Category: Gun Rights

Guns Save Lives

A gun is a tool and like any tool is can serve multiple roles. For example you can use it to stop an attacker of the two and four legged varieties, you can use them for sport, of you can use them to save three children from a sinking car:

As many as 10 people jumped into an icy Utah river to help save three trapped children after a car plunged down a 10-foot embankment and flipped over, the state’s Highway Patrol said Sunday.

The rescuers helped turn the Honda Accord upright in the Logan River, and one man shot out the car’s window with a handgun and cut a seat belt to help free the children after the Saturday afternoon accident, patrol Lt. Steve Winward said.

This story makes a good case for carrying a firearm and a quality knife on your person. There is wisdom on the Boy Scout motto, “Always be prepared.”

But There Was a Sign Stating Guns Were Banned in the Courthouse

The idea behind so-called gun-free zones has always baffled me. Proponents of the idea claim guns won’t be carried into these zones because bad people obey laws. When I look at the idea all I see is a big sign telling criminals that persons in these zones will most likely not be armed and therefore make prime victims. Whereas proponents have never been able to demonstrate their idea works those of us who claim gun-free zones are stupid ideas have plenty of examples to fall back on. Another example manifested earlier this money as a prosecutor in the Cook County courthouse was shot:

The Cook County attorney was shot and three others were hurt in the chaos. The gunman had been convicted of criminal sexual conduct moments earlier, his attorney said.

This should have never happened according to those who advocate the establishment of gun-free zones:

“This is a very small courthouse. This is a very small community,” County Commissioner Janice Hall said. “There’s a sign on the door that says no firearms allowed beyond this point.”

It seems to me that criminals aren’t much for obeying signs. Instead of trying to disarm lawful individuals how about we establish more areas where people maintain a right to defend themselves. If a criminal can get a gun into a courthouse they can certainly get one into a school.

The New York Times Hit Piece of Carry Permit Holders Falls Flat

The New York Times recently ran a hit piece on carry permit holders. The article tried to make permit holders sound like scary individuals with the following statistic:

To assess that claim, The New York Times examined the permit program in North Carolina, one of a dwindling number of states where the identities of permit holders remain public. The review, encompassing the last five years, offers a rare, detailed look at how a liberalized concealed weapons law has played out in one state. And while it does not provide answers, it does raise questions.

More than 2,400 permit holders were convicted of felonies or misdemeanors, excluding traffic-related crimes, over the five-year period, The Times found when it compared databases of recent criminal court cases and licensees. While the figure represents a small percentage of those with permits, more than 200 were convicted of felonies, including at least 10 who committed murder or manslaughter. All but two of the killers used a gun.

2,400 permit holders were convicted of felonies? Holy mother of Thor, that’s a bit number. Well, except in the grand scheme of things, it’s not:

That’s a dozen gun assaults a year. How many permit holders are there in North Carolina? According to the story, “more than 240,000.” So 0.2 percent of them are convicted of a non-traffic-related offense each year, about 0.017 percent are convicted of a felony, and only 0.005 percent are convicted of a gun assault. The Times concedes that the number of permit holders convicted of crimes “represents a small percentage of those with permits.” More like “tiny.” By comparison, about 0.35 percent of all Americans are convicted of a felony each year–more than 20 times the rate among North Carolina permit holders.

So the average rate of felony convictions for North Carolina permit holders is far less than the average felony conviction rate in the nation. That seems to prove once again that permit holders are less likely to commit felonies than the average population.

Gun Control Fails in Venezuela, Just Like Everywhere Else

Several years ago in the socialist paradise of Venezuela the government announced they were going to implement stricter gun control to curb crime:

Caracas, Venezuela, July 2, 2006–The Venezuelan Ministry of Justice announced the creation of a new firearms control plan on Wednesday, in an attempt to decrease excessive violence in Venezuela. The plan will be presented to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in two weeks, and could begin to be implemented by the end of July.

[…]

According to official statistics, in the past three years there have been 11,643 (2003), 9,719 (2004), and 9,412 (2005) homicides, which is high, considering that Venezuela has a population of 27 Million people. The murder rate in Venezuela in 2005 was six times higher than in the United States.

So how has that plan been working out? Not so well:

The Venezuela Violence Observatory says at least 19,336 people have been killed this year, an average of 53 a day.

The figures suggest Venezuela’s murder rate is the highest in South America and four times that of Mexico.

While I love irony as much as the next person I wish people didn’t have to die in order to make a point. Gun control doesn’t work and it never will work. Six years after establishing stricter gun control laws to curb the country’s crime rate Venezuela leads South America in murder rates, even surpassing the drug cartel stricken state of Mexico.

The group did not give an overall reason for the rising violence, but said the problem was fuelled by impunity, with the great majority of killings going unpunished.

A high level of gun ownership is also a factor.

Emphasis mine. If a high level of gun ownership is a factor shouldn’t the murder rate have dropped after stricter gun control laws were implemented in 2006? The first linked story put the murder rates of Venezuela at 11,643 in 2003, 9,719 in 2004, and 9,412 in 2005. In 2011 there were 19,336 murders, an increase of roughly 10,000. If gun ownership rates were a contributing factor than the murder rate should be staying relatively steady or decreasing since stricter gun control laws were implemented. Instead they have more than doubled since 2005.

Firearm Related Accident Rate Falls Again

Anti-gunners try to scare people by claiming owing a gun increases your risk of having a firearm related accident or committing suicide with a gun. They like this argument because technically it’s true, one can’t have a firearm related accident if they are never around a firearm, nor can they commit suicide with something they don’t have. What the anti-gunners leave out in their fear mongering is the fact that accidents and suicides involving firearms is very low:

Data recently released by the National Center for Health Statistics shows that in 2008, the number and per capita rate of firearm accident deaths fell to an all-time low. There were 592 firearm accident deaths (0.19 such accidents per 100,000 population) in 2008, as compared to 613 accidents (.20 per 100,000) in 2007. In 2008, the chance of a child dying in a firearm accident was roughly one in a million.

Firearm accidents accounted for 0.5% of all accidental deaths; well below the percentages accounted for by motor vehicle accidents, falls, fires, poisonings, and several other more common types of mishaps.

Firearm suicides rose in 2008 because total suicides rose, but the percentage of suicides accounted for by those misusing firearms remained steady, at just barely over half. This is down from about 60% during the 1980s and early 1990s. The firearm suicide rate remained at just under 6 per 100,000, as it has been every year from 1999 forward. Contrary to claims made recently by some gun control advocates, firearm suicides among children are extremely uncommon, and in 2008, fell to an all-time low.

It must really piss the anti-gunners off knowing trends do not support their message of fear. One half of one percent of accidents involve a firearm, that’s insanely low. Likewise removing firearms from a suicide would only result in the use of another means of suicide. When somebody has been pushed to the point of suicide little is going to stop them besides immediate intervention.

Gun Control and Racism

Anti-gunners often accuse gun rights activists of being middle-aged white racists. Unless you actually are one of the rare middle-aged white racists you laugh and call the anti-gunner a hypocrite. Why? Because the history of gun control has been almost entirely driven by racism and fear of minorities having the same rights of self-defense as whites:

As an adult I continued to fear and hate guns and to generally align myself with the gun control cause, but Jeff’s suggestion that the regulation of people’s access to guns is essentially conservative nagged at me, unresolved, until I read UCLA law professor Adam Winkler’s stunning new book Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America. At the heart of his narrative, Winkler convincingly argues that the people who began the movement against gun control operated not out of the National Rifle Association’s national headquarters in Washington, D.C., but out of a nondescript two-story brick building three blocks from where I sat staring at that pistol: 3106 Shattuck Avenue, in the heart of radical Berkeley. It was there, in 1967, at the headquarters of the Black Panther Party, that Huey Newton and Bobby Seale planned an armed march into the California State Capitol that “launched the modern gun-rights movement.”

Despite my feelings about guns, even as a child I admired that the Panthers made their name shortly after their founding in 1966 by patrolling West Oakland streets with rifles and shotguns and confronting police officers who were detaining blacks. It seemed to me that there was no more effective means of curbing the daily police brutality being meted out to the residents of Oakland’s ghetto. But I did not know until reading Gunfight that the Panthers’ armed patrols provoked the drafting of legislation that established today’s gun regulation apparatus, or that the champions of that legislation were as conservative as apple pie.

Whether your like or dislike the early actions of the Black Panthers it must be noted that their rise was a direct result of police brutalizing members of the black community. In other words if they didn’t come together as a community and fight against the state’s monopoly on initiating violence they would be subject to acts of violence without recourse. The Second Amendment was drafted for this exact reason, when the state becomes overly tyrannical an armed citizenry maintains the option of defending themselves from state actors. Members of the Black Panthers originally armed themselves to resist tyranny as all other options including the courts were entirely against them. Sadly the need for self-defense gave the state an excuse to advance gun control in the hopes of disarming blacks and rendering them easier to subjugate:

In 1967 Don Mulford, the Republican state assemblyman who represented the Panthers’ patrol zone and who had once famously denounced the Free Speech Movement and anti-war demonstrations at the University of California at Berkeley, introduced a bill inspired by the Panthers that prohibited the public carrying of loaded firearms, open and concealed.

[…]

Two months after the invasion of Sacramento, riots erupted in response to instances of police brutality in the black sections of Detroit and Newark. From rooftops, windows, and doorways, gunmen fired on police, National Guardsmen, and Army troops sent to quash the rebellions. Congress responded by passing the Gun Control Act of 1968 and its companion bill, the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act. Although Winkler chastises “extremists” on both sides of the current gun control debate who characterize their opponents as totalitarians, he does note that while drafting the 1968 bills, Sen. Thomas Dodd (D-Conn.) had the Library of Congress provide him with an English translation of the gun control regulations that the Nazis used to disarm Jews and political dissidents.

Yes the 1968 Gun Control Act is basically an English translation of the Nazi Gun Control Act. Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership published an excellent book that compares our 1968 Gun Control Act with the Nazi equivalent and they are almost the same (minus the fact our version doesn’t overtly target a minority group).

I think I’ll throw Gun Fight onto my reading list and, whenever I get around to actually reading and finishing it, I’ll post up my thoughts.

Too Many Idiots

The Brady Campaign has been trying to build up hype for their next failed attempt to create a movement of victim disarmament. You may not have heard anything about it as nobody pays much attention to the Brady Campaign anymore but Miguel over at Gun Free Zone had his ear to the ground and found the Brady Campaign’s new site, Too Many Victims (of Gun Violence, people killed by other violent crimes need not apply). Here’s a link you can copy and paste to visit the site:

http://www.bradycampaign.org/toomanyvictims/

Yeah I know it’s kind of petty to not link directly to their site, but I don’t link directly to sites of white supremacists either. If you’re advocating the creation of victims you’re not getting any link love from me.

Basically it’s a site created so people can go post memorials of people killed by guns. As Miguel pointed out the Brady Campaign doesn’t give two shits about victims of other violent crimes. If your family member was stabbed to death that’s just too bad, find somewhere else to post his memory.

The other thing the Brady folks are doing is encouraging people to host vigils for the victims of violent crimes involving firearms (if you were a victim of rape you can just take your sob story right over there with the rest of the people who were victimized in other violent crimes). Conveniently they have a very sparse list of planned vigils (which can be visited at the following link):

http://www.bradycampaign.org/toomanyvictims/local-vigils/

Notice how most of the planned vigils don’t even have a date or location set yet, I’m guessing they never will. Sadly the only one going on in Minnesota is why the fuck up in Duluth so I’ll not be able to verify if five or six people attended.

I’m going to find it difficult to surpress me desire to troll this site. Miguel brought up the idea of posting “memorials” for criminals who were shot by their would be victims. My question is whether or not these vigils are open carry events. There is also the question regarding whether or not the Brady Bunch are so cold and calloused as to remove memorials of victims of violent crimes not involving firearms. Do Brady shills employees verify the memorials are for real people? There is certainly the potential of creating some very funny memorials for non-existant or fictional individuals (some James Bond villains would be good candidates).

Now that I’ve given you all these bad ideas I want to urge you to take the high road and do your best to resist trolling this site. Ff we don’t give it any traffic nobody will (seriously, we’re the only people who visit anti-gun websites and we do is just to laugh).

Either way the lack of factual evidence to back up their claims has lead to the anti-gunners to rely entirely on emotional manipulation. This new initiative by the Brady Bunch is a sickening demonstration of their selectiveness in opposing violence. They don’t care about violent crime, only gun crime.

Ron Paul Calls for Criminal Charges Against Eric Holder

At least one person in Washington DC is still on the up and up. Ron Paul has officially come out and said Eric Holder should be criminally charged for his involvement in Fast and Furious:

Congress is currently investigating Fast & Furious. Attorney General Eric Holder has already been caught making at least one false statement under oath.

Gun rights advocates have been asking why Republicans aren’t calling for criminal charges against Eric Holder. Many have criticized FOX News for giving the story little coverage. CBS national news has been breaking most of the new details related to Fast & Furious. Recently Eric Holder yelled at a reporter at an event in DC. He blamed the media for public outrage over Fast & Furious, and told a reporter “you guys need to stop it.”

Today, Texas Congressman Ron Paul became the first GOP president candidate to call for criminal charges against Eric Holder.

Speaking to syndicated radio talk show host Alex Jones, Paul called for Holder to be “immediately fired.” Paul went on to say “I think it was criminal,” and called the operation a “false flag.” He said that there needs to be an immediate investigation into Holder himself, and said Holder “deserves charges.”

Kudos to Ron Paul for demanding what nobody else has and brining up the fact that Fast and Furious was a false flag operation to advance gun control. Holder’s false flag operation has lead to the death of both American and Mexican citizens just so the current administration could fabricate a scenario to advocate for more gun control.

Watch Eric Holder Squirm

There are few things as sweet as watching Attorney General Eric Holder squirm:

What a pompous ass. He literally state his refusal to provide Congress with documents related to Fast and Furious. Thank Odin that Issa has a spine and refused to simply let Holder get away with pulling such a maneuver unchallenged. The Department of Justice knows they were caught trying to advance gun control by smuggling weapons into Mexica and they’re trying their damnedest to cover the entire mess up.

While many people are calling for Holder’s resignation or impeachment I want to see that asshole in prison. This video demonstrates his complete disregard for law and order by his blatant attempt to cover up his botched gun smuggling operation. Were you or I to withhold evidence during a trial we would likely be ruled in contempt of court and held in a cage until we finally provided the desired information.

And to Think, Anti-Gunners Want to Prohibit People on the Terror Watch List from Owning Guns

From the horses fucking mouth:

POSITION: As a way to strengthen the Brady background check system, the Brady Campaign supports closing the Terror Gap.

PROBLEM: There is a gaping hole in our nation’s firearm laws that terrorists can exploit. Federal authorities can’t stop sales of guns – including military-style assault weapons – by federally licensed gun dealers to known or suspected terrorists because of gaps in current law. Our definitions of those prohibited from purchasing guns from federally licensed dealers do not include those known and suspected terrorists.

[…]

SOLUTION: Congress must pass the bill to close the Terror Gap to stop known or suspected terrorists from buying guns.

GET ACTIVE: Contact your Representative and Senators to urge them to support the Terror Gap bill.

I’ve been completely opposed to this because many innocent people appear on those lists. Now we’ve learned that the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) has been permitted to leave people acquitted of terrorist-related offenses on their lists:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is permitted to include people on the government’s terrorist watch list even if they have been acquitted of terrorism-related offenses or the charges are dropped, according to newly released documents.

[…]

The 91 pages of newly disclosed files include a December 2010 guidance memorandum to F.B.I. field offices showing that even a not-guilty verdict may not always be enough to get someone off the list, if agents maintain they still have “reasonable suspicion” that the person might have ties to terrorism.

There you have it, if your name appears on the list and you’re later acquitted the FBI can simply leave your name on there so long as they have “reasonable suspicion.” This means, beyond any doubt, that what anti-gunners are advocating is the removal of people’s right to keep and bear arms even if those people are innocent of any crime.

You know what’s rather funny about this? I’ve been saying due process is dead in this country for a while now and am often called paranoid for it. This document proves without any doubt that due process is in fact dead in this country. Welcome to the United Police State of America.

By the way, in case this document gets removed I’ve uploaded a copy to my server, which can be accessed here [PDF].