty sure asking Native Americans or residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and August 9th, 1945 whether or not the United States would commit democide would lead to a resounding yes.

Advocates of gun control want to strip non-state individuals of firearms. Their method of doing this is to implement laws against gun ownership and have state agents, armed with guns, kidnap or murder any non-state individual in possession of a gun. Who is the more violent extremist? Me, an anarchist who carries a gun but has never killed anybody, or somebody who wants armed agents of the state to initiation violence against people like me? I would say the latter show a much higher propensity for violence. They want to give more power to organizations that have, together, killed an estimated 262,000,000 people (and that’s not including the wars those organizations have waged). How does that make sense? How can somebody claim to oppose violence while advocating state-initiated violence? Just because a guy with a costume and a badge initiates violence doesn’t make it something other than violence.

Statists seems to have a hard time scrounging up examples of anti-government violence. They mention Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the Oklahoma City bombings time and time again but in each case the number of people who died was relativel small. One other other hand I can point out many examples of pro-government violence that killed millions of people. It seems disarming the people would put them at an even greater disadvantage when faced with state aggression. Why do gun control advocates want to disarm generally peaceful individuals instead of disarming states? Why are they pro-government extremists? If gun control advocates truly opposed violence they would be demanding the governments around the world disarm.

The State Reduces the Cost of Committing Violent Acts

After hurricane Katrina the number of thefts skyrocketed. Individuals scrambled to defend themselves and their property from roving bands of looters. Likewise after hurricane Sandy struck the Eastern seaboard looting in affected areas skyrocketed. Once again individuals found themselves scrambling to defend themselves and their property. What isn’t mentioned by most people is that the state lowered the cost of committing violent acts such as looting.

In the aftermath of Katrina the National Guard actually confiscated firearms from individuals. Likewise many of the states heavily affected by Sandy, including New York and New Jersey, have very stringent gun control laws on the books. In both cases looters could be reasonably sure that their victims were unable or poorly able to defend themselves.

Whenever the state moves to make self-defense more difficult, either through confiscating weapons or implementing laws that make legal self-defense difficult, it reduces the cost of performing violence. Robert Heinlein wrote, “An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.” in his novel Beyond the Horizon. It’s true, an armed society is a polite society. Criminals, like everybody else, perform actions as a means to achieve ends. In the case of a thief their ends are to obtain property. They may want the property for personal use or to exchange it for something else. Either way they have determined that taking the desired property from another is a better method than exchanging voluntarily for it. This brings us back to cost-benefit analysis.

The cost of robbing an armed individual is higher than the cost of robbing an unarmed individual. An armed individual may resist the robbery attempt with a great deal of violence whereas an unarmed individual will only have access to the violence they can produce with their bare hands. Therefore a criminal faces far greater bodily harm, and even loss of life, when they rob an armed individual but likely face little risk of bodily harm or death, especially if they themselves are armed, when robbing an unarmed individual. The cost of robbing an armed individual is relatively high compared to the cost of robbing an unarmed individual.

By disarming individuals or severely restricting the ability of individuals to arm themselves the state reduces the cost of committing violent acts. Laughably they usually justify disarming individuals under the guise of protecting individuals. Gun control is usually justified to the public by claiming it will prevent violent individuals from obtaining firearms. Ironically gun control laws actually increase the likelihood of violent crimes by reducing the cost of initiating violence. I would argue that allowing everybody to remain armed, even individuals with a history of violence, would be far safer than preventing anybody from being armed. Why reduce the cost of performing violent acts? Perhaps a great number of violent criminals would have been dissuaded from committing their violent crimes had they faced the likely threat of bodily harm or death.

The state’s reduction of the cost of violence doesn’t stop at disarming individuals or passing laws that make self-defense more difficult. Through its monopoly on violence the state reduces the cost of violence for individuals in its employ. Consider the man who is facing the death penalty for defending himself against police officers. Why are officers so willing to perform no knock raids? Because the state has granted them special legal protection from consequences caused by unannounced raids. Individuals inside a targeted home face potential death if they defend themselves from police officers whereas police officers seldom face any consequences for harming a homeowner. If somebody wants to commit a violent act they simply need to join the state’s employ; receive an official costume, badge, and gun; and enforce the state’s decrees. So long as your perform violence in the name of the state the cost is relatively low.

People often ponder about the cause of high violent crime rates in the United States. One of the causes is that initiating violence is relatively cheap. Combining a generally disarmed populace with legal methods for psychopaths to perform violent acts nets you a lot of violence. The state protecting us from violent individuals is a farce. We’re subjected to more violence because of the state.

EDIT: 2012-11-14 14:40: General spelling and grammatical fixes. Thanks to Steven for pointing them out.

Advocate of Gun Rights Who Aren’t Helping Gun Rights

When I discussed the curmudgeons in the gun rights movement who were entirely unwilling to accept people with differing ideologies this was the kind of crap I was thinking of:

Effective immediately, if you voted for Obama, your money is no good here. You have proven beyond a doubt that you are not responsible enough to own a firearm. We have just put a sign up on the front door to save you the trouble of walking all the way in here….

I took this ad out in our local paper. It will come out in the White Mountain Independent tomorrow, 9 November

Sincerely,
Cope Reynolds

Southwest Shooting Authority of Arizona

Congratulations Southwest Shooting Authority of Arizona, you’ve just effectively dissuaded a majority of voters from the gun community. I know that many people in the gun rights movement are butt hurt over the election results but lashing out at the people who voted for Obama isn’t going to help the cause of gun rights. Instead of alienating Obama’s supporters we need to reach out to them. Gun rights shouldn’t be a Republican or Democrat issue, it’s should be an all inclusive issue that accepts people from all manners of political ideologies. Statements like the one made by Southwest Shooting Authority of Arizona reinforces the stereotype that all gun owners are hardcore Republicans and therefore delegates the issue of gun rights to an “us” versus “them” debate.

Regarding the Supreme Court

I know one of the biggest concerns the gun rights community has now that Obama will be in office for four more years are Supreme Court nominees. Several of the current robe-adoren ones are getting up there in age and will likely be retiring relatively soon. The main concern gun rights activists have is Obama appointing anti-gun justices who will reverse the decisions in District of Columbia v. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago. While the Supreme Court is potentially worrisome it’s also one of the branches that the gun rights community can, for the most part, control.

The Supreme Court only rules on cases that have been appealed to their level and they are willing to hear. Because of these two requirements, and the nature of the gun control movement, the gun rights community can mostly control whether or not gun rights cases get to the Supreme Court. Needless to say so long as the gun rights community doesn’t appeal cases to the Supreme Court level the Supreme Court doesn’t get to make a decision. Unfortunately this may mean holding off on lawsuits, which have proven to be a most effective tool as of late, if anti-gun justices are seated but it also means that the threat of seeing either previous victory reversed is mostly avoidable. This means that gun rights would not move forward through the judicial system but it also means it won’t move backwards either.

I also mentioned that the nature of the gun control movement plays are part in this equation. When it comes to court cases regarding gun rights the only two sides that are apt to file lawsuits are advocates of gun rights and advocates of gun control. Advocates of gun rights have good reason to file lawsuits against municipalities that violate gun rights but gun control advocates don’t because they want municipalities to violate gun rights. Without some kind of violation there aren’t grounds of lawsuits so it’s far more difficult for gun control advocates to initiate one. Furthermore the gun control movement has more limited resources available to it. The only gun control game in town that still has money is Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which is funded by the personal fortunes of Mayor Bloomberg and his cronies. On the other hand the gun rights movement has the National Rifle Association (NRA), Second Amendment Foundation (SAF), Gun Owners of America (GOA), Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership (JFPO), and numerous state gun rights organizations. Combining forces these gun rights organizations have a funding base of millions of members. Considering the expense of hiring a lawyer that has the required credentials to argue in the Supreme Court it’s unlikely that gun control advocates are going to pursue such lawsuits.

If Obama appoints anti-gun justices to the Supreme Court the gun rights community stands to lose one of its most valuable tools, but it mostly control whether or not ground will be lost. The worst case scenario is that gun rights activists will need to pursue another strategy. One of my biggest criticisms of the NRA is their laser-like focus on a single strategy even when it’s ineffective. When one strategy fails or is no longer viable then another must be developed. Innovate or die is the name of the game. Just because the gun rights movement becomes cut off from the Supreme Court doesn’t mean the game is over, it means a different game must be played.

Of course the real problem is the fact that nine robe-adoren individuals can decide what is and isn’t allowed for an entire country but I touched on that argument already so I’ll not repeat it here.

Expanding the Ranks of Gun Rights Advocates

The sky is falling! Fire and brimstone is raining from the sky! We’ve lost the election and will have are guns taken from us! The end is nigh my friends, the end is nigh!

That’s seems to be the general attitude many gun owners are having after Tuesday’s election. Why are gun owners screaming about the end of gun rights? Because a Republican isn’t in the Oval Office and to many gun owners Republicans equal gun owners while Democrats equal gun grabbers. This attitude is pervasive throughout the gun community and, as Shelley Rae at Gun Nuts Media points out, it shouldn’t be this way:

This should not be a liberal versus conservative conversation. But it continues to be and that, I believe, is partially our failure as a community. We continue to attack and alienate target demographics that could benefit us, especially in regards to more liberal politicians who are interested in reducing our Second Amendment rights. Politicians play to their constituents, and if a liberal politicians were to realize that all the 20-something hipsters would be upset if their 9mm Makarovs were taken away it would be a major asset to our community.

What am I really getting at here? Generation Y. My people. The ones who are participating in Occupy Wallstreet marches and getting married to people of the same sex and have a bunch of tattoos along with their PhD. I’m not suggesting you have to like everything they do or all their political ideals, in fact I’m well-known among my peers for making stuck-up comments about individual responsibility, but this isn’t about that – this is about gun ownership and the Second Amendment.

One of the shortcomings of the gun community, in my opinion, is the relatively authoritarian nature of some the most vocal members. Many of these individuals spend a great deal of time talking about individual liberty only to turn around and demand compliance with their beliefs. Anybody who has been an active participant in the gun community and isn’t a clean-cut male Christian Republican has likely found themselves embroiled in arguments with some of the vocal members of the gun culture.

To quote George Carlin:

I don’t like ass kissers, flag wavers or team players. I like people who buck the system. Individualists. I often warn people: “Somewhere along the way, someone is going to tell you, ‘There is no “I” in team.’ What you should tell them is, ‘Maybe not. But there is an “I” in independence, individuality and integrity.'” Avoid teams at all cost. Keep your circle small. Never join a group that has a name. If they say, “We’re the So-and-Sos,” take a walk. And if, somehow, you must join, if it’s unavoidable, such as a union or a trade association, go ahead and join. But don’t participate; it will be your death. And if they tell you you’re not a team player, congratulate them on being observant.

As a general rule I prefer to be around, what most people would consider, weird people. Most of these people do not comply with the beliefs of the above mentioned. They usually don’t fit into binary categories such as Democrats and Republicans or Catholics and Protestants. These people blur the lines, buck trends, and sometimes set out to be as weird as possible. When I bring these people to the range or to a gun show it’s almost inevitable that one of the above mentioned will stroll up and start some kind of argument.

For the guys reading this post let me just say that you haven’t gotten the full curmudgeon gun owner experience until you’ve brought a girl with pink hair to the range or a girl with tattoos covering one of her arms. If there’s an above mentioned anywhere on that range you can guarantee that he’ll come up and start any kind of argument possible. Do you want some more fun? Bring a girl to a gun show, start a stopwatch when you enter the door, and stop it when the first guy mentions buying her a pink gun. If you want even more entertainment take her to a table, act entirely disinterest in the wares, have her look at the firearms, then see if the attendant addresses you or her. In my experience the attendant will address you nine times out of ten.

Fortunately there many people in the gun community who aren’t the above mentioned. I’m one of them and I’m guessing you’re one of them as well (since I’m pretty sure I’ve run off the above mentioned long ago when I started posting more about anarchism). We need to become more vocal and let it be known that the above mentioned are not the only people in the community. Expanding our ranks is critical if we want to keep the community going after all of the above mentioned have died off. This means attracting everybody including Christians, Muslims, pagans, atheists, men, women, transgender, conservatives, liberals, libertarians, communists, anarchists, people with brown hair, people with pink hair, people covered in tattoos, and people haven’t modified their body. One of the most effective things the “left” has done is be very inclusive of people with different backgrounds. It’s a strategy the gun community should adopt post haste.

On a Federal Level Nothing Changed

The election may be over but self-declared Republicans and the gun rights community are still angry at Tuesday’s results. Ultimately nothing has changed on a federal level. Looking at Google’s federal election results the Democratic Party has retained its control of the Presidency and the Senate while the Republican Party has retained its control over the House. For the gun rights community this should be treated as good news. As I said, the presidential race was a complete loss as far as gun rights were concerned and that energies would have been better spend on congressional races. Without Congress to make and pass gun control laws the presidency doesn’t matter. This is where some gun rights activists will point out that the president gets to nominate Supreme Court justices but history demonstrates that “conservative” justices aren’t reliable defenders of individual rights anyways.

I know ammunition, gun, and gun accessory prices are going to jump sky high for the next few months because of Obama’s victory. This is an irrational response by the gun community because everything is the same today as it was the previous four years as far as the federal government is concerned. If you’re truly worried about the Supreme Court then you should advocate the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and the National Rifle Association (NRA) to cease brining more gun rights lawsuits. The Supreme Court only gets to rule on cases that get appealed to its level so if there are no new cases their previous judgements stand. Gun control advocates don’t have enough money or influence at this point to get cases to the Supreme Court so it’s really up to the gun rights community to decide whether or not new Supreme Court cases regarding gun rights are heard. Avoiding any detrimental affects caused by possible Supreme Court nominations is almost entirely in our hands.