Tag: Logic an Anti-Gunner’s Worst Nightmare

Possession of Lead Now Illegal in Washington DC

The amount of stupidity that occurred in Mark Witaschek’s trial is hard to describe. For those who don’t know Mr. Witaschek was facing charges for illegally possessing ammunition in Washington DC. He was found guilty but when you look at the details you will notice how desperate the prosecution was to nail this man to the wall:

Until the final hours of the trial, both the defense and government focused the case on whether the single 12 gauge shotgun shell that was found in Mr. Witaschek’s D.C. home was operable. The judge, however, never ruled on it.

In the afternoon on Wednesday, Judge Morin shook the plastic shell and tried to listen to something inside. He said he could not hear any gunpowder. He then asked the lawyers to open the shell to see if there was powder inside.

(This seemed like a bizarre request since the lack of primer — not gunpowder — would be relevant to the interoperability of the misfired shell.)

Assistant Attorney General Peter Saba said that the government wanted to open the shell but that, “It is dangerous to do outside a lab.”

The prosecutors and police officers left the courtroom to try to find a lab that was open in the afternoon to bring the judge to cut the plastic off the section that holds the pellets. When that proved not possible in the same day, the judge decided to just rule on the bullets.

Opening a 12 gauge shell is not dangerous to do outside of a lab, unless my reloading room qualifies as a lab. Uncrimp the top, down the shot out, wiggle the wad out, and dump the powder. Since the prosecution was looking to see if power was inside of the shell the method I just described would have sufficed. But since the shell couldn’t be dissected the day of the trial the prosecution moved to its backup plan:

The 25 conical-shaped, .45 caliber bullets, made by Knight out of lead and copper, sat on the judge’s desk. They do not have primer or gunpowder so cannot be propelled. The matching .50 caliber plastic sabots were also in the box.

Mr. Witaschek was found guilty because he was in possession of lead that happened to be shaped in a conical form. It appears that the simple possession of lead is now an offense in Washington DC.

This trial was purely vindictive. The prosecution wanted to send a message to the people of Washington DC and that message is “Shut the fuck up slaves. We are your masters.” It’s no secret that the overlords of Washington DC don’t want their serfs possessing firearms. When one dares to do so the police are sent out, with guns of course, to kidnap the unruly serf so he or she can be put in front of a judge. Since it’s rare for the police to actually find somebody illegally possessing a firearm (because those people are generally smart enough to hide their firearms) the overlords have to take what they get. If that means prosecuting somebody for possessing a shotgun shell and some pieces of lead so be it.

University of Minnesota Students Making Effort to Allow Students and Faculty to Carry Firearms

Brace yourselves because the sky is about to fall. A group of students at the University of Minnesota are urging the administration to allow students and faculty to carry firearms on campus:

A string of robberies on the U of M campus late last year escalated on Nov. 11, when the campus went into lockdown because of an attempted robbery at gunpoint, and the suspect got away. A month later, in December 2013, there was another armed robbery on campus.

U of M freshman William Preachuk believes things could have ended differently if he’d been able to pack heat. “I would believe that I have the right to defend myself; I have the right to protect others as well as myself only if the situation allows it,” William Preachuk said.

Preachuk signed a petition Monday that will be sent to the Board of Regents asking to be allowed to conceal and carry on campus.

Susan Eckstine with College Republicans is a permit holder and trained in using a gun. “If I was able to carry a firearm here on campus I’d feel a lot safer to protect myself from a life-threatening situation,” Eckstine said.

As usual advocates of gun control are playing Chicken Little. The most common argument against allowing students and faculty to carry firearms on college campuses is that those areas are high stress environments where emotions run high. This is an interesting argument because I don’t understand where its basis lies. While college campuses are indeed high stress environments and emotions often run high the rate of actual violence is relatively low. Fist fights, stabbings, beatings, and other forms of violence remain low enough on college campuses that when they do occur they are major news items. The linked article mentions that there have been a few robberies near the University of Minnesota campus. Those robberies were big news here in the Twin Cities precisely because such violence is rare. So I’m at a loss as to how allowing students and faculty, who are a pretty peaceful bunch judging by the current lack of regular violence on college campuses, to carry firearms will turns campuses from peaceful spots to veritable war zones.

If the high stress environment of college campuses inherently bred violence then we would already be seeing a great deal of violence. It’s an absurd variation of the “blood in the streets” argument made by gun control advocates whenever a state was planning to pass or further liberalize carry laws. The sky will not fall if college students and faculty are allowed to carry firearms because, as it turns out, college students and faculty members are rational human beings. That means a vast majority of them understand concepts like violence and recognize when it should be used and how much should be used. They’re not likely to pull a gun on a drunken student who is getting overly aggressive but have the option of meeting deadly force with deadly force in a life threatening encounter.

A particularly disturbed anti-gun individual on Facebook made an absurd claim that I want to bring up just because it made me laugh. The individual, who we will refer to as Steve (because that’s his actual first name), said “This will cause a trickle effect and allow weapons of mass destruction into other areas where they shouldn’t be.” Wow. According to his logic allowing students and faculty to carry discriminatory weapons will somehow cause a trickle effect that will result in allowing them to carry nondiscriminatory nuclear and biological weapons. That’s a long leap of logic that is so absurd that it’s barely worth addressing (as I said, I merely brought it up for entertainment value). But it is interesting to see how far advocate of gun control will stretch things in an attempt to argue their case.

Criminal is an Arbitrary Label

Both advocates of gun control and gun rights spend a lot of time discussing the need to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. On paper it sounds like a good idea but when you look at what the label “criminal” means in American society it becomes a less desirable idea.

What is a criminal? Criminal, in our society, is a completely arbitrary label. If a select group of individuals gather in a designated marble building, write some words on pieces of paper, and a majority of them later vote to make those words law then anybody in violation of those words is no a criminal.

Imagine that today, March 7th, Mr. Smith is an upstanding law-abiding citizen. Tomorrow some guys donning suits and gathering in a marble building write some words that Mr. Smith is in violation of and vote to make it law. By March 9th Mr. Smith is no longer a law-abiding citizen but a wanted criminal.

This is why I have no time for programs that are supposedly meant to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. Until we redefine criminal to actually mean something other than arbitrarily selected individuals the mission of keeping anything from the hands of criminals is foolhardy. Instead we should first work to make the process of defining who is and isn’t a criminal something consistent and predictable instead of arbitrary. Once that has been done we can have a discussion about keeping guns out of the hands of criminals.

Minnesota Carry Permit Holders Almost Doubled in 2013 Compared to 2012

Carry permits appear to be getting more popular in this frozen tundra commonly referred to as Minnesota. Last year the number of permits issued was almost double of the number of permits issued in 2012:

Minnesota sheriffs’ offices issued almost double the number of permits to carry handguns in 2013 than they had the year before, according to figures released by the state Friday. It was the largest number since the state’s permit-to-carry law was enacted in 2003.

As of Friday, more than 165,000 people had valid permits to carry guns in Minnesota, according to the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension.

So what does this mean for Minnesota? Contrary to what gun control advocates have been claiming for ages, the Mississippi isn’t running red with blood. For the most part nothing really appears to be changing in this state. It seems rational adults don’t turn into blood thirsty monsters after they receive legal permission to carry a firearm.

What this increase in issued permits likely means is a slow cultural shift. Firearms seem to be regaining their status in American culture. This is a good thing as it may also indicate a cultural shift, however small, towards decentralization. Instead of relying primarily on centralized police departments to provide defense many people are beginning to provide for their own defense. I would like to see this attitude spread into other areas as well. The less centralized our culture becomes the less apt to widespread failure it will be.

ATF Demonstrates Its Irresponsibility with Firearms

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) is supposedly tasked with, among other things, enforcing federal firearm laws. You would think an agency tasked with enforcing firearm laws would also demonstrated some modicum of firearm responsibility, right? As it turns out the ATF doesn’t exactly have a stellar record of knowing where its firearms are:

ATF agents have lost track of dozens of government-issued guns, after stashing them under the front seats in their cars, in glove compartments or simply leaving them on top of their vehicles and driving away, according to internal reports from the past five years obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Agents left their guns behind in bathroom stalls, at a hospital, outside a movie theater and on a plane, according to the records, obtained Tuesday by the news organization under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

Oh, and you know all of the stink gun control advocates make about wanting laws that mandate “safe storage” of firearms to protect the children? Perhaps they should spend less time focusing on us gun owners and more time focusing on the ATF:

In December 2009, two 6-year-old boys spotted an agent’s loaded ATF Smith & Wesson .357 on a storm sewer grate in Bettendorf, Iowa. The agent lived nearby and later said he couldn’t find his gun for days but didn’t bother reporting it — until it hit the local newspaper.

The article contains more incidents where ATF agents lost firearms. I’m not sure if these loses were part of the ATF’s ongoing program to provide guns to drug cartels or just pure incompetency. Either one is equally likely when the ATF’s past is considered. But I think the moral of this story is that the ATF is not competent enough with firearms to have any authority regarding firearms.

Connecticut Moving to Confiscate Aesthetically Offensive Firearms

Gun control advocates like to point out that registration is not confiscation. Gun rights advocates like to point out that registration leads to confiscation. A recent development in Connecticut shows that the gun rights advocates are, regardless of claims made by gun control advocates, not paranoid nutcases:

That triggered widespread dumbfounded confusion amongst state officials, including Governor Malloy, who seemingly cant seem to accept the fact that people are willfully refusing to comply with the arbitrary diktats of their tyrannical “leaders“. Since Jan 1st 2014, Malloy has come up with any number of excuses to explain what to him and others like him is incomprehensible.

At various times blaming it on the Post Office closing early on Dec 31st 2013, for “confusion” and most recently at a Winter Governors Association Meeting last week he finally resorted to simply saying he refuses to believe the numbers are accurate and that people really are actually complying. ( http://tiny.cc/ivjubx )

See the a copy of a letter sent by the Connecticut State Police to one resident, whose registration paperwork was rejected, (right).

The problem now becomes, even though the paperwork was rejected it is without a doubt certain that the Connecticut State Police kept the declaration of ownership and now have at least some official records of those who are not in compliance. It was reported late yesterday by the Manchester Journal Inquirer ( http://tiny.cc/9qlubx ) that letters are now going out to at least a certain number of gun owners that they have been found to be in non compliance with the law and were technically felons.

This is why you never register firearms. By registering you admit that you are in possession of a firearm that the state is interested in. If the state is interested in a type of firearm you can all but guarantee that it will eventually become interested in confiscating that type of firearm. But confiscation doesn’t always have to come in the form of a piece of legislation. Police officers charged with handling registration forms can merely claim that the form was not properly filled out and therefore the weapon listed on said form is forfeit, which appears to be what is happening in Connecticut.

Enforcing this law will become interesting. As I stated earlier, Connecticut doesn’t have sufficient cages to house all of the potential violators of this new registration scheme. However it may have enough cages to select a few individuals who did register, claim that their paperwork wasn’t properly filled out, and prosecute them. As that appears to be the strategy selected by the Connecticut law enforcers those who registered their firearms also painted a gigantic target on their backs.

Never register your firearms. It’s a lesson that cannot be stated enough times. When you do register in the hopes of avoiding the wrath of the state you risk making yourself a target. But what the state doesn’t know about it can’t go after. So long as it doesn’t know about the firearms (or any other property) you possess it cannot move to confiscate them.

We’re Going to Need More Cages

Via Shall Not Be Questioned I came across an opinion piece from a guy who wants Connecticut to strictly enforce its new “assault weapon” registration law:

Connecticut has a gun problem.

It’s estimated that perhaps scores of thousands of Connecticut residents failed to register their military-style assault weapons with state police by Dec. 31.

[…]

Although willful noncompliance with the law is doubtless a major issue, it’s possible that many gun owners are unaware of their obligation to register military-style assault weapons and would do so if given another chance.

But the bottom line is that the state must try to enforce the law. Authorities should use the background check database as a way to find assault weapon purchasers who might not have registered those guns in compliance with the new law.

A Class D felony calls for a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Even much lesser penalties or probation would mar a heretofore clean record and could adversely affect, say, the ability to have a pistol permit.

If you want to disobey the law, you should be prepared to face the consequences.

Let’s consider the logistics of what the author is advocating. It’s estimated that tens of thousands of Connecticut gun owners failed to comply with the new “assault weapon” restrictions. The author wants Connecticut law enforcement agents to use the background check system to discover who may own an “assault weapon” and have him kidnapped and held in a cage for five years. Connecticut already has overcrowded prisons so new facilities would have to be constructed. Back in 1995 the Connecticut General Assembly responded to a request to know the costs associated with building new prison capacity. The cost per bed in Connecticut, at that time, was estimated to be $50,388.

Using a very conservative estimate of 20,000 noncompliant gun owners (since there are multiple tens of thousands I went with the lowest possible figure of 20,000) and 1995 prices to build new cages (because that’s the most recent information I was able to obtain) the state of Connecticut would be look at paying out $1,007,760,000 just to add the capacity necessary to cage all of these gun owners. Again, this figure is a low ball figure since the cost of constructing a new cage is higher than in 1995 and the number of noncompliant gun owners likely exceeds 20,000. But we get the idea that the costs of doing as the author recommends would be mind bogglingly high.

And what would Connecticut get out of spending over one billion dollars to enforce its new law? Not a damn thing. Merely being in possession of an aesthetically offensive semi-automatic rifle doesn’t make an individual violent. The satisfaction that could be obtained from doing what the author advocates is vengeance against the disobedient. If we want to go down that route I’m sure I can find several felonies the author committed in the last week and demand he be caged for them.

Gun Control Activist Arrested for Carrying Gun into a School

It’s only Tuesday and the irony scale has already been pegged. Gun control advocates have a list about a mile long of places that they don’t believe guns should be allowed. While the list ultimately encompasses everywhere the most forbidden of all places are schools. Needless to say it was only a matter of time until a gun control advocate decided to carry a gun into a school:

BUFFALO, N.Y.(WIVB)- More than a dozen cop cars, the SWAT team, K9 units and the Erie County Sheriff’s Air One helicopter swarmed Harvey Austin Elementary School in Buffalo on Thursday after reports of a man with a gun near the school or on the grounds. Dwayne Ferguson, head of the Buffalo chapter of MAD DADS, was taken into custody. He will be arraigned Friday.

[…]

Police believe the 52-year-old may have been the person that prompted the 911 call. Police say they do not believe he had any ill intent and Ferguson has a valid permit for the weapon.

[…]

News 4 interviewed Ferguson in March of 2013 at a rally in support of the NY SAFE Act. At the time, Ferguson stated the law did not go far enough.

“Our kids are not buying assault weapons, they’re buying pistols and they’re buying them right out of community stores and back here in the school. So this is serious. It needs to go further than what it is,” he said.

There’s really not much else that needs to be said here. But need has never been my driving factor and there are a few things I want to say about this.

First, the amount of hypocrisy displayed by Mr. Ferguson is so thick that it’s palpable. It was only last year that Mr. Ferguson was upset that the New York Secure Ammunition and Firearms Enforcement (SAFE) Act didn’t go far enough. His primary hangup regarding the SAFE Act seems to be that it didn’t restrict handguns enough. Specifically he didn’t believe the law went far enough to prevent children from acquiring handguns. As it turns out Mr. Ferguson possesses a permit that allows him to carry a firearm that he feels isn’t restricted heavily enough. Then, to peg the irony scale, he brings that handgun into a school. If he is concerned about children obtaining handguns illegally (because it was still illegal to transfer a handgun to a child before the SAFE Act) wouldn’t you think he would try to prevent children from coming into close proximity to handguns?

Second, stories like this lead me to believe that many gun control advocates aren’t sincere. They spend a lot of time talking about the need to restrict access to firearms but what they really want is to restrict people they don’t like from accessing firearms. I haven’t met a gun control advocate yet that believed police officers and military personnel shouldn’t possess firearms (after all, those groups will need firearms to enforce gun control laws). There are also a large number of gun control advocates that believe “important” people (as defined by them) should be allowed to carry firearms because they’re better than you and me. In the case of Mr. Ferguson it seems he believes he is one of these “important” people, which isn’t surprising considering how egotistical many gun control advocates are (after all they do know what’s best for you).

Third, the reaction by the police was absurd. A dozen police cars, SWAT team, K9 unit, and helicopter aren’t necessary for a report of an individual carrying a firearm. If the initial report involved an actual shooting then I could see such a militaristic response but the act of carrying a firearm isn’t in of itself dangerous. But our society has become so incredibly fearful that we believe any report of a man carrying a gun, especially in a school, warrants the deployment of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of firepower before even a cursory investigation is performed. The first response to the initial call should have involved the 911 operator asking whether or not the individual in question was acting in a violent manner. If he wasn’t then I could see sending an officer or two to the school to inform the individual that carrying a gun on school grounds is illegal and that he should exit the building and place the firearm in his vehicle before returning.

This story demonstrates so many issues I have with gun control advocates and the state in general. Between the irony, hypocrisy, and overreaction I can’t help but sit in here and shake my head.

Reducing Gun Violence and Enacting Gun Control Laws Aren’t Synonymous

Yesterday I opened a copy of the Star Tribune sitting in the lunch room at work and found, unsurprisingly, a letter to the editor arguing for gun control. While letters arguing in favor of gun control are a dime a dozen in the Star Tribune I decided to post this one here because it demonstrates a common logical error in the gun control movement:

I was moved by the article written by former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (“Fighting gun violence day by day, step by step,” Jan. 9). She describes the incredible difficulty she has had to face after a coward with a gun shot her in the head. But she has survived, is recovering well and is committed to ending gun violence along with her husband, Mark Kelly.

I support her efforts and, along with thousands of others in our state and millions across this country, realize the necessity of making our communities safe from gun violence. People victimized by guns have rights, too.

Truthfully, it has never been about the loss of Second Amendment rights nor about government confiscation, despite what the public has been told by the gun industry. On the contrary, common-sense laws that require universal background checks, prevent illegal gun traffic and straw purchases, and allow the collection of data from gun sales and crime have been proven to save lives while still maintaining the right to own guns.

Let’s work together to get this done. Our cause is just and growing, and we will not be silenced.

JAY THACKER, Shoreview

Mr. Thacker is arguing for a need to reduce gun violence and to enact gun control laws. His argument implies that the two are synonymous, which they aren’t. We live in a period that has seen a dramatic increase in the number of firearm sales and an overall reduction in violent crime. Increases in firearm sales have been due to multiple criteria including a governmental push for stricter gun control laws and a rapid increase in the number of carry permit holders. We’re not simply experiencing an increase in the number of firearm sales but also in the number of firearms being carried by individuals.

Gun control laws have the sole purpose of reducing the number of firearms in circulation. The belief of gun control proponents is that decreasing the number of firearms in circulation will reduce the rate of gun violence. That belief has been proven false by the above mentioned points. Therefore we must look at other reasons for the overall reduction in the rate of gun violence that we are enjoying today. I’m not foolish enough to believe that there is a single reason for the reduced rate of gun violence but I do believe that an armed society is a polite society plays a sizable part.

Increasing the number of firearms being carried on the street also increases the potential consequences for performing a violent crime. Assaulting, raping, or murdering somebody becomes more dangerous when the more members of the potential victim pool are able to effectively defend themselves. This potentiality is mutually exclusive to the potentiality that reducing the number of firearms in circulation also reduces violent crime rates. Since we are experiencing a period of higher gun sales and lower gun violence we must conclude that the beliefs of gun control advocates are false. This doesn’t necessarily mean that the beliefs of gun rights advocates are factual but those beliefs haven’t been proven false yet and a lot of evidence supports such beliefs.

If one is serious about wanting to reduce gun violence they should abandon their advocacy of stricter gun control laws. It’s demonstrable that gun control laws aren’t having an effect on gun violence rates. This means that gun violence rates must be effected by other factors. These factors must be discovered and understood before an effective method of reducing gun violence rates can be pursued. Therefore I urge those wanting to reduce gun violence to invest their time and resources into uncovering factors that effect gun violence rates. Once we have a better understanding of the causes of violence in a society we can work to address those issues.

Man Murdered by Retired Cop for Texting in a Theater

Normally I wouldn’t have much to say about this story other than one man murder another in cold blood. But advocates of gun control have been using this story to argue for banning the lawful carrying of firearms in movie theaters. That requires us to have a little discussion:

The shooting suspect, identified as retired Tampa police officer Curtis Reeves, 71, became annoyed when a couple sitting in front of him were texting during the movie’s previews, according to the Pasco County Sheriff’s office.

Police said that Reeves asked Chad and Nichole Oulson several times to stop, and then Reeves left the theater. When Reeves returned, Chad Oulson asked Reeves if he reported his phone use to the theater managers, police said. That prompted an argument which ended when Reeves pulled out a gun and shot Oulson in the chest, police said.

The first point that is worth mentioning is that the shooter was a retired police officer. I bring this point up because most gun control advocates are in favor of allowing the police to keep carrying firearms. In fact gun control is entirely dependent on police officers having a means of inflicting violence on those who would violate any firearm restrictions.

The second point that is worth mentioning is that the shooter was obviously prone to violence. This could be due to his years as a police officer or he could just naturally have a predisposition to preferring violence. Either way, if he was willing to shoot somebody for texting he would almost certainly be willing to beat them to death for the same.

As a side note I will also add that the retired cop may have become too used to being held unaccountable for his actions. Most cops are shielded from the consequences of their malicious actions and that tends to breed an atmosphere of irresponsibility. This former cop may have shot the gun because he was shielded from accountability for so long he forgot that actions have consequences. Regardless of how I look at it I can’t find a way to blame the firearm or the fact that people can lawfully carry firearms into theaters.