Father Pfleger PFAIL

Gun dealer/banner Josh Sugarmann's tactic of confusing the public by conflating 'assault weapons' with semiautomatic guns has really taken hold.  We see it all the time by gun prohibitionists who do it on purpose, but also by those (Joan, I'm looking your way) who really don't know the difference between auto and semiauto.  The funny part is that Josh has fooled his own people just as much as the general public.  Which group does this Father Pfleger, who conflates concealed pistols with 'assault weapons,' fall into? 

The group is asking the Illinois legislature to block a bill that would allow people to carry concealed handguns in public.
Father Pfleger says if it's passed more children would be killed by gun violence.
"Assault weapons were created for the Army and they're for murder," said Pfleger.

That's a really nice sentiment about our soldiers, Padre. If assault weapons were created for murder, and every US soldier uses them, then what are you saying about soldiers?  

When he asserts that 'assault weapons' were created for murder, he ignores that they are almost never used for this purpose.  It's like saying that the pencil was invented to stir martinis. 

Lastly, what plausible causation could there be with lawful concealed carry and the increased murder of children?  Does this priest, who presumably has some kind of formal education, honestly think that the people who go through the trouble of fingerprinting, background checks and application fees are going to murder children once they get their CCW? 

I'm thinking Father Pfleger is in the 'special' group of gun banners.

Gail Collins' misperceptions

Here are two of the more idiotic comments by Gail Collins in today's NYT:

The core of the great national gun divide comes down to this: On one side, people’s sense of public safety goes up as the number of guns goes down; the other side responds to every gun tragedy by reflecting that this might have been averted if only more legally armed citizens had been on the scene. 

I don't particularly want to avert any mass shooting or any other crime that does not present imminent, grave harm to me or my family.  When I hear those shots, I will be the fastest runner on the planet for the next thirty seconds.  I carry a gun to protect myself and my family.  Period. 

Concealed Carry on Campus envisions a female student being saved from an armed assailant by a freshman with a concealed weapon permit. I see a well-intentioned kid with a pistol trying to intervene in a scary situation and accidentally shooting the victim.

No, we envision the woman saving herself, with her gun that she legally carries on campus.  Collins' comment reminds me of that old eye-opening feminist joke with the punchline "the surgeon is her mother."  Gail Collins is so blinded by her hatred of redneck, gun toting hick vigilantes looking for any excuse to use their guns, that she doesn't even consider that a woman would want to be armed in order to nullify the disparity of force against a male rapist. 

This is a real hack opinion piece. 

At least you're consistent, Joan

 Joan Peterson, Brady Campaign board member, March 1: 
"...law abiding citizens are purchasing hundreds of guns ( from legal and licensed firearms dealers) to traffic to the Mexican drug cartel where they are used to murder people in high numbers daily. I remind you again that these are law abiding citizens aiding and abetting the Mexican drug cartel."


The same Joan Peterson, March 3
"As long as anyone accuses me or people on my side of calling law abiding citizens felons, remarks will not be taken seriously."

GPS - yet another reasonable gun control law the NRA will oppose...

The Massachusetts legislature has established a commission that will study the feasibility of putting GPS locators in firearms, and that shall (not may) draft such legislation. 


Where to start?  Suppose we have 5 million guns (just throwing a low number out there) in Massachusetts that are GPS-equipped.  Now, in order to be useful for after the fact crime investigation, we would need to store the geographic location of each firearm say, once a minute.  So each minute, every gun's GPS transmits to a government mainframe its ID and location.  That's five million observations per minute, or 300 million observations of data per hour, 7.2 billion observations per day, 216 billion observations per month.  I think I got my orders of magnitude right. 

Now, I'm speaking as a guy who makes a living as a SAS programmer analyzing massive medical datasets (100 million rows) for researchers, so I have some idea of what I'm talking about.  The computing infrastructure that would be needed to read in, pre-process, write, sort, interpolate and retrieve this data would be tremendously expensive.  We're talking tens of millions, at least, in IBM mainframes and staff.  I can't wait to see what this committee's findings will be in terms of cost/benefit. 

How could this possibly happen Massachusetts?

From today's Herald:

A 29-year-old rising Roxbury rap artist was killed, and another man wounded early yesterday in a Theater District shooting that sent shock waves through the Boston hip-hop community.
Jamie Lee, a.k.a. Roc Dukati, and a 24-year-old man whose name was not released were gunned down after a fight broke at about 2 a.m. yesterday on Tremont Street among several men who had been attending a record release party, family members and authorities said.
...
Officers cordoned off the garage, arresting two men in separate cars on gun charges, prosecutors said.
Andrew Flonory, 26, of Brockton and Joshua Hollis, 22, were each charged with carrying a firearm without a license, prosecutors said.

Can someone explain to me just how the hell these guys got guns without a license to carry and possibly not being able to pass a background check?  It's almost as if the the NRA wackos have a point that gun control only affects law-abiding people.

But I'm sure these two young men were just a rare exception to the effectiveness of Massachusetts' strict licensing requirements.  

Straw buyers are law abiding?

Joan Peterson, Brady Campaign board member:

Never mind that there is clear evidence, from the linked article, that law abiding citizens are purchasing hundreds of guns ( from legal and licensed firearms dealers) to traffic to the Mexican drug cartel where they are used to murder people in high numbers daily. I remind you again that these are law abiding citizens aiding and abetting the Mexican drug cartel.

Straw buyers are law abiding citizens?  Joan Peterson is either a liar, or is too lazy to understand the most basic concepts at hand.