Hey Britain How’s the Gun Ban Working

I’m once again asking Britain how it’s almost total ban on guns is turning out. Apparently not so hot as there are about four stories involving guns in Britain.

The first article tells a story that should be impossible in Britain. A man was shot in the head in Rotherhithe. The man was taken to the hospital where he apparently is receiving treatment. I’m still baffled that a man was shot in Britain. Didn’t the shooter know they don’t allow people to have guns there?

Next up the police are looking for a 16 year old kid who is suspected of shooting somebody. There is a £15,000 reward for information leading to his arrest. How he could have helped murder somebody with a gun is still a complete mystery.

For our third story a man was apparently gunned down by police after shooting at them. The police were unaware of the fact that the gun only fire blanks (Not their fault.). Yet the gun looked real and that makes it an imitation of a firearm which is illegal there. Remember it’s not just a gun ban but a anything that looks like a gun ban. Somehow this one made it through the gun ban barrier though.

Finally two people are being charged for attempted murder. Their preferred instrument for the attempted murder was nothing less then a evil shotgun. Of course there are means of acquiring a shotgun in Britain but it involves a ton of paper work and licensing. Well either this 55 year old grandmother and 17 year old kid did that or they had the gun illegally which should be impossible as there are laws against possession of a gun illegally. I mean that’s exactly what makes it illegal!

So Britain how is the gun ban working out for you?

Recession Hits Chicago’s Annual Gun Buy Back Program

Man the anti-gunners are losing again and again. It’s almost as if people believe in the right to bear arms. Every year Chicago, the safest place on Earth thanks to their draconian gun laws, holds a gun buy back program. Too bad for them people aren’t donating money like they used to:

Last year, about $130,000 was collected. This year, only $50,000 has come in. An assault weapon will still be worth $100. And BB guns and replicas once again will bring $10.

Because of the funding issue surrendering a handgun only nets you $50.00 of dirty money instead of $100.00. Maybe it’s the hard economy, maybe it’s the fact more and more people are waking up and realizing disarming our populace isn’t a good thing, or maybe it’s a little bit of both. Either way it’s nice to see this program floundering as it only gets honest citizens to turn in guns while the criminals keep theirs.

Sheriff Says Civilians Better Shots than Police

Here is an interesting story from Sharp as a Marble. There is a debate going in Columbia, Missouri to determine if people with permits to carry pistols should be allowed to be armed at the local high school. The debate is raging because the smart people realize having armed faculty could stop a mass murdered before he killed enough people to be considered a mass murder.

The local police showed up to comment. The first comment that was made by a law enforcement officer was the stereotypical, but true, cop line on the subject:

Other officers say arming everybody makes it harder for them to tell the good guys from the bad guys.

“And when you have multiple people potential pulling out guns, that’s gonna totally go against our training and potentially create a chaos that we may not be prepared to handle,” said a police officer in the audience.

That is a concern but in most cases it won’t be an issue. If the shooter has been stopped then the armed citizen will have holstered his weapon. Remember most mass shooters are cowards and end up offing themselves the second they are presented with armed resistance. And if the mass murder was still going at it when police arrived and the armed citizen was in a firefight with the said murderer I’m sure they would be good enough to not point the gun at the police or even holster the weapon when the cops arrived. Like I said it’s a valid concern but probably not one that is going to be an issue. The next commend was made by the Sheriff:

Sheriff White argued that armed civilians on campus have the potential to end the threat quickly. And he stunned the room with this assertion.

“In actual shootings, citizens do far better than law enforcement on hit potential,” said White. “They hit their targets and they don’t hit other people. I wish I could say the same for cops. We train more, they do better.”

I like this Sheriff, he’s smart and honest. On average armed citizens do have a better hit ratio. This may be due to the fact most civilians with carry licenses that carry practice shooting. Many police officers only shoot when they do their qualifying and as many times as their department requires. But this is entirely theory.

Either way it’s good to see an honest Sheriff talking about arming citizens in schools.

Somebody Needs a Truck Load of Fresh Knickers

Because Lois Romano just shit hers. I found yet another interesting story via Snowflakes in Hell that amounts to normal pants shitting hysteria by an anti-gunner. I don’t know where to begin with this one so I’ll do the logical thing and start with the top. She starts of talking about Governor Corzine signing New Jersey’s one gun a month strangling bill. That’s probably the only fact in the entire article, the rest is emotional nonsense. Let us being:

f the New Jersey government was thinking of the good of the citizens of New Jersey and our federal lawmakers were thinking of the good of the citizens of our entire nation, they would be working day and night to see how to get rid of the guns in our country instead of allowing more to be on our streets.

So she is stating we should get rid of all guns in this country. Of course the Constitution doesn’t allow for that and cities such as Chicago and Washington D.C. that have strict gun bans aren’t free of shootings or even remotely close to it. In fact ask England how their gun ban is working out (Hint, if you read this blog you know it’s not). Next up:

The Second Amendment to our Constitution was signed into law on Dec. 15, 1791. I’m sure those signers are turning over in their graves as to how our government has allowed this amendment to be interpreted.

The Second Amendment was written as follows: “A well regulated Militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

I’m sighing and shaking my head again. Yet another dumb ass that is trying to use the militia argument. I’m not going into this again, as I’ve explained it a couple of times. Are your pants full of shit yet? Well if not she has more scare tactics:

I cannot see how these words mean that there should be “gun shows” where anyone can buy an Uzi, a missile launcher or any other weapon that our military uses. Why has our government allowed so many guns to be in our country? There were over 9,000 murders by shootings in our country last year. In England and other countries in Europe the number of murders by shooting in all these countries totaled less than 50.

OK stop the boat, where the Hell can I find a gun show that has missile launchers for sale? I’ve seen expended missile tubes before but those are from fire once and throw away weapon systems. Hence the tubes are useless beyond a collector’s item. Hell I want to see any gun show that offers any weapon our military uses beyond the M9 pistol. You can’t buy modern machine guns even if you go through the ATF bull shit and I don’t think our military uses anything that was produced before 1986 anymore. And possession of such a weapon without the tax stamp is a felony and hence illegal already.

And yes according to England’s own study the number of murder involving firearms was 38:

Firearm offences can be broken down by injury and this shows there were 38 firearm offences
recorded by the police that resulted in a fatal injury (i.e. homicides) in 2008/09, 15 offences
fewer than in 2007/08.

That does look good on paper. In fact it makes it appear as though gun control works as England has an almost complete ban on guns. Oh wait let us look at the overall violent crime rate in England. What’s that it’s two times that of the United State’s? In addition to that the study that was just linked to shows there is absolutely no correlation between less guns and less violent crime, in fact the opposite appears be to true:

It turns out that in nations where guns are less available, criminals manage to get them anyway. After decades of ever-stricter gun controls, England banned handguns and confiscated them from all permit holders in 1997. Yet by 2000, England had the industrialized world’s highest violent crime rate — twice that of the U.S. Despite the confiscation of law-abiding Englishmen’s handguns, a 2002 report of England’s National Crime Intelligence Service lamented that while “Britain has some of the strictest gun laws in the world, [i]t appears that anyone who wishes to obtain a firearm [illegally] will have little difficulty in doing so.”

So although the number of murders involving guns has went down in England after their gun ban violent crime as a whole increase. This may have something to do with the fact criminals feel safer going after prey that is unarmed. Let’s continue with the pants shitting hysteria:

We are not living in the days of lawlessness. We have police departments in every town and city in our country. We have federal law enforcement officers. We have the National Guard in case of civil riots. We do not need to have every citizen carrying a gun. Some states even allow people to walk around with their loaded guns.

When seconds count the police are minutes away. It takes much less time for a thug to murder you then it does for the police to figure out where you are and get to your location. Maybe if the police had personal teleportation devices that wouldn’t be the case but sad to say they don’t. Hence for those minutes it takes them to get there you are on your own. If I’m my own against a criminal I want something to at least equalize the struggle, that’s exactly what a gun does.

I like her mention that some states allow citizens to carry around loaded guns. In fact 48 states do with Wisconsin and Illinois being the only two hold outs (Although Wisconsin legally allows open carry). If gun crime had increased after passing carry laws I promise you the laws would have been repealed, but that’s not the case. In fact most states notice a drop in crime rate after passing carry laws. And so it continues:

There are about 35 adults living on my street. If we each purchase a gun a month, in one year there will be at least 420 guns on my street. This will never happen because we are all law-abiding, sane people and trust our police department to maintain law and order in our little town. On the other hand, there are those who will be happy to be able to gather this number of guns by legal means or not.

I’m glad you trust your police department. I trust mine as well. I trust them to show up after the crime has been committed and try to figure out who did it and where they went. That is their job after all, to dispense justice after a crime has been committed. Also what does it matter if you own 10, 20, or even 1,000 guns? You can use at most two (A pistol in each hand, which is dreadfully useless) at one time and there is a limit to the number you can carry on your person.

And she mentions people will gather these guns by legal means or not. Well I have to say I’ve got bad news for you, if somebody is currently willing to get guns illegally making guns illegal won’t stop them. Ask England. Since England has an almost complete ban on guns there should be no crimes involving guns correct? Too bad that’s not the case. Luckily we’re almost at the end, because the smell of shit is really starting to stink here:

It doesn’t matter if these stores check out the credentials of the prospective buyer. We all know that the number of forged credentials probably outnumber the legitimate number of credentials in our country.

I’d like to know where you came up with that. According to the FBI in 2008 12,709,023 background checks were performed. In order for what Lois said to be true at least 6,354,512 of those credentials would have to be forged. She is saying that the most likely event is over 6 million credentials were forged in 2008 by gun buyers. If there were the case you would think the FBI would stumble upon that and investigate. Having over 50% of their NICS checks end up being done through forged identities would indicate a MASSIVE organized crime effort. I’d really like her to produce a source that gave her the opinion she has. Anyways we have one last paragraph that she wrote:

So now I probably will be getting calls from NRA members telling me that guns don’t kill people. My answer to them is, “People kill people using guns!”

Oh my God, people kill people using guns! Guess what people kill people using knives, cars, poison, lamps, sticks, stones, weed whackers, water, stairs, and almost anything else that exists. Her implication with that saying is since people kill people with guns then we must ban guns. Likewise that means she wants to ban everything people can use to kill other people. Well she better cut off her arms and legs then sew her mouth shut (Actually it would be nice if she did) since all of those can be used to kill people as well.

Yet another emotional anti-gun debate that doesn’t hold up once facts are injected into the claims. Too bad and so sad, thank you for play.

Fighting Piracy One Machete at a Time

You know that problem with piracy in Somalia the media no longer reports on? Well it’s still a problem, they just aren’t reporting it. In fact those zany pirates are still hijacking ships, and world leaders are still saying we can’t arm the crews of these ships. Well that didn’t stop 40 Egyptian fishermen from arming themselves and fucking some pirates up.

Although guns are always preferable they aren’t the only weapons that can be used as the story states:

A wounded pirate, found on a beach with machete wounds, said the crew attacked him and his colleagues with tools and then seized their weapons.

Machete wounds, ouch. Those Egyptians must have been hard core to be carrying machetes on board, good on them. But see how armed resistance works? You beat up or kill the people meaning to bring harm to you (If an armed force is invading your home, or in this case ship, you can safely assume they mean to do you harm) then you take their weapons if they are better then what you have. I love this part:

He said that at least two pirates died before the crew sailed towards waters patrolled by international navies.

That’s two pirates that won’t be harming anybody else in the future. If all the ships going into that area were armed properly I think we’d see a huge decline in piracy in the region. The pirates currently understand that most of the ships are unarmed and hence hijacking them is fairly low risk and easy. Since there is such a chance to make major money for little risk they keep pirating. Increase the risk and it doesn’t seem as profitable.

When “Security” Goes too Far

Via Random Nuclear Strikes we have an example of airliner security going way over board. An airplane going from Houston to Minneapolis had to land in Rochester due to severe weather. During this 6 hour delay the passengers were trapped and not allowed to leave the plane until security screeners returned for their shift.

During their stay on the plane the single toilet on board overflowed and of course you had angry people and babies screaming. Not what I’d call humane conditions. So why does the TSA require agents there before people trapped on a planet can get off? Well they don’t:

Airlines, not TSA, make the decision on whether or not to deplane passengers if there is a delay or diversion. TSA does not prohibit airlines deplaning passengers and re-boarding without screening as long as they don’t exit past the checkpoint and leave the secure area, regardless of whether or not TSA officers are conducting screening operations.

In addition, TSA has the ability to recall security officers and resume screening passengers after hours at the request of an airline or airport.

So the airliners could have let people off at any point. Hell they could have recalled a couple TSA officers if it made them feel better. But instead they left people trapped on a plane, probably due to CYA (Cover Your Ass) security. But here is the funny part in my book:

Continental Airlines did apologize to the passengers, saying their ordeal was “completely unacceptable” and offering refunds and vouchers for future flights.

I’m sorry if I ever was subjected to such conditions on an airliners the last thing I would do is fly with those pricks again.

Idiocy Astounds Me Once Again

OK I game across a rather disturbing story on Gizmodo. The summary of the story is some kid in Japan burned down the house his mother and him were living in because she threw out a plastic toy. An important thing to note here is his mother and himself were in the house when he set it ablaze. I really shouldn’t say some kid as this idiot was 29 but if you burn down a house because your mother threw out a toy you’re a fucking kid, period. Ironically people always point to Japan as a utopia society who has banned guns and has a low murder rate, they always neglect to mention suicides and stupid shit like this though.

The story isn’t as interesting as the commands on Gizmodo though. What follows is a rant about users on the Internet, hence it has no real value to anybody other than showing how stupid people can be. If you don’t care just do yourself a favor and skip the remainder of this post. Now that the disclaimer is out of the way let us dissect some of this posts, the first one I found extremely stupid was posted by a man named Bokusatsu_Tenshi:

I know there’s no justifying for what the guy did, but if I’m not mistaken, those where GUNPLAS, not “action figures”… which means they were all artisanally hand assembled and probably painted too. So it’s NOT about some dumb collection the guy spend some bucks on, but rather a hobby that probably cost him tons of work and money. So instead of posting prejudicial comments, maybe some of you should think how you would react if someone took something very precious to you, which you spent hours making, and just tossed it out as if it was nothing. People seem to think they are so fucking superior to the guy only because he lives with his mother and collects gunplas…

So he’s asking how would I react if I lived at home and my mother threw away my guns? I’d be pissed, I’d yell, but there is no way I’d burn the fucking house down. Up next we have Dr. Evil Genius:

Let’s see… take something that you hold in high-regard – your most treasured belonging and say… your significant vagina takes it upon herself to just throw your shit out. PLEASE tell me you’re gonna be happy about it. Everyone wants to criticize others over what is important to THEM. I think his reaction was inappropriate but have your girlfriend get your car towed to the Chop Shop and we’ll see how YOU react.

Once again I’m not going to burn her house down. If she had my vehicle towed to the chop shop I can assume the relationship is over otherwise I’d have no idea why she would do that (even then she wouldn’t). At most I may take her to court to get the value of the vehicle back so I could get some wheels. I’d also probably say some words not meant for children, but I do that in normal conversation so it’s nothing out of character. Then we have TheGZeus:

Your mother nags at you constantly your whole life, you probably can’t get a job doing anything that doesn’t make you want to die, and the only thing that makes you happy is the Gundam collection you’ve had since you were a child, and probably spent most of your allowance on. So for many years of your life most of your income goes towards these things, so their value gets inflated. When your mother throws out what is probably worth thousands of dollars, and worth infinitlely more to you and she doesn’t care you fucking SNAP. My dad reset my router accidentally, risking ALOT of data in the process, and he got angry with me for cursing and kicking a box of my own stuff. That data meant nothing to him, but represented hours of work and setup to me.

First of all we’ve all done jobs we’d rather not have. But if you want to survive you need money, and the only way to get money is through theft or work. Most of us prefer work even if the job sucks. And if the only thing you have in life that makes you happy are toys, Hell any object, you’re life is terrible and you should work on fixing it (In other words go out and meet people.). Snapping at your father because he accidentally (we all make mistakes) unplugged your router is rather dumb. No data in transit is irreplaceable. If you are copying a file it still exists on the source machine, if you are downloading something you can always restart the download. If it was a very large download that you’ve been working on for hours or days you should have used a method that can recover from such errors such as BitTorrent. Finally if your mother is your “significant vagina” you need therapy.

The point of this rant is unless your life is in danger via the person taking an inanimate object from you (An armed robber for instance who may just kill you after taking your object anyways) there is no justification for putting another person’s life in jeopardy. If somebody throws up something of importance to you feel free to scream, yell, or even take them to court (I don’t see any reason I could possible take a family member to court over property myself.) but never ever attempt to bring harm to their person. Should I be away from my home and somebody breaks in and steals my stuff I’m not going to bring bodily harm to them if I find them afterwards, I’m calling the police and seeing them in court. A person’s life is more valuable than your stuff, period. It’s sickening to me that some people think otherwise.

As a cultural awareness note I didn’t belittle the kid for living with his mother. In many other countries, especially asian countries, it’s common for elderly parents to move in with their kids when they are no longer capable of being independent. I haven’t a clue if that is the case here so I’m not touching that subject.

Multi-Layer Security

Bruce Schneier has an excellent essay posted on his blog. It deals with a security mechanism we are all familiar with, physical locks. It’s no secret physical locks can be bypassed via lock picks, bump keys, and random everyday objects. Few people realize though how insecure the lock on their front door is. On top of that most physical locks require a key, which many people find inconvenient.

Lock companies have been trying to solve both of these problems through more secure locking mechanisms and keyless entry methods. Of course as with any security related items these new methods are introducing new ways of exploiting physical locks. I don’t think there will ever be a secure lock, there will always be methods of bypass. But locks are important because they add another layer of security.

Having one layer of security is never a good idea since an exploit in that layer will leave everything behind it vulnerable. Case in point if somebody picks your lock they are through the front door. If you have no other security layer everything in your home is fair game. Now let’s add a large guard dog to the mix. Once the criminal bypasses the lock they will have to deal with the dog. This can be accomplished by simply killing the thing but if you are in the house and you hear the dog bark that gives you a few seconds to prepare. That would imply a third layer, you. Hopefully that third layer has a gun to add another layer between you and the criminal.

Security can only be properly done in layers, and each layer should complement another. No layer should be exploitable via another layer. In other words using our example bypassing the front door lock won’t affect the dog. Bypassing the dog won’t affect you and your gun. Meanwhile as mentioned in the link Schlage are introducing Internet enabled locks. This ties your physical security to the security of your computer. Should somebody exploit your security layers on your computer they also exploit one layer of your physical security. This should never be the case.

When planning a home defense strategy make sure you have multiple layers. Even seemingly unimportant things will require time on the criminal’s behalf. The more time the criminal wastes the more time you have to properly respond and prepare. Sure having two locks on your font door (always ensure one is a good dead bolt) may seem like a meaningless idea since it only prolongs the criminal’s entry it does prolong it. Those few additional seconds could buy you enough time to round your family up in a secure room with only one entrance that can be covered with a shotgun.