Tag: Logic an Anti-Gunner’s Worst Nightmare

Regarding the Shooting in California

Another piece of shit decided he wanted to go out with a bang but didn’t have the common courtesy to go it alone. He took the lives of six people before taking his own and now everybody is clamoring for answers.

Predictably a lot of people are blaming America’s “weak” gun laws. The fact that this occurred in California should who how silly such arguments are. Others are blaming the lack of mental illness screenings. When somebody discovered an effective test for predicting future homicidal behavior please let me know. Until we have such tests the whole idea of mental illness screenings is pretty sketchy. I even found an article that blames the whole incident on misogyny. Because, you know, misogyny leads to murder sprees, or something.

The point is everybody is latching onto whatever piece of the puzzle be helps them push their agenda. But boiling this event down to pet issues misses the big picture, which is unfortunately so complex we’ll likely never fully understand it. All we know for certain is that the events of this murderer’s life combined with his unique mentality made for a lethal combination. I doubt any form of mental illness screening would catch somebody like this solely because the mentalities we consider to be illnesses often don’t show visible signs until a horrible deed has already been committed.

I know it’s a natural reaction to want to do something to prevent horrible deeds from happening in the future. But events perpetrated by a single individual are hard to stop because the dangerous factor is a single individual. As there are roughly seven billion individuals on this planet it’s almost impossible to create a mechanism to stop the darker inhibitions of each and every one of them. Some will claim that such a statement is defeatist in nature and it probably is. But there are things that we as a species cannot do. We cannot propel ourselves to the moon under my own power and we cannot stop individuals for doing heinous things. It sucks but it’s reality.

I’m Not Saying They’re Gold Diggers

Here in the United States we have a tradition that goes back at least as long as I have been alive. When something bad happens to you or one of your family members the tradition is to find an organization that is both tangentially linked to the bad thing and wealthy and file a lawsuit against it. That is exactly what family members of four New York firefighters who were ambushed by a man with a firearm are doing:

The families of four New York state firefighters are suing St. Paul-based Gander Mountain, alleging that the retailer’s Rochester, N.Y.-area outlet could have prevented a “straw buyer” from purchasing the rifle that was turned over to a convicted killer and used on Christmas Eve 2012 to kill two firefighters and wound two others.

The lawsuit, which has the legal heft of prominent gun control advocates behind it, said the rifle used in the bloody ambush should never have been sold to 22-year-old Dawn Nguyen in 2010 with the eventual shooter at her side.

Along with payment to the families of punitive and compensatory damages, the suit seeks to have Gander Mountain reform its practices and employee training procedures to prevent these “straw purchasers.” The suit was filed Tuesday in state court in Rochester, N.Y.

How can Gander Mountain stop straw purchases? Preventing straw purchases requires the ability to read minds, which no human has as far as I know (although I sometimes suspect that my mother has such powers). There is no way for employees of Gander Mountain to know that a person purchasing a firearm isn’t doing so with the intention of giving that gun to a prohibited person. Even if, as this lawsuit insinuates, I go into Gander Mountain with a friend and purchase a gun there is no way for the employees involved with the transaction to know if I’m buying it for myself or to give to my friend.

In other words what this lawsuit is demanding is that Gander Mountain perform an impossible feat, which hopefully means that this lawsuit will be dismissed.

Thankfully the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act shields gun manufacturers and dealers from a lot of legal gold digging. But it doesn’t completely close the door as manufacturers and dealers can still be sued for selling defective products, breaching contracts, and performing criminal actions. Depending on how this legal gold digging is being justified the case may get thrown out or Gander Mountain may be dragged into a pointless lawsuit because it was unable to read one man’s mind.

Well This Changes Everything

Remember the 7 year-old kid who was suspended from school because he ate his Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun? Well new information has come to light that changes everything:

Laurie Pritchard, Anne Arundel’s director of legal services, said that the object central to the case had been misportrayed, as well as the reason for the discipline.

“First of all, it wasn’t a Pop-Tart,” she said. “It was a breakfast pastry. And he was not suspended because he chewed his breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun.” He was suspended for “an ongoing classroom disruption,” she said.

Holy shit, why weren’t we informed of this right away? If we had known he had shaped a breakfast pastry into a gun instead of a Pop-Tart we could have demanded the kid’s head!

OK, the actual content of the story isn’t quite that simple. But that quote was gold. The school is now trying to claim that the child was suspended because of a history of behavioral problems:

School officials produced a lengthy log of various types of incidents. They argued that they had made many efforts to address the boy’s behavioral issues. The family said they had not seen the list before and had been unaware of a number of the incidents.

There’s a problem with this narrative though. If he was suspended for a history of behavioral issues why was he not suspended during one of those incidents? Why did they choose an incident where the kid ate a Pop-Tart, sorry, breakfast pastry into a firearm to suspend him? Is eating food into abstract shapes a behavioral issue?

I’m sure the school will go to great extent to justify the suspension. We’ll probably be told that the kid held a black mass in the school cafeteria or something along those lines. School administrators don’t like to admit wrongdoing and will go to absolutely absurd lengths to throw their petty authority around.

Why Firearm Access Control is a Futile Effort

The issue of access control technology built into firearms (erroneously called smart gun technology by advocates of gun control) has been a hot topic as of late. Anti-gunners want it and gun owners want nothing to do with it. But the argument is irrelevant and Forbes, in an article trying to explain why gun owners should fear access control technology in their firearms, explains why:

10. Firearms must be able to be disassembled in order to be cleaned and maintained. One of the principles of information security is that someone who has physical access to a machine can undermine its security. Smartgun manufacturers need to show evidence that criminals who steal smartguns cannot modify them to work with the smart technology removed or disabled (or that preventing any components from being accessed that are accessible in conventional weapons will not impact the durability of the weapons).

Physical access is the ultimate killer of any security system. If an individual has both physical access and unlimited time they can bypass any security system. After all security systems merely buy time. An effective security system is one that takes longer to bypass than an attacker is either willing or able to invest. With access control technology on firearms both of those criteria are met since the owner necessarily has permanent physical access.

Mandating access control technology in firearms is entirely futile. The technology won’t survive even a few days once it’s introduced to market. With that said, the technology would give us something fun to play with at Defcon.

The State is Hindering Smart Gun Availability, Not the NRA

Today’s theme, as you can probably guess from the previous post, is putting the blame where it should be. Far too often the media attempts to blame anybody but the actual culprit for perceived wrongdoings. For example, The Verge recently ran an article accusing the National Rifle Association (NRA) of taking peoples’ smart guns. At least that’s the accusation found in the title, the article itself points out that the NRA doesn’t actually oppose smart gun technology:

Opponents counter that the technology adds an unnecessary failure point — you don’t want to fumble with a fingerprint unlock if someone is breaking into your home. They also fear the spread of laws like New Jersey’s, since similar proposals have been introduced in other states and in Congress. “The NRA does not oppose new technological developments in firearms,” the group writes on its website. “We are opposed to government mandates that require the use of expensive, unreliable features, such as grips that would read your fingerprints before the gun will fire.”

And the closing paragraph finally points to the real cause of opposition to smart guns:

Many gun owners don’t object to smart guns, as long as they’re still allowed to buy regular guns. “If someone wants to buy a smart gun, that is fine,” Raymond said in his Facebook address. “When the law legislates it, that is a sin.” After the apology, he and his shop were flooded with supportive emails, calls, and visits. Members of the Maryland Shooters forum even rallied for a barbecue at Engage Armament. “It is only a matter of time before such guns are available. Acting like babies about it doesn’t make things better,” one user wrote. “Assuming of course there is an actual market for such a bad idea.”

So we come again to the real culprit, the state. As the article points out New Jersey passed legislation that would mandate smart gun technology be integrated into all firearms sold in the state within three years of the technology becoming available to consumers. That being the case it’s pretty simple to figure out why so many people oppose this unproven technology.

Smart gun technology is another victim of the gun control advocates’ policy of making everything either mandatory of verboten. If a new technology can inhibit firearms they demand it become mandatory and if the technology can enhance firearms they demand it be prohibited. Access control policies (which is what gun control advocates really mean when they say smart guns) could inhibit the reliability of firearms as none of the proposed access control methods have been rigorously tested. I don’t want a gun that will sudden cease to function because some asshole decided to jam the radio frequency being used to authenticate with my firearm. And I certainly don’t want to cut up and deface my current firearms (some of which are very valuable to me) to jerry rig some half-assed access control system into them. But that’s what the politicians in New Jersey have demanded and, as a general rule, if the politicians in New Jersey concoct a gun policy then us gun owners know it’s not to be trusted (and in this case those politicians were kind enough to make it blatantly obvious why we shouldn’t trust them).

There’s almost certainly a market for firearms with reliable access control technology. But the state doesn’t want to allow that market and the market for guns sans access control technology to coexist. So the debate necessarily becomes one of “us” versus “them”. If the state wasn’t using its monopoly on force to favor one market over the others then we could have both and everybody could be happy (except the anti-gunners but they’re never happy so there’s no point in trying to please them).

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.

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.

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.