John Kerry proves me right

Now I'm not a racist, but...

“As a lifelong hunter, I know that no one is going to mess with the constitutional right to bear arms, but rights come with responsibilities, and criminals and the mentally unstable do not have a right to avoid background checks or carry military style assault weapons,’’ Kerry said. “There is no legitimate reason not to close a loophole that allows criminals to get a gun with no background check or to allow dangerous individuals access to military style assault weapons.’’

Now I'm not a racist, but...

When someone prefaces a statement with "Now I'm not a racist, but," it means they're about to knowingly tell me something racist.  Similarly, when someone starts with "Now I'm a hunter and a second amendment supporter, but," I know they're going to make an anti-gun argument. 

And when someone follows that with "but I can't imagine any reason why a civilian should have a high capacity ammunition magazine [or clip/bullet clip/high volume bullet clip/extended cartridge magazine clip]," I just tell them their lack of imagination is not a reason to restrict my right to self defense. 

The controversy over high volume extended cartridge ammunition magazine bullet clips will go away soon enough.  I try not to get too fired up by it. 

Now Joan's just making shit up

She shows us a bunch of examples of what her "gun owning friends" have written her recently on the issue of magazines that hold more than ten rounds.  Go ahead and decide for yourself, but it sounds to me like every one of these statements was written by the same person.  I'm calling bullshit here, Joan, you made them all up. 

And as for the first fake letter, I am comfortable dismissing the opinion of any gun owner who uses the term "multiple bullet clips." 

Sorry, Baldr, the police aren't obligated to protect you

As if we need more proof that gun banners live in a magical fantasy land, filled with fairies and elves, Joyce Foundation fundee Baldr Odinson said this:

I'm certain that NJ law enforcement officers would disagree with your statement that "NJ is also not legally responsible to defend you so as far as they are concerned. You are on your own."

Perhaps Baldr should stop speaking for NJ law enforcement officers, because he is completely, indisputably wrong.  Established case law holds that the police are neither obligated nor liable for failing to protect you from an attack. That's right, Baldr, you can't sue the cops if they show up an hour after your 911 call.  Here's a citation.  Are you starting to get why ordinary people need the means to protect themselves? 

This is such a great example of their idealistic, childish worldview, that we're so civilized that we contract out the ugly business of self-defense to heroic supercops who speed to the scene of the crime just in time to save the innocent civilian.  But this isn't a TV show - the police can take a long time to get there. 

Calling 911 is no substitute for a gun. 

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On a side note, to the "BanTheNRA" guy who comments on Baldr's blog: if you've going to try to make a clever portmanteu of the words gun and retardedness, stop embarassing yourself by using "guntardiness."  This implies a gun owner who is frequently late.  Instead, use "guntardedness."  Thank you. 

Paul Helmke on plastic guns

Brady President Paul Helmke said:  

“Allowing access to high-capacity magazines is beyond the pale.  Banning them is a matter of public safety.  There is no Second Amendment or God-given right to be able to maim and kill your fellow Americans with military-style arms.  When the high-capacity magazine restriction was in place until 2004, it was effective.  If our nation can agree that machine guns, cop-killer bullets, and plastic guns ought to be restricted, surely we can agree that large-capacity magazines have no place in our society.”

Let's put aside the facts that machine guns are just about the most restricted object a private citizen can own, and that any bullet can be used to kill a cop. 

I'd like to hear from the Brady members on this one: why ought plastic guns be further restricted, compared to guns made of other materials, like steel or aluminum?  What did Helmke mean by this? 

The lie that won't die

Amy Goodman:

In May 2010, President Felipe Calderon spoke before a joint session of the U.S. Congress and called for a reinstatement of the assault weapons ban. According to law enforcement officials, 90 percent of the guns picked up in Mexico from criminal activity are purchased in the United States.

Like many before her, she is lying about the denominator.  It may very well be true that 90% of Mexican crime guns that are sent to the BATFE for tracing originate from the US.  But it is a flat-out lie to say that 90% of Mexican crime guns originate from the US. 

If the difference is too subtle for Amy Goodman to understand, let's do an example.  Say there were 1000 crime guns in Mexico.  Of the 1000, only 100 are traceable, so the Federales send these 100 to the BATFE for tracing.  The feds then determine that 90 out of the 100 did indeed come from the US.  Therefore it is correct to say that 90% of traced crime guns come from the US.  However, only 9% of crime guns come from the US. 

By replacing "crime guns sent for tracing" with "crime guns" in the denominator, Goodman is either being lazy or deceitful.  And she's not the first. 

A weekend of fun shooting activities

Today I taught a few hours worth of my club's NRA Basic Pistol Course.  It was a fairly large group of eight students.

It always kills me when one of the students fails the written test.  In this case it was a language barrier, with a guy who was really trying to learn.  We had to send him home with encouragement to study the book over and over again until he understood.  He might come back for a re-test, or he might not.  I hope he does.

It's a great feeling knowing I introduced all these people to responsible and safe gun ownership.  How many eager, paying students did Josh Sugarmann or Joan Peterson influence today?  Not as many as I did.  

Tomorrow morning is our second indoor USPSA match of the winter season.  I might as well get all the shooting I can in this weekend, since next weekend is the wife's birthday.  And there won't be any me-time then!


 ...
Also, I'm not commenting on the tragic Arizona assassination attempt, except to say I'm not willing to further sacrifice my constitutional and natural rights because of the actions of a schizophrenic criminal.

Will Paul Krugman apologize?

Krugman posted this on his blog today:

We don’t have proof yet that this was political, but the odds are that it was. She’s been the target of violence before. And for those wondering why a Blue Dog Democrat, the kind Republicans might be able to work with, might be a target, the answer is that she’s a Democrat who survived what was otherwise a GOP sweep in Arizona, precisely because the Republicans nominated a Tea Party activist.

(Her father says that “the whole Tea Party” was her enemy.) And yes, she was on Sarah Palin’s infamous “crosshairs” list.

Just yesterday, Ezra Klein remarked that opposition to health reform was getting scary. Actually, it’s been scary for quite a while, in a way that already reminded many of us of the climate that preceded the Oklahoma City bombing.

You know that Republicans will yell about the evils of partisanship whenever anyone tries to make a connection between the rhetoric of Beck, Limbaugh, etc. and the violence I fear we’re going to see in the months and years ahead. But violent acts are what happen when you create a climate of hate. And it’s long past time for the GOP’s leaders to take a stand against the hate-mongers.

Wow.  All the evidence at this point indicates the gunman was a schizophrenic loner with no coherent political outlook.  Yet Krugman impulsively created a hate-crime narrative, based on absolutely nothing but his own prejudices.

This reminds me of my time at UMass in 2000-2001 or so when there were a series of rapes.  The radical feminists marched around all day for weeks protesting the phallocracy, and stenciling on the sidewalks graffiti of a cock and balls with the words "This is not power."  Of course the crimes were merely the acts of a lone criminal, but they didn't miss out on the opportunity to create a feminist power structure narrative.  I think Krugman is doing the same here.

Krugman, this brilliant economist whose academic work I admire, lowered himself to the level of those who blamed the Muslims immediately after the Oklahoma City bombing, and to the level of the feminist wackos who protested phallocracy after the rapes.

Now that the facts are in, he owes his readers an apology.

And how would gun control have stopped this?

The Brady Campaign didn't waste any time exploiting this recent school shooting to call for more gun control. 

Here's a mentally ill kid who stole his father's duty pistol, murdered his school principal then killed himself.  How could more or different gun control laws have stopped this? 

There is only one way the principal could have saved his own life, and the Brady Bunch does their best to make sure that's illegal for him to do. They elevate the nobility of victimhood over the right of self defense. 

Also, to reiterate a point I've been making a lot - I am not willing to  have my rights further restricted because of the actions of some nutjob. 

Lying about lying with statistics

I read this comment recently by an anti-gun type:


Pretty soon we'll get the 2010 statistics from which the pro-gun crowd can pick and choose those which support their irresponsible policies.  Maybe I can help.  Let's take all the "accidental gun deaths" and divide them by all the stars in the galaxy.  This will clearly show how insignificant the number is.

Statistics don't lie.  They are what they are.  If you were to literally divide the number of accidental gun deaths by the number of stars in the galaxy, you would get a rate (which is not a statistic) that has no meaningful interpretation.  This blogger's intention is to make the naive reader think that dividing accidental shootings by a large number is as dishonest as dividing them by the number of stars.  It's a false equivalence, a rhetorical trick. 

To get a meaningful rate, you start with a meaningful question.  No one asks "how many people per star in the galaxy get shot every year."  But it is meaningful to ask "what is the probability of the average person being accidentally shot in a given year?"  A question like this puts a rare, but serious, event into perspective.  And there's an easy answer. 

To calculate the probability of the average person getting shot accidentally, we just divide the total number of events by the population at risk.  According to this site, there were 642 accidental shootings in the US in 2006, with an at-risk population of 300 million.  Therefore the probability of getting shot accidentally is 642/300,000,000.  In percent, 0.000214%. 

Yes, this is a low number, but it means something very important that discredits a major argument for gun control: there's virtually a zero probability that the average person will be accidentally shot and killed in a given year.  It's an honest and clear calculation - no calculus, no regression analysis, just a meaningful ratio.  We didn't have to divide by the number of stars. 

DA in denial about gangs in Lowell

“I don’t characterize this as a gang issue so much as a violence issue amongst young people who are willing to carry weapons and utilize them to resolve conflict,’’ Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr. said.

So when a pair of Cambodian Bloods gets kicked out of a party, then return with rifles and hose down a room, it's not a gang issue?  Ok, Gerald, makes sense to me.  No gang problem in Lowell. 

This really shouldn't be surprising given Gerald Leone's characterizations of other crimes... here are a few other things he very well may have said in the past:

"I don't really see this as a rape so much as a case of a man forcefully penetrating a woman without her consent."

"I don't think this is a case of terrorism as much as a few young men flying planes into buildings." 

"I wouldn't characterize this as a suicide so much as someone jumping off a bridge to end his own life."

It looks to me like Leone wants to blame the crime on an easy target - the availability of guns, instead of doing real policing to convict and imprison for life the Cambodian gang members in Lowell.