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. 

CVS pharmacy clerk suggests I'm a murderer

I went to pick up my wife's prescription at the CVS in West Roxbury tonight. As I'm paying the pharmacy clerk, I also hand her the new Combat Handguns magazine to ring up for me. She holds it up, looks at me and deadpans "Gee, I hope you're not mad at anyone today." I shot her a dirty look and shook my head in disgust. "Well at least I hope it's not me you're mad at," she continued. At that point I was so pissed I didn't even bother say anything. I just grabbed my receipt and walked away.

The encounter was very awkward for me in two ways. First, a pharmacy worker should never make a comment about what the customer is buying, no matter if it's shampoo, condoms, or anything else the store sells. Second, she was expressing her view that people with an interest in guns have violent, angry tendencies - and implying that her view is so unquestionable that she can unabashedly say it to my face. I felt like a black guy being told a racist joke.

I think attitudes like this are a predictable result of policies that have destroyed gun culture in my state.

Microstamping in Massachusetts - it was only a matter of time

Just got word from the NRA, Representative Linsky of Natick is introducing a microstamping bill, as follows:

(B) All semiautomatic firearms as defined in Chapter 140 Section 21 manufactured or delivered to any licensed dealer within the commonwealth shall be capable of microstamping ammunition.

(C) For purposes of subparagraph (B), a firearm is capable of microstamping ammunition if –

(i) a microscopic array of characters that identify the make, model, and serial number of the of the firearm is etched into the breech face and firing pin of the firearm; and

(ii) when ammunition is fired from the firearm, the characters are copied from the breech face and firing pin onto the cartridge case of the ammunition.

It's not surprising.  It's just the latest attempt to reduce supply.  They know many manufacturers won't bother with such a stupid requirement, so they won't ship to MA anymore.  That's what the politicians want. 


It looks like the law is impossible to comply with as written, since the firing pin would have to imprint markings on the case.  I would like to invite Rep. Linsky to my basic pistol class where he will learn that this is not physically possible in a centerfire gun. 

Looks like we may be up for a big political fight.  Stay alert, guys. 

NY Times reporter taking liberties with an anecdote?

 Here's a colorful anecdote that I find highly implausible.  Jo Craven McGinty last week in the NYT...

Most gun owners interviewed said they had never drawn their weapons in self-defense. But John A. Catsimatidis, the owner of the Red Apple Group and Gristedes supermarket chain, recalled a chilling episode from the mid-1980s, when he intercepted a robber fleeing one of his stores in the Bronx.

“The first guy comes out with a sawed-off shotgun, goes right by me and says, ‘Be cool, man,’ ” said Mr. Catsimatidis, who has owned a gun for at least 35 years. “The second guy comes out with a sawed-off shotgun, goes by me and says, ‘Be cool, man.’ The third guy comes out with a sawed-off shotgun, and I intertwine my arm into his arm, and I put my gun to his head, and I say, ‘Drop your gun, or I’ll blow your head off.’ ”

When the police arrived, they arrested the man, and examined Mr. Catsimatidis’s weapon — a Walther PPK/S 9-millimeter pistol.

“The sergeant says to me, ‘You couldn’t have shot the guy anyway: your safety is still on,’ ” Mr. Catsimatidis recalled. “The sweat started dripping off my head.
“I’m not going to do anything stupid like that again."

She's using the story to demonstrate that defensive gun use by civilians is, well, stupid.  It's the Times and we expect that bias.  But does the story make sense as told?

The setup sounds like a movie.  He lets the first shotgun-wielding robber flee, then lets the second one (carrying the same gun and uttering the same line... hmmmm) flee, then he finally summons the courage to pull out his little PPK, does some ninja arm interlock, and holds the shotgun-wielding third robber at bay until the police come?  Where were the other two robbers at this point?  Why didn't they help their buddy?  Did the third robber really just give up and stand there, waiting to be arrested?  I don't buy it. 

That's the least of it.  The cops finally show up, and examine the pistol.  How did the cop know if he had the thumb safety engaged or disengaged during the encounter?  Did Catsimatidis just hand the cop the gun, action closed, safety disengaged?  Had he reholstered it and re-engaged the safety?  How did he know the owner didn't engage the safety when when the police arrived?

We don't get those answers in the article.  Instead we get Sean Connery as the grizzled old British Special Forces agent New York cop, and Nicholas Cage as the naive, bumbling science nerd grocery store owner.  "You won't shoot me.  Besides, your safety's on."  It sounds made up.

Let's dig deeper.  Who is this John Catsimatidis? Some humble small business owner?  Nope, turns out he's a big-shot billionaire in NYC.  Not only that, but also a buddy of... wait for it... Mayor Michael Bloomberg.  From his Wikipedia page: He has made donations to Democratic Party and Republican Party campaigns,^[16] and helped run a fund-raiser in 2006 with New York City Mayor Bloomberg for Joseph Lieberman.

To sum it up, we have a virulently anti-gun newspaper using an old, hard to substantiate anectode told by a billionaire friend of the most rabid anti-gun mayor in the country, to make the point that "Yeah, only the elite in NYC get gun permits, but it's for their own good."

This whole thing stinks.

What if they got everything they wanted, and nothing changed?

Bob S. posted a question to the gun control crowd, asking if the background check and registration laws on their agenda were enacted, would they be in favor of lifting restrictions on CCW in the currently prohibited places? 

I'd take that one step further:
If all these laws were enacted, and firearms-related violence steadily increased or remained the same, what new laws, if any, would you then push in an attempt to drastically reduce gun violence? 
 
I don't think any of them would say they'd drop their advocacy in the face of its failure - their only option would be to escalate.  That's why the slippery slope argument from the gun guys is valid.  We don't see a plausible mechanism by which gun control can affect the actions of those in the tail of the lawfulness curve (or the carefulness curve either).  So while one gun a month might seem superficially reasonable, when it fails to decrease crime, it'll turn into one gun a year, then one gun a decade, one gun per person, then England. 


A Brady Campaign board member said it herself - they won't stop until there are zero gun deaths in the US.  When they fail to reach their impossible goals, and they will fail, they'll just keep pushing more restrictions until there's nowhere left to push - until civilian gun ownership is completely prohibited.