Tag: Gun Rights

It’s the Thought that Counts

Unless you’ve been living under a pile of rocks you know that the National Rifle Association (NRA) held its annual meeting last week. From what I’ve heard there was an estimated 70,000 NRA members in attendance. Every year there is a traditional protest held by whatever gun control group happens to be prominent (relatively speaking, of course). This year the Michael Bloomberg funded group Moms Demand Something or Other Action were the protest holders. According to gun control advocates the people of the United States desperately want stricter gun control laws. But if the number of protesters who turned up to this year’s annual protest are any indicator the demand only exists in their heads:

I was interested in seeing what Shannon Watts and her allies at Moms Demand Illegal Actions From Mayors In Everytown (MDIAFMIE) were to say during their trip to Indianapolis. The group had promised to “send NRA leadership a message.”

Apparently, their message was “we don’t want to be anywhere near where you are,” because when I decided to attend their rally, I found that I had to hike down W Maryland Street, hang a left on N Illinois, turn right on E Market, hang a left around Monument Circle, and then schlep four blocks up, to see this.

Most of the MDIAFMI members attending the rally were convincingly camouflaged as an empty lawn, but there were perhaps 100+ people (some have claimed as many as 200, but a good 10%-15% appeared to be media, so that number seems inflated) clustered around the stage, roughly matching the numbers of supporters that Bloomberg paid to attend.

Roughly 100 people? Wow. No wonder they held their protest several blocks from the NRA meeting. It would be embarrassing to have your protests outnumbered by the people simply going to and exiting from the meeting you’re protesting.

This is par for the course. Every year the NRA protests fails to attract any real numbers. But, as they say, it’s the thought that counts. And it’s nice to know that the gun control crowd is thinking about us.

Georgia Rustled a Lot of Jimmies With Its New Gun Rights Bill

Nathan Deal, the governor of Georgia, recently signs a pretty sweeping gun rights bill:

Gov. Nathan Deal signed legislation today that would vastly expand where Georgians can legally carry firearms, a proposal that has drawn heaps of praise and scorn from outside groups.

“People who follow the rules can protect themselves and their families from people who don’t follow the rules,” said Deal, adding: “The Second Amendment should never be an afterthought. It should reside at the forefronts of our minds.”

It’s nice to see the people of Georgia have better legal options available for their self-defense. But what’s really entertaining about the signing of this bill are the number of anti-gunner jimmies that it rustled. Let’s start with Warren Summers, the chief of police of Norcross, Georgia:

Picture this: It’s a pleasant summer day. The kids are out of school, and you’ve decided to take them to the local park. You’re sitting on a park bench in the shade, watching them play, when you suddenly notice a man dressed in a heavy winter coat approaching the playground.

As he scurries past you, you notice a handgun strapped around his waistband. Alarmed? You should be. Who is this man, and why is he armed at your children’s playground? Concerned enough to call the local police?

I find it ironic that a police officer is trying to make people who carry handguns near schools sound sinister. That’s exactly what cops do. Most of us who live in larger metropolitan areas don’t know the cops personally so we don’t know if they are level-headed individuals or violent psychopaths. If you’re concerned about a stranger without a badge carrying a gun near a school then you should be equally worried about a stranger with a gun and a badge carrying a gun near a school. Or you could be a sensible human being and realize that a vast majority of us are nonviolent so assuming every stranger you see is maleficent is a pretty paranoid attitude.

Slate, always a great source of hysterics, took it’s usually sarcastic tone when discussing the signing of the bill:

The problem in Georgia isn’t that you can’t own a gun. The problem, you see, is that once you do own a gun you can’t take it absolutely everywhere you want to. But what to do about those pesky restrictions on where you can, and cannot, pack heat? Problem solved. On Wednesday, Georgia Governor Nathan Deal signed a bill that doesn’t cramp gun owners’ gun-toting style so much by vastly expanding where firearms can be legally carried in the state.

That actually was a problem and will remain a problem as the bill didn’t eliminate all gun-free zones. ThinkProgress (can you tell I was searching through well-known anti-gun websites for blog fodder) almost disappointed me but then redeemed itself in the last paragraph:

The provision authorizing guns in bars is especially likely to result in an uptick of violence. According to Washington State University Sociology Professor Jennifer Schwartz, “40% of male [homicide] offenders were drinking alcohol at the time” of their offense, and about one in three female offenders were also drinking.

Let me first point out that Minnesota allows permit holder to carry firearms into bars. You can even legally have a drink so long as your blood alcohol level stays below .04%. Guess what? Our state’s bars haven’t turned into murder zones. In fact permit holders in this state committing murder or manslaughter is only .542 per 100,000 versus 1.78 per 100,000 of the general population. So the concern that allowing permit holder to carry in bars will cause an increase in violence is nothing more than fear mongering. I also applaud ThinkProgress for including a link to a totally irrelevant study. 40% of male homicide offenders may have been drinking but that doesn’t mean they were permit holders, drinking at a bar, or otherwise fall in the demographics that ThinkProgress is trying to demonize.

My next stop in the search for rustled jimmies was Salon. Unlike ThinkProgress, Salon delivered up front:

This probably won’t come as news to Salon’s readers in the state of Georgia, but it turns out it’s way, way, way too hard in the Peach State for one to procure and go everywhere with a gun. So the state Legislature, keeping its eyes firmly fixed on the real issues that matter, is on the verge of remedying this grave injustice by eliminating seemingly every single law regulating firearms in Georgia (which, considering this is Georgia, might not be quite as much work as it seems).

So much impotent sarcasm. We can see that the mere fact that Georgia tends to lean towards gun rights really upsets the staff at Salon. But the real gold was found towards the end:

As if all of that weren’t enough, MoJo reports that the bill would also so broaden the state’s SYG regulations that even a person using a gun he does not legally hold would be allowed to claim a SYG defense.

Oh. My. God. This bill enables people to use whatever tool they have at hand, regardless of whether or not they legally hold it, to defend their life? What a travesty! How dare somebody be allowed to legally defend themselves with something they don’t legally hold! Seriously, that paragraph was probably the best find in my search for rustled jimmies. It packs so much stupidity into such a small paragraph.

I really enjoy it when pro-gun rights legislation passes because it really, really upsets people who think everybody has a moral duty to die at the hands of a violent criminal instead of defending themselves. When somebody subscribes to such a cockamamie idea I relish seeing them not get what they want.

Incidents of Gun Crime Increase in Minneapolis

After a nice stint of declining gun-related crimes Minneapolis suffered a notable increase last year:

Gun incidents rose 40 percent in Minneapolis last year, the first significant jump in years following a long-term downward trend in gun-related cases.

The gun incidents in the city report being released Wednesday include people being shot or shot at, reports of gunshot wounds or a gun used in a crime.

It wouldn’t surprise me if gun control advocates started blaming those of us who carry firearms for defensive purposes and the lack of gun control laws passing in St. Paul’s most notorious marble building. If that happens I will deservedly rip their claims apart. But the take away from this story, in my opinion, is that it’s still a good idea to carry a firearm.

I do hope that this is a statistical anomaly and the downward trend that was being enjoyed years prior picks up again.

Update: 2014-04-23: 16:50: As it turns out the initial calculations were in error:

A department spokesman said this afternoon that crime analysts discovered a flaw in the data and that new calculations found an 8 percent increase, not 40 percent, in gun incidents from 2012 to 2013.

So it doesn’t look like things are as bad as they first appeared. Granted, I still don’t like going to Minneapolis but that’s mostly because I hate trying to find parking.

I also want to thank Paul for forwarding me this information.

Moving Towards Electromagnetic Guns

Firearms are considered a mature technology. The basic concept hasn’t changed in centuries. Since inception firearms have effectively been tubes designed to contain pressure and direct it out a specific direction. Inside the tube is a projectile placed in front of a chemical propellent and when the propellent is ignited it creates pressure that propels the projectile out of the tube. The need to contain and direct pressure is one of the limiting factors in firearm design.

3D printed firearms have become a buzzword as of late. While politicians and the media are making 3D printed firearms out to be the next destroyer of civilization the truth is there are currently severe limitations on what can be manufactured on an affordable printer. While this will improve over time I think it may be time to consider investing resources into improving electromagnetic guns.

The reason I say that is because electromagnetic guns don’t rely on high pressure to propel a projectile. Rail guns rely on closing a circuit between two rails with a conductive projectile, which creates Lorentz force to move the projectile. Coil guns rely on timing a series of electromagnets to pull a projectile down a barrel. Neither design involves high pressure created by burning chemical propellents. A rail gun will generate a great deal of heat as the projectile moving down the rails generates a lot of fiction. That leads me to believe a coil gun design would be a better option if one’s goal is to create a firearm that can mostly be manufactured on a 3D printer.

Obviously the electromagnets, capacitors, and other necessary electronics can’t be manufactured on an affordable 3D printer at this time. But those components are all readily available either online or an electronic hobbyist shops. And best of all buying the parts doesn’t announce to the world that you’re building a firearm or explosive (something that buying chemical propellents or components necessary to create chemical propellents can do).

There are major drawbacks to such a gun though. At this point in time traditional firearms are a known quantity. We know how to manufacture them in a way that is reliable. Coil gun designs are in their infancy and a lot of research and development would be necessary to make such weapons that could perform all of the duties of a traditional firearm can. Being able to accelerate a projectile to anywhere near the speeds of a traditional firearm isn’t easy and reliability will likely be an issue for some time. But coil guns may represent a weapon that is easier to manufacture in the home during this age where knowledge of electronics is becoming more common that knowledge of metalworking. Furthermore the components needed to build a coil gun are more difficult to control than components needed to build a traditional firearms (namely chemical propellants). In fact this is probably the most appealing aspect of electromagnetic weaponry, the components need to build a coil gun are also used in everything that our modern civilization relies on. Controlling such commonly available components is impossible (technically controlling anything is impossible but controlling commonly available components is orders of magnitude more difficult than controlling specialized components).

I think pursuing electromagnetic guns is something the gun rights movement should consider and maybe even invest resources into investigating.

National Association for Gun Rights Leaking Personal Information

The National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR) is an organization that I’ve heard nothing good about and that hasn’t changed with the most recent news I came across via Shall Not Be Questioned. It turns out that the NAGR has been leaking information submitted to their contact page:

On Friday evening we were contacted by Jeff Hulsey, a retired gunsmith from the Gulf Coast region of Texas. Jeff had a problem. Starting back in August of 2013 He began receiving emails at his personal email inbox, which is through the popular Gmail domain, that it did not appear were intended for him.

[…]

What concerns Jeff is the fact that even though he is trying to point out the fairly obvious error that they are making that they are leaking personal information to an unknown source. We asked Jeff if these emails were truly unsolicited. He replied, “Absolutely unsolicited. The only dealings I’ve ever had with the NAGR were to score a couple of stickers for the side of my toolbox. I’m not even a member.”

When asked if the rest of the emails looked like the email he provided to us he stated, “Yes. It’s random questions from people who visited their “Contact Us” page, then forwarded by someone within their organization for follow-up or review. Some of them contain some very specific personal information, like the USPS worker who details which facility he works at in pursuit of an answer to a legal question.”

If you’re advertising yourself as a gun rights organization you need to realize some accepted practices within the gun rights arena. What may be the most important practice is privacy. Gun ownership is under constant attack by politicians and gun control activists. Because of this gun owners tend to desire privacy. Unless you’re willing to respect the privacy of gun owners you’re unlikely to gain much ground as a gun rights organization. But what makes this apparent misconfiguration or mishandling worse is the NAGR’s response:

To Jeff, this looked like a simple mistake. It looked like someone had the wrong email address and was forwarding him email incorrectly. He tried to contact NAGR and got no response. He has since received about one email a month from them following the same pattern.

Misconfiguration an e-mail forwarder or mishandling data, although bad, are mistakes that any system administrator in a hurry can make. Failing to acknowledge and correct the problem after it has been pointed out is unacceptable.

Handling personal information isn’t trivial. There are a lot of mistakes that can lead such information be leaked to unauthorized individuals. We see this even with well reputed organizations such as Target. What I find most telling about an organization is how to respond to their mistakes. The lack of response from the NAGR shows me that the organization is either disorganized or unconcerned. If it’s too disorganized to fix a simple mistake how can it expect anybody to trust it with fighting for gun rights? Political fights require a great deal or organization. On the other hand the NAGR may be unconcerned about its users’ privacy. If that’s the case how can anybody trust the organization to be seriously concerned with gun rights?

I haven’t supported the NAGR because I’ve never heard anything positive about the organization. But news like this leaves me urging people not to support or interact with the organization. Any information you give the NAGR, including payment information for all we know, could end up in unauthorized hands.

Sporting Purpose

Today (well technically a few days ago) is a day ending in “y”, which means somebody in Congress is losing their shit over the existence of firearms and the ability of the peasantry to acquire them. A letter submitted by our rulers in Congress was sent to our ruler in the White House urging him to enforce the ban on importing “military-style firearms” (firearms that have aesthetic features that offend many politicians). What interesting though is the argument made for why the President can prohibit their importation:

Enforcing the import ban would require no congressional action as the President has very broad authority under the 1968 Gun Control Act to prohibit the importation of firearms and ammunition unless they are “generally recognized as particularly suitable for or readily adaptable to sporting purposes.”

I think it’s safe to say that any claims that “military-style firearms” are not recognized as being suitable for sporting purposes are false. As it turns out “military-style firearms” are used in one of the fastest shooting sports in the country: 3-gun. 3-gun almost necessitates the use of rifles with quickly swappable standard capacity magazines. Anybody attempting to complete with a bolt-action rifle, for example, will find themselves entirely outclassed as well as holding up the entire stage for their extended run.

3-gun scoring is a combination of accuracy and time. The faster you complete a stage the better your score tends to be. Being able to top off your rifle, handgun, and shotgun quickly will greatly benefit your score. Anybody who has participated in a 3-gun match has noticed AR-pattern rifles and other “military-style firearms” dominate. And that, I believe, puts the whole sporting purpose debate to rest.

The NRA

During my textual monologue about the new generation of shooters I said some disparaging things about the National Rifle Association (NRA). This lead to an e-mail asking me why I dislike the NRA (it was actually a very polite e-mail, which I’m not used to receiving in response to criticisms I make). Assuming other people were wondering the same thing I felt that this would make a better blog post than an e-mail response. To save you a lot of reading I will just quote the relevant part of my post here:

I’ve had numerous heated discussions with fellows gun enthusiasts due to my political views (because the only thing more vile than a dirty liberal Democrat to some members of the shooting community is a downright dangerous anarchist). If you ever want to see a political discussion go from civil to yelling just bring up the fact that you think the Constitution is a flawed document that shouldn’t be cited as scripture. My viewpoints and the viewpoints of most of my anarchist friends do not align with the National Rifle Association (NRA). We don’t derive our ability to own and carry firearms from an amendment to some document written by power hunger individuals who were upset that the Articles of Confederation didn’t allow for monarchical control. Us metalheads aren’t interested in a country music concert and most anarchists and metalheads want to be as far away from a prayer breakfast as we can get.

It’s pretty obvious that I despise the NRA, right? Well my opinion regarding the NRA isn’t that cut and dry. The thing to remember is that the NRA is a large organization composed of approximately four million members. That being the case it’s difficult to make an overall judgement of the organization. I personally have a love-hate relationship with the NRA. While the organization does many things that I don’t like (with my range of dislike of individual things going from mild to borderline disgust) it also does many things that I do like.

Let’s start with the things I dislike about the NRA. The most obvious place to start is with the organization’s politics. In general the NRA uses its political clout to fight for gun rights and the organization has a good track record. However it also does incredibly boneheaded political maneuvers in my opinion. For example, during the last presidential election the NRA threw its political weight behind Mitt Romney. I’m not sure how endorsing a candidate who has a history of being, at best, wishy-washy on gun rights promotes gun rights but that’s what the NRA did. And the organization has endorsed other candidates who have been less than stellar in regards to gun rights.

Another thing I dislike about the NRA, and it is something that I dislike about most large and established organizations, is it’s apparent inability to adapt strategically. Political endorsements and campaign contributions are its hammer and it gets used whether the problem is a nail or a screw. There are many avenues of promote gun rights that the NRA has failed to utilize effective. Social media is probably ones of the biggest avenues that remains underutilized (although that seems to be slowly changing). Like them or not social media tools are probably the best way to reach the new generation. Much of what the NRA does with its barrage of physical mail could be better, and more cheaply, accomplished with Facebook, Twitter, etc. While the NRA does maintain Facebook and Twitter accounts it doesn’t use them much for engagement, which is the real power of social media. It would be nice to see the NRA engaging its online audience to both gather support for gun rights and to refute claims made by gun control supporters.

The third major problem I have with the NRA is it’s habit of taking credit for the accomplishments of others. This ties with the NRA’s inability to adapt. When organizations such as the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) make gains using a strategy left underutilized by the NRA it’s inevitable that the NRA will try to take credit for the success. Taking undue credit is sketchy at best and downright disgusting at worst. Instead of trying to make itself look like the only game in town the NRA should spend time reaching out to other gun rights organizations and try to build an alliance instead of a monopoly. Give credit where credit is due and make a point to work together with other gun rights organizations.

My last major gripe with the NRA is cultural. As was pointed out in Grant Cunningham’s excellent post on the new generation of shooters the NRA culturally appeals to political and social conservative Christians. While this group has traditionally been the biggest supporters of gun rights they are a dying breed (literally, they are getting older and the younger generation isn’t falling over itself to replace them). I don’t believe that the NRA should stop appealing to political and social conservatives but it should also invest time in appealing to other cultures. There’s nothing wrong with keeping the country music concerts and prayer breakfasts but it would go a long way to offer alternatives for those uninterested in such events. A death metal concert may be too niche but a concert by a group popular with the younger generation wouldn’t hurt. How about a workshop on using direct action to fight for gun rights? Some of us political radicals aren’t interested in working for political campaigns or marking boxes next to names of politicians but we love doing hands-on activities.

OK, that is a rather lengthy (although not all inclusive) summary of my criticisms of the NRA. Now let me bring up some things that I like about the organization.

One of the best things the NRA does in my opinion is promote firearm safety. While advocates of gun control spend time and money trying to scare children away from firearms the NRA invests time and money educating children on how to be safe with and around firearms. Children are naturally curious. Scaring them can often discourage them from exploring for a while it seldom works in the long run. Eventually their innate curiosity gets the best of them and they decided to face their fear. Education on the other hand tends to work well. If you want your child to be safe around firearms you need to destroy the mystery surrounding firearms. This is best done by educating children on firearms. Take away the mystery by showing them what a firearm is and how it works. Take your children to the range so they can experience what a firearm truly is in a supervised manner. This is something the NRA understands and directly works on.

The NRA also invests effort in firearm training. If you’ve never been around firearms the NRA has programs that introduce you to the shooting sports in a safe manner. Are you interested in learning how to instruct others on the use of firearms? There are numerous NRA programs for training trainers. I think it’s also beneficial to have a program geared towards teaching women how to shoot. My reason for thinking this is, unfortunately, related to the cultural problem surrounding the firearms community. Woman are sometimes treated as inferior by male shooters (especially traditional shooters). While those of us who aren’t sexist pigs are working to change this it’s taking time. Until things have been changed I appreciate having a mechanism for women to learn how to shoot without having to deal with the potential cultural neanderthal shitting all over their experience.

I also appreciate what the NRA does to promote the construction and improvement of firing ranges. Due to the legal landscape in this country it’s almost impossible to build anything without an army of lawyers to look over your plan. The NRA offers advice on how to build firing ranges in a manner that won’t upset the lawyers. It also offers grants for improving existing ranges. Without firing ranges the shooting sports become difficult to participate in. Any help that can be received for building new ranges or improving current ones is appreciated.

My overall opinion of the NRA changes depending on its current actions. When it does something like endorse a lackluster politician (but I repeat myself) I find myself wanting to burn my membership card. But then I hear about a firing range that was given a grant by the NRA for facility improvements and I’m happy to hold my membership card. As I said, it’s a love-hate relationship. Due to my range’s requirement of being an NRA member I will maintain my membership for the foreseeable future. But I not longer push people to sign up with the organization. If you want to sign up then do so but you shouldn’t feel like being an NRA member is mandatory to enjoy the shooting sports. Do what’s right for you.

The New Generation of Shooters

I stumbled across an article that says something that I don’t believe is said often enough in the shooting community:

I’ve written before about the lack of welcome given to the Millennial Generation (and the later members of Gen X) by the shooting community. Their tattoos and piercings put off some, while their voting patterns and interest in social justice causes make others mad. As I’ve said, they look and think differently from the generations which came before — and that makes many people very nervous.

But there is a point of common interest: they like guns (they particularly like suppressors!) and they believe that people have a right to own them. We share that enthusiasm with them, and that’s what’s important.

Yes, they’re different. They like guns but worry about income inequalities; they enjoy shooting but also a clean environment; they want to buy ammo but dislike the multinational corporations which make it possible for them to do so. In short, they’re full of dichotomies and inconsistencies — just like the rest of us!

Appearance-wise I’m one of the most bland people out there. I’m always always dressed business casual, I keep my hair short and naturally colored, and my skin is entirely devoid of tattoos or piercings. In other words my appearances are generally unoffensive to the traditional shooting culture. But I’m also an anarchist and a metalhead. That means I keep some very colorful company. Many of my friends would fall in the category that is sometimes referred to as punks. They have long hair that can be cut into mohawks, colored anything from pink to blue, are often covered in piercing and tattoos, and wear clothing with enough spikes that one could mistake a single individual for an entire Spartan legion in phalanx formation. They’re damn good people but often receive a less than welcome response from traditional shooters.

Now it’s story time. Back in the day I had a girlfriend who liked to color her hair. During the year we were dating she had changed her hair color from having two pink stripes framing her face to first entirely light blue then green then light blue again and finally pink. While she grew up around firearms she hadn’t been shooting in quite some time so I decided to take her to an undisclosed range (undisclosed because I don’t want to sully the range’s good name). Everything was fine until a couple of more elderly individuals showed up.

During one of the cease fires one of the individuals approached me as I was walking out to swap targets. He didn’t bother introducing himself or offer any other form of nicety but jumped right into questioning me about my at the time girlfriend. His first question was “Does she know what she’s doing?” From the tone of the question I was led to believe he was insinuating that she didn’t know how to shoot or at least shoot safely. I said “She knows exactly what she’s doing. She grew up around firearms.” To which he said “She doesn’t look like she knows what she’s doing.” This statement irritated me. Her target was testament enough that she knew what she was doing. Furthermore at no point did she handle any of the firearms she was using in an unsafe manner. Needless to say I had to ask “How so?” I half expected him to make an offhand remark about her gender being unable to shoot. Instead he surprised me by saying “Well she looks like a gang banger.” This really, and I mean really, pissed me off. I politely informed the man, truthfully, that she held a Ph.D. in mathematics and more security clearances than he was probably aware existed. When we returned to the firing line and called the range hot my wonderful electronic earmuffs picked up the conversation he was having with his friend and needless to say there were a lot of rather unflattering remarks being made about my girlfriend. Unfortunately she was also wearing fancy electronic earmuffs and overheard their conversation. Her enthusiasm for shooting deadened a notable amount that day.

We in the shooting community often spend a lot of time talking about the need to get more people involved in shooting. Unfortunately for many of the more vocal shooters what they really mean is that they want more people like them in the shooting community. Unless you’re a Republican voting, politically and socially conservative, Christian church goer they don’t want you in their little club. The linked article made a point that demonstrates this quite well:

One thing is certain: these new shooters don’t like the NRA and they aren’t members. They don’t know the organization because the organization hasn’t taken the time to know them. What they believe they know about the NRA and its members comes from the mainstream media, because too many members have decided that these new shooters aren’t worth getting to know as human beings.

(Frankly, the organization’s social stances haven’t helped, either. Seriously, look at the major social activities planned for the NRA convention later this month: a country music concert and a prayer breakfast. Do you really think these people are going to be excited about either?)

I’ve had numerous heated discussions with fellows gun enthusiasts due to my political views (because the only thing more vile than a dirty liberal Democrat to some members of the shooting community is a downright dangerous anarchist). If you ever want to see a political discussion go from civil to yelling just bring up the fact that you think the Constitution is a flawed document that shouldn’t be cited as scripture. My viewpoints and the viewpoints of most of my anarchist friends do not align with the National Rifle Association (NRA). We don’t derive our ability to own and carry firearms from an amendment to some document written by power hunger individuals who were upset that the Articles of Confederation didn’t allow for monarchical control. Us metalheads aren’t interested in a country music concert and most anarchists and metalheads want to be as far away from a prayer breakfast as we can get.

Fortunately most of the gun rights activists I know aren’t bigoted pricks. But many of the shooters I know are. And those shooters are usually more than willing to share their opinion of others without much resistance. I try to make it a point when I hear one of those individuals shooting their mouths off at or about people they don’t like to speak up. If we want to grow the shooting community we need to be accepting of all people who are interested in guns. That “dirty liberal” who supports background checks but otherwise is in favor of gun rights? Yes, accept him. You may be able to change his mind about background checks but being a dick to him isn’t going to do it. What about that transgendered individual or that gay couple? You damn well better accept them because the second you don’t you not only turn them off to shooting but you also make the rest of us in the community look like bigoted assholes.

While you don’t have to like everything about fellow shooters you should at least realize that shooting is enough common ground to build an alliance, and preferably a friendship, on.

Less Blood Running in Chicago’s Streets After Passage of Illinois’s Carry Legislation

Whenever gun laws are liberalized the gun control advocates are quick to scream that blood will be running through the streets. However this prediction of death and destruction has failed to come true. What has happened in areas where gun laws are liberalized is violent crime either remains unchanged or is reduced. Chicago has regularly held position in the top 10 list of United States city homicide rates. Illinois recently passed carry legislation. What’s interesting is the change in Chicago’s homicide rate under Illinois’s carry law:

Chicago police are reporting that the murder rate for the first quarter of the year is the lowest it’s been in more than 50 years, which gun advocates are attributing to a concealed carry law passed in Illinois last year.

The first three months of 2014 have seen the fewest number of homicides since 1958 — six fewer than this time in 2013, and 55 fewer than this time in 2012, The Chicago Sun-Times reported.

I won’t go so far as to say Illinois’s carry legislation is responsible for the drop in Chicago’s homicide rate but the correlation is certainly there. What I will say is that Illinois’s carry legislation didn’t lead to an increase in homicide rates as predicted by gun control advocates.

The rapid decline in this country’s gun control movement is most likely due to its failure to make a case. Every prediction made by gun control advocates has failed to come to fruition. Predictions by advocates of gun rights have had great success in accurately predicting the outcome of liberalized gun laws. When one side of an argument has nothing to show but failure it makes a good case for the other side.

Victim Blaming Versus Preparedness Advocacy

Political discussions, in general, annoy me. This is due to multiple factors including the rapidity in which emotions turn a perfectly civil conversation into a yelling match. But the factor that probably annoys me the most is how the definition of words and phrases are in constant flux.

A phrase that is finding more use in political discussions if victim blaming. Victim blaming occurs when an individual attempts to blame the victim of a crime. At least that’s what it used to mean. Today victim blaming can be more aptly said to occur whenever an individual mentions a combination of the victim and something the other individual doesn’t like. Case in point, self-defense.

As an advocate of self-defense I advocate individual learn defensive skills. Defensive skills is a topic that is so vast that volumes of books have been written on it. But the what seems to be the most controversial skill that I advocate is learning how to use a firearm and obtaining a carry permit (if you’re unfortunate enough to be in a state that requires such nonsense to carry a gun). Lately I’ve been running into people who have begun accusing me of victim blaming when I advocate individuals learn self-defense skills. The conversations usually follow a similar pattern to this:

Some Dude: “We have to find a way to stop rapes.”

Me: “Agreed. I think raising the cost of attempting a rape would help.”

Some Dude: “Damn right. Let’s put rapists in jail for life!”

Me: “Jail only comes into play after the crime has been committed. I think it would be better to make rape more difficult to commit.”

Some Dude: “Right. More jail.”

Me: “I think encouraging more people to learn how to use a firearm and carry one would go much further. Knowing that attempting to commit a rape would carry with it a high probability of getting shot would go a long way as a deterrent.”

Some Dude: “Typical gun nut. You expect the victim to take responsibility. You probably tell women that they were raped because the clothes they were wearing were too slutty.”

Me: “I’ve never once said that nor do I think that…”

Some Dude: “Shut the fuck up. I’m not going to waste my time talking to somebody who blames victims.”

This brings me to the point of this post. There is a big difference between victim blaming and preparedness advocacy. The former involves blaming the victim of a crime for that crime happening whereas the latter involves preparing for the potential of a bad situation occurring.

Self-defense advocacy is a form of preparedness advocacy. It assumes that there are bad individuals in the world and one should have a plan for dealing with them. When I advocate for more people carrying firearms I’m not saying that anybody who doesn’t carry a firearm is to blame if they are the victim of a violent crime. What I am saying is that one can reduce their chances of being a victim of a violent crime if they have a means of defending themselves against violent criminals.

The perpetrator of a violent crime is always the one at fault. It was entirely within that individual’s power to decide whether or not to commit that violent crime. A target of a violent crime is not at fault because it wasn’t within their power to decided whether or not that crime would be committed. What self-defense advocacy says is that individuals who are targets of violent crime stand a better chance of mitigating harm when they are able to fight back.

Victim blaming, which is a real problem, is an idea quickly being cheapened because a handful of individuals are using it as a blanket argument against anything that disagrees with their ideology.