2nd Amendment

A Conversation Regarding Utopian Gun Control (Plus More)

Published by Papa Giorgio

This is one of the many convos on SANTA CLARITA COMMUNITY’S Facebook Page about a meeting to “Stop Gun Violence: SCV’s Message to Mitch McConnell”

(ME) Stop gun violence, health insurance for all, free college, etc., etc. All these Utopian ideals are just that. Fiction.

(SANDRA RC) Hey Sean, not fiction as it works in other countries. Are you saying that we’re sub-standard?

(ME) Sandra RC mmm no, it doesn’t work in other countries. There is a myth about Australia. The first being that there are more guns now owned in Australia than before the 1996 massacre (3.2 million vs. 3.6 million).

The following is from a post on my site: “Mass Shootings Have Decreased ~ Obama vs. Australia”….

…Here is the actual data from Australia. First note that gun ownership exhibits a very interesting pattern that isn’t often acknowledged. There was a large gun buyback in 1996 and 1997 that reduced gun ownership from 3.2 to 2.2 million guns. But immediately after that gun ownership increased dramatically and is essentially back to where it was before the buyback. Why is that important? Well, if it is the number of guns that is important, you should initially see a large drop in suicides or crimes and then see it increasing. Yet, in none of these data series do you observe that pattern.

For example, homicides didn’t fall until eight years after the laws. It is not clear what theory they have for why the long delay would occur. Nor can I even find an acknowledgment of that long lag in the cited literature. A more natural explanation for the drop at the eight year point would be the substantial increases in police forces that occurred at that time…

In places like the UK, Jamaica, and the like, violent robbery and home invasions while the occupants are home are VERY high. It is a dangerous place to live in, and many wish they could protect their loved ones.

And of course there is this moving testimony of one of the patrons at Luby’s Massacre:

(STILL ME) Sandra RC — in other words, they [the countries you are thinking of] are sub-standard. Or the purported beliefs about what they have done and accomplished with gun control — those beliefs are sub-standard.

Some More Stuff

…Since the gun ban, Australia has issued 37,000 gun licenses in the past five years, a jump from 177,675 to 215,462. In New South Wales (NSW), gun ownership has gone up 10%.

Alarmingly, in 22 of the state’s 600 postcodes, registered guns outnumber people.

Here’s the part that will annoy every anti-gun advocate in a thousand mile radius:

There did not appear to have been an increase in gun related crime that related to the increase in licenses.

Got that? Gun ban in 1996. The government flat out confiscated weapons. It was mandatory. A gun grab. Now more people than ever have guns. Gun crime has not gone up. Because gun bans totally work…NOT….

(LOUDER WITH CROWDER)

MYTH: GUN CONTROL IN AUSTRALIA IS CURBING CRIME

Australia Homicides rates both before and after gun ban with trend linesFact: Homicides were falling before the Australian firearm ban. In the seven years before and after the Australian ban, the rate of decline was identical (down to four decimal places). Homicides dropped steeply starting in 2003, but all of this decline was associated with non-firearm and non-knife murders (fewer beatings, poisonings, drownings, etc.). 33

Fact: Crime has been rising since enacting a sweeping ban on private gun ownership. In the first two years after the ban, government statistics showed a dramatic increase in criminal activity. 34 In 2001-2002, homicides were up another 20%. 35

From the inception of firearm confiscation to March 27, 2000, the numbers are:

  • Firearm-related murders were up 19%
  • Armed robberies were up 69%
  • Home invasions were up 21%

The sad part is that in the 15 years before the national gun confiscation:

  • Firearm-related homicides dropped nearly 66%
  • Firearm-related deaths fell 50%

Fact: Gun crimes have been rising throughout Australia since guns were banned. In Sydney alone, robbery rates with guns rose 160% in 2001, more than in the previous year. 36

Fact: A ten-year Australian study has concluded that firearm confiscation had no effect on crime rates. 37 A separate report also concluded that Australia’s 1996 gun control laws “found [no] evidence for an impact of the laws on the pre-existing decline in firearm homicides” 38 and yet another report from Australia for a similar time period indicates the same lack of decline in firearm homicides. 39
Fact: Despite having much stricter gun control than New Zealand (including a near ban on handguns) firearm homicides in both countries track one another over 25 years, indicating that gun control is not a control variable. 40

MYTH: THE AUSTRALIAN GUN BUYBACK REDUCED MASS HOMICIDES

GUNS IN OTHER COUNTRIES - Australia Mass Homicides 1970 through March 2018
Mass Homicides in Australia
Before/After 1990s Gun Control Initiative
Incidents Deaths
22-years Total Average Total Average
Before 0.13 0.08 0.13 0.08
After 0.09 0.10 0.09 0.10
Per 1,000 Population

Fact: The number of mass homicides and the number of people killed in mass homicides in Australia has gone up since the gun control initiatives of the mid 1990s.

(33) Australia Institute of Criminology, AIC NHMP 1989/90 to 2011-12
(34) Crime and Justice – Crimes Recorded by Police, Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2000
(35) Report #46: Homicide in Australia, 2001-2002, Australian Institute of Criminology, April 2003
(36) Costa targets armed robbers, The Sydney Morning Herald, April 4, 2002
(37) Gun Laws and Sudden Death: Did the Australian Firearms Legislation of 1996 Make a Difference?, Dr. Jeanine Baker and Dr. Samara McPhedran, British Journal of Criminology, November 2006.
(38) Austrian firearms: data require cautious approach, S. McPhedran, S. McPhedran, and J. Baker, The British Journal of Psychiatry, 2007, 191:562
(39) Australian firearms legislation and unintentional firearm deaths a theoretical explanation for the absence of decline following the 1996 gun laws Public Health, Samara McPhedran, Jeanine Baker, Public Health, Volume 122, Issue 3
(40) Firearm Homicide in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand: What Can We Learn From Long- Term International Comparisons?, Samara McPhedran, Jeanine Baker, and Pooja Singh, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, March 16, 2010 

(GUN FACTS)

Obama vs. Australia

The American Spectator has this great information that sets the record clear by giving guidelines to the debate:

Type “mass shootings” and “common” into a search engine and you’ll get all sorts of breathless commentary that might lead one to believe there Americans face a genuine epidemic of shooting rampages. A few headlines:

  • Vox: “Mass shootings on campus are getting more common and more deadly.”
  • ThinkProgress: “Mass Shootings Are Becoming More Frequent.”
  • NPR: “Study: Mass Shootings Are On The Rise Across U.S.”
  • Washington Post: “Why are mass shootings becoming more common?”

[….]

Homicide in America is far more common than it ought to be. But mass shootings — defined as four or more murders in the same incident — constitute a minuscule share of the total, as I discuss in “The Shooting Cycle” in the most recent edition of the Connecticut Law Review…

I want to break here and post something Mother Jones said in trying to define what a Mass Shooting is… “she” says this:

Broadly speaking, the term refers to an incident involving multiple victims of gun violence. But there is no official set of criteria or definition for a mass shooting, according to criminology experts and FBI officials who have spoken with Mother Jones.

Mother Jones then goes on to quote the definition — after being ambiguous about it — as four or more [excluding the shooter]. Wikipedia says this:

The FBI defines mass murder as murdering four or more persons during an event with no “cooling-off period” between the murders. A mass murder typically occurs in a single location where one or more people kill several others.

  • Aggrawal A. (2005) Mass Murder. In: Payne-James JJ, Byard RW, Corey TS, Henderson C (Eds.) Encyclopedia of Forensic and Legal Medicine, Vol. 3, Pp. 216-223. Elsevier Academic Press, London
  • “Serial Murder – Federal Bureau of Investigation”. Fbi.gov. Retrieved 2012-03-07.

It is odd to me why Mother Jones would be ambiguous about it while at the same time use the accepted FBI terminology/definition. At any rate, I HIGHLY suggest reading this Debunking of Mother Jones’ “10 Pro-Gun Myths,” worth the read.

Obama recently praised Australian gun-control.

ANN COULTER tackles this “Australian Stat” often mentioned. She quotes the New York Times’ Elisabeth Rosenthal as saying this:

Rosenthal also produces a demonstrably false statistic about Australia’s gun laws, as if it’s a fact that has been carefully vetted by the Newspaper of Record, throwing in the true source only at the tail-end of the paragraph:

“After a gruesome mass murder in 1996 provoked public outrage, Australia enacted stricter gun laws, including a 28-day waiting period before purchase and a ban on semiautomatic weapons. … Since, rates of both homicide and suicide have dropped 50 percent … said Ms. Peters, who lobbied for the legislation.”

John Lott Responds:

…Here is the actual data from Australia. First note that gun ownership exhibits a very interesting pattern that isn’t often acknowledged. There was a large gun buyback in 1996 and 1997 that reduced gun ownership from 3.2 to 2.2 million guns. But immediately after that gun ownership increased dramatically and is essentially back to where it was before the buyback. Why is that important? Well, if it is the number of guns that is important, you should initially see a large drop in suicides or crimes and then see it increasing. Yet, in none of these data series do you observe that pattern.

For example, homicides didn’t fall until eight years after the laws. It is not clear what theory they have for why the long delay would occur. Nor can I even find an acknowledgment of that long lag in the cited literature. A more natural explanation for the drop at the eight year point would be the substantial increases in police forces that occurred at that time…

…ELSEWHERE he states:

…This is actually pretty amazing given the threat that the government could actually again try to confiscate guns in the country. That imposes a real potential tax on gun ownership.

Australians own as many guns now as they did at the time of the Port Arthur massacre, despite more than 1 million firearms being handed in and destroyed, new research reveals.

A University of Sydney study has shown there has been a steady increase in guns imported into the country over the past decade, with the number of privately owned guns now at the same level as 1996. . . .

Weirdly, gun control advocates are claiming that the buy back is lowering suicides at the same time that they are upset that gun ownership is back to it pre-buy back levels. One doesn’t need a semi-auto to commit suicide. While Australia’s population grew by 20 percent between 1997 and 2011, apparently its gun ownership rate grew by 45 percent. If they are right, the pattern should have been clear: suicides with guns should have plunged in 1997 and then quickly grown after that. Obviously that pattern wasn’t what was observed….

Crime is dropping recently in Australia, but this can be attributed to gun ownership rising back up to the previous rates before the ban. GAY PATRIOT comments on the before mentioned Obama quote about Australia:

I reiterate the two hidden rules of “Common Sense Gun Laws:”

1. “We only want to keep guns away from dangerous persons.”

2. “Anyone who owns a gun is a dangerous person.”

NATIONAL REVIEW also makes the point that in order to praise Australian “success,” one is praising anti-Constitutional actions:

Let me be clear, as Obama likes to say: You simply cannot praise Australia’s gun-laws without praising the country’s mass confiscation program. That is Australia’s law. When the Left says that we should respond to shootings as Australia did, they don’t mean that we should institute background checks on private sales; they mean that they we should ban and confiscate guns. No amount of wooly words can change this. Again, one doesn’t bring up countries that have confiscated firearms as a shining example unless one wishes to push the conversation toward confiscation.

[….]

Obama gave the impression that gun-violence is on the increase. This is false. As both Pew and the Department of Justice recorded last year, the majority of Americans believe that gun violence is proliferating when it is in fact dropping. This year marked a 20-year low. More than anything, America has a copycat problem in its schools.

Just a long side-note, continuing with the AMERICAN SPECTATOR article:

 

…The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that from 2002-2011, 95 percent of total homicide incidents involved a single fatality, 4 percent involved two victims, 0.6 percent involved 3 victims, and only .02 percent involved four or more victims. Another study performed between 1976 and 2005 yields similar results — that less than one-fifth of 1 percent all murders in the United States involved four or more victims. In other words, the bottom line is that out of every 10,000 incidents of homicide, roughly two are mass killings.

Further, contrary to what the zeitgeist may suggest, mass shootings are not on the rise. Prominent criminologist James Alan Fox has found “no upward trend in mass killings” since the ’70s. Take campus statistics as an example: “Overall in this country, there is an average of 10 to 20 murders across campuses in any given year,” Fox told CNN  (and roughly 99 percent of these reported homicides were not mass shootings).  “Compare that to over 1,000 suicides and about 1,500 deaths from binge drinking and drug overdoses.” Mass shootings on college campuses lag far, far behind many much more prevalent social and mental health problems.

The rare nature of these incidents also holds true for safety in K-12 schools, which garnered a significant amount of attention in the wake of the tragedies in Columbine and Newtown. According to two reports by the Centers for Disease Control, the probability of a child “dying in school in any given year from homicide or suicide was less than one in 1 million between 1992 and 1994 and slightly greater than one in 2 million between 1994 and 1999.”

…READ IT ALL…

Of course any story like the above needs a positive one added to it. The Blaze has this:

Two armed criminals reportedly put a gun to a 17-year-old girl’s head on Monday night as she was outside retrieving something from a car. The man, whose intentions still aren’t entirely clear, then ordered the teenager to take them into her house — a decision that would prove to have deadly consequences.

Peering out the window of the St. Louis home were the girl’s mother and father, each prepared to protect their daughter with deadly force. There was also a 5-year-old boy in the house, though his relationship to the family wasn’t known on Tuesday.

The girl’s father, a 34-year-old man, reportedly observed the men walking towards his home while holding a gun to his daughter’s head, a sight that no father ever wants to see. He quickly retrieved his firearm and his wife did the same.

The brave dad then confronted the two criminals and opened fire, hitting both suspects with accurate shots…

Ted Cruz Educates Alyssa Milano On The Bible/Constitution

Published by Papa Giorgio

UPDATE:

NOQ has this interesting response by Ted Cruz to Alyssa Milano’s Tweet… first their set up:

Professional Hollywood radical progressive activist Alyssa Milano has taken her war against conservatism and common sense to the gun arena as she’s now their leading gun control advocate. At least that’s what one can glean from her recent Tweets. Her vision of how she will run the country when she’s finally in control has shifted over the years as she’s gone from #MeToo headmaster to open borders spokesperson, from proud double-abortion princess to her current position as lead interrogator in the fictional NRA trial.

She’s even attacking Bible-believers for their defense of the 2nd Amendment.

[….]

Did someone say “Bible” and “guns” in the same sentence? Cue Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) who happens to be a devout Christian and Constitutional scholar. His 10-Tweet reply was a master’s course on why you shouldn’t try to attack the Bible with the Constitution and visa versa:

Here is the exchange put into order by (*breathes on finger nails, polished them on my tattered morning shirt) myself:

Another Debunking Of “America Leads In Mass Shootings”

Published by Papa Giorgio

Any gay person, and/or person of color, is suicidal if they would willingly give up their Constitutional rights of self-protection to a government run by Progressives.

— Bruce Carroll [for the record, Bruce is a gay libertarian]

Older Posts:

REAL CLEAR INVESTIGATIONS has an excellent study of the history of mass killings in America:

Not a New Crime

Three years ago, Smithsonian magazine ran an article headlined “The Story of the First Mass Murder in U.S. History.” It was an account of World War II combat veteran Howard Unruh, who in 1949 went on a 20-minute “walk of death,” as one newspaper called it, indiscriminately shooting neighbors in his Camden, N.J., neighborhood with a German Luger. Before his capture, Unruh killed 13 people and wounded three.

It was a shocking tragedy, and the Smithsonian article is riveting. But it wasn’t the first mass murder in U.S. history. Or the second, or the third, or the fourth, or the fifth. It wasn’t even the only mass shooting in that decade. There were at least two others.

In the 1930s, there were two more mass shootings, which followed a psychotic farmer’s 1927 attack on a Bath, Mich., schoolhouse. Using a rifle and explosives, he took 44 lives, 38 of them students. Andrew Kehoe had wiped out most of the children in an entire town – and exacted a death toll greater than Columbine High School and Sandy Hook Elementary combined.

The first mass killing at an American school predates the existence of the United States. In 1764, a teacher named Enoch Brown was gunned down in his Greencastle, Pa., schoolhouse by Lenape Indians, who then tomahawked 10 children and scalped them.

From 1900 to 1928, African-American gunmen killed 40 people in seven separate incidents – six of them in the South, and the last incident in Chicago. Rampant racism of the day mitigated against widespread news coverage: Either the gunmen were targeting cops in response to police brutality — or the victims themselves were African-American, which apparently limited media interest.

Not all of these early 20th century cases would necessarily be classified as “mass shootings” by the FBI. The standard definition excludes killings done in the commission of another crime, which rules out, for example, the Kansas City Massacre and Chicago’s Valentine’s Day Massacre, famous gangland mass killings in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It probably would not include the weeklong crime wave of Charlie Starkweather, who shot, stabbed, or strangled 11 victims as he robbed his way through the Midwest in 1957-58. And most of Andrew Kehoe’s carnage was done with explosives, not his rifle.

And yet, the Las Vegas shooting of Oct. 1, 2017, the deadliest in U.S. history, was foreshadowed more than a century earlier in small-town Kansas. Holed up in the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, the Vegas gunman opened fire on patrons at a music concert. On Aug. 13, 1903, 30-year-old Spanish-American War veteran Gilbert Twigg used a .12-gauge shotgun on a crowd at an outdoor concert Winfield, Kan. Twigg killed nine people and wounded many more before turning a revolver on himself.

For more than a century, law enforcement authorities, victims’ families, and the media invariably ask the same question: Why? Why do they do it? The killers, in the cases in which they survive, often wonder that themselves. “I don’t know,” Howard Unruh told a newspaper reporter who telephoned him on a hunch when the killer returned to his apartment for more ammunition. “I can’t answer that yet.”

(READ IT ALL)

PJ-MEDIA responds to the lies — on cue — from the Left:

As expected, Democrats immediately began politicizing the shootings in El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio. Quite a few of them even blamed Trump. Like clockwork, calls for more gun control have commenced. Democrats are even trying to pressure Mitch McConnell to cancel the Senate recess so they can vote on gun control.

A common myth you can expect to hear a lot in the coming days and weeks is that the United States “leads the world in mass shootings (CNN)” and therefore we must pass some law that will do nothing to stop future mass shootings, but will infringe on the rights of law-abiding gun owners.

What you might not hear is that this claim is completely bogus.

Sure, if you following conservative media, you’re probably aware of this. Townhall, The Daily Signal, Bearing Arms, FEE, The Washington Examiner, and others have all previously reported on how the myth that the United States leads the world in mass shootings is based on a deeply flawed study, which has been debunked by the Crime Prevention Research Center.

Yet, the myth remains alive and is sure to be regurgitated endlessly again.

The following video from John Stossel explains how the myth got started and why it’s bogus:

Many on the left have tried to delegitimize CPRC’s research. Snopes rated their claim as “mixed” but CPRC debunked their assessment here. Glenn Kessler, the fact-checker at The Washington Post, also suggests that CPRC’s research is misleading for including acts terrorism, which, he suggests, inflates the number of mass shooters abroad, however, if we excluded acts of terrorism from mass shootings, the El Paso shooting would not count as a mass shooting, as it is now being investigated as domestic terrorism. The Orlando Pulse Nightclub shooting, and the Las Vegas shooting were also considered domestic terrorism incidents. If those, and other similar incidents, don’t count as mass shootings but as terrorism, then we should be having a completely different discussion……..

Venezuela: “The Moment Is Now”

Published by Papa Giorgio

My prayers are with these people fighting for freedom – and willing to lay down their life for it.

Several firefights have broken out in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas with opposition leader Juan Guaido calling for a military uprising against President Nicolas Maduro.

Guaido’s call came Tuesday morning in a three-minute video declaring the uprising as the “final phase” of his plan to oust Maduro, according to CBS News. This comes Guaido has turned the garrison of La Carlota air base to his cause.

“The moment is now,” he said, referring to the moment as “Operation Liberty,” according to The Washington Post. Formerly detained activist Leopoldo Lopez also appeared in the video after being freed on Tuesday, as well as armed soldiers and armored vehicles….

(DAILY CALLER)

If the above video (sounds of gunfire) doesn’t show the seriousness of the situation, this video surely will (GRAPHIC):

THE DAILY CALLER notes it was only 10-years ago private ownership of guns was banned:

Venezuela banned private citizens from owning guns seven years ago, leaving firearms solely in the hands of the army and the police. Now, as the country’s opposition attempts to oust the oppressive Maduro regime from power, it is a decision some have come to regret.

[….]

In 2013, just 37 weapons were handed over voluntarily. More than 12,500 were confiscated by force.

Maduro ramped up the program in 2014, expending more than $47 million to enforce the ban. His tactics included “grandiose displays of public weapons demolitions in the town square,” according to Fox News.

Citizens who disobey the ban face 20 years in prison.

“Guns would have served as a vital pillar to remaining a free people, or at least able to put up a fight,” Javier Vanegas, a Venezuelan teacher exiled in Ecuador, told Fox News. “The government security forces, at the beginning of this debacle, knew they had no real opposition to their force. Once things were this bad, it was a clear declaration of war against an unarmed population.”

He added, “Venezuelans evolved to always hope that our government would be non-tyrannical, non-violator of human rights, and would always have a good enough control of criminality.”

Omar Adolfo Zares Sanchez, a lawyer and politician, suggested citizens could have combated the Maduro regime much sooner if they had access to guns….

RELATED: MSNBC reporter Kerry Sanders unwittingly made the American case for the Second Amendment during a report Tuesday on the political upheaval in Venezuela. (WASHINGTON FREE BEACON)

No Speaker, A Democratic President Could Not Do That

Published by Papa Giorgio

Nancy Pelosi is a goof. This is what she said:

“Let’s talk about today: The one-year anniversary of another manifestation of the epidemic of gun violence in America,” Pelosi said. “That’s a national emergency. Why don’t you declare that emergency, Mr. President? I wish you would. 

“But a Democratic president can do that.”

(THE HILL)

No, no he or she cannot do that Mrs. Pelosi.

Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution requires the President to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” This clause, known as the Take Care Clause, requires the President to enforce all constitutionally valid Acts of Congress, regardless of his own Administration’s view of their wisdom or policy. The clause imposes a duty on the President; it does not confer a discretionary power. The Take Care Clause is a limit on the Vesting Clause’s grant to the President of “the executive power.”

The United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in an opinion handed down just last year striking down the President’s assertion of authority to disregard a federal statute, provided a succinct description of the President’s obligations under the Take Care Clause, as follows:

Under Article II of the Constitution and relevant Supreme Court precedents, the President must follow statutory mandates so long as there is appropriated money available and the President has no constitutional objection to the statute. So, too, the President must abide by statutory prohibitions unless the President has a CONSTITUTIONAL OBJECTION to the prohibition. If the President has a constitutional objection to a statutory mandate or prohibition, the President may decline to follow the law unless and until a final Court order dictates otherwise. But the President may not decline to follow a statutory mandate or prohibition simply because of policy objections. Of course, if Congress appropriates no money for a statutorily mandated program, the Executive obviously cannot move forward. But absent a lack of funds or a claim of unconstitutionality that has not been rejected by final Court order, the Executive must abide by statutory mandates and prohibitions.

(HERITAGE FOUNDATION)

There is both a positive and negative aspect to this part of the Constitution. In other words, a President cannot declare an emergency that violates the 2nd Amendment. (I can’t believe a high school drop out 3-time felon has to point that out to the Speaker of the House.)

The Truth About Gun Control (VOX Rebuttal)

Published by Papa Giorgio

Originally posted July of 2013, updated January 2019

(Louder with Crowder) Misrepresenting numbers, massaging “facts,” are tactics used by leftists daily. Misrepresentation is the secret ingredient in their half-caf soy latte. Leftists always have a pre-determined outcome in mind. In Vox’s case (like all leftists), TAINT GUN OWNERSHIP. Make gun owners look like out of control whack jobs with no hearts.

Crowder likewise showed that the “Gun Show Loophole” exists only in the leftists mind:

Here is a great video by Encounter Books:

From the video description:

The right to keep and bear arms has always been central to the American identity. The American Revolution was sparked by British attempts to confiscate guns. After the Civil War, America changed the Constitution to defeat America’s first gun control organization, the Ku Klux Klan. When Hitler and Stalin demonstrated how gun registration paves the way for gun confiscation which paves the way for genocide, Americans resolved to make sure it never happens here.

Gun control is not an issue of left vs. right, or urban vs. rural. Liberal icons such as Hubert Humphrey and Eleanor Roosevelt recognized the right to arms as fundamental to preventing large-scale tyranny by criminal governments, and small-scale tyranny by ordinary criminals. Barack Obama’s gun control program is founded on disinformation, and is a direct assault on the Constitution.

To learn more read The Truth about Gun Control, by David B. Kopel.

Here is the OG info via John Lott:

UPDATED INFO (2019)

One thing gun control advocates such as Vox would never mention is that every single time that guns are banned — either all guns or all handguns — homicide/murder rates rise.  This is a remarkable fact.  One would think that just due to random chance, one or two countries would have a drop in homicides after banning guns.

Vox begins its discussion on mass public shootings using data collected by Jaclyn Schildkraut of the State University of New York-Oswego and H. Jaymi Elsass, a researcher at Texas State University.  Unfortunately, in December 2015, when it was pointed out that their list was missing a lot of cases, Washington Post “Fact Checker” reporter Michelle Lee wrote Dr. Lott: “[Schilkraut] said they are still adding cases, and that it’s not a complete database.” However, Schilkraut and Elsass had already gone public with their findings about how the U.S. compared to other countries. They did so with full knowledge that they were missing many shootings in foreign countries.  Not only did they miss cases, but Vox also doesn’t present the numbers for different countries on a per capita basis.  It is startling that Vox puts other numbers in per capita terms, but not these numbers.

Here is a much more complete list of mass public shootings in the US.  For cases around the world, see here.

Responding to Vox’s and the New York Times’ graphs.

1) Vox.com’s Claim #1 and New York Times Claim #1: “America has six times as many firearm homicides as Canada, and nearly 16 times as many as Germany”

Vox offers no explanation for why it compares only these 14 countries or why the New York Times looks at just 11. The New York Times graph is also mislabeled, as it clearly concerns firearm homicides, not murders. OECD, the organization of developed countries, has 34 member nations. But 192 countries worldwide provide homicide data.

Here are homicide rates across all countries for which data is available (click on figures to enlarge).  Even disregarding the problems with homicide data being underreported in many countries, the US homicide rate is less than the median rate and half of the mean average for all countries (the raw data for this section are available here).

LINKED TO LARGER GRAPHIC
ONCE AT THAT IMAGE, RIGHT CLICK AND “OPEN IMAGE IN NEW TAB” ~ THAT IS THE BIG ONE!

HERE IS JOHN LOTT EXPLAINING THE ABOVE GRAPH

….READ THE REST! It is a beast of an article/rebuttal!

JOHN STOSSEL

Dozens of news outlets reported that America has the most mass shooters in the world. Many say that shows America needs more gun control.

The 5 Guns Of John Wick 3

Published by Papa Giorgio

(More at TACTICAL SHIT) SigGlockinColt meets up with Taran Butler and the ladies of Taran Tactical. Honestly, have you ever seen Taran without them? We didn’t think so. Come to think of it. We’ve never seen him without them either. Back to the Topic at hand. Taran and Sig talk guns. More specifically the guns used by Baba Yaga himself featured in the hit new film John Wick 3 used by Keanu Reeves as well as Halle Berry. These guns will not disappoint!….

TRAILER

 

Guns SAVE Lives! A CDC Study Uncovered

Published by Papa Giorgio

THE DAILY WIRE squashes the anti-gun peoples MANTRA:

…A new report from Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck shows that recently unearthed surveys from the CDC, which were never made public, show that Americans use guns in millions of defense scenarios every year on average.

Reason reports:

… Kleck conducted the most thorough previously known survey data on the question in the 1990s. His study, which has been harshly disputed in pro-gun-control quarters, indicated that there were more than 2.2 million such defensive uses of guns (DGUs) in America a year.

Now Kleck has unearthed some lost CDC survey data on the question. The CDC essentially confirmed Kleck’s results. But Kleck didn’t know about that until now, because the CDC never reported what it found.

Kleck discovered that the CDC asked about defensive uses of guns in its Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) in 1996, 1997, and 1998.

The CDC survey, which Kleck described as “high-quality,” asked respondents: “During the last 12 months, have you confronted another person with a firearm, even if you did not fire it, to protect yourself, your property, or someone else?”

Reason notes that the survey instructed respondents to leave out “incidents from occupations, like policing, where using firearms is part of the job” and it excludes instances where firearms were used in a defensive manner against animals.

One key point that Kleck noticed was that the only people who were asked that question were people who admitted to owning guns. This is a problem because Kleck found in his surveys that “79 percent of those who reported a DGU ‘had also reported a gun in their household at the time of the interview.’” Because of this, Kleck argues that the CDC’s numbers needed to be rounded up, as Reason notes:

At any rate, Kleck downloaded the datasets for those three years and found that the “weighted percent who reported a DGU … was 1.3% in 1996, 0.9% in 1997, 1.0% in 1998, and 1.07% in all three surveys combined.”

Kleck figures if you do the adjustment upward he thinks necessary for those who had DGU incidents without personally owning a gun in the home at the time of the survey, and then the adjustment downward he thinks necessary because CDC didn’t do detailed follow-ups to confirm the nature of the incident, you get 1.24 percent, a close match to his own 1.326 percent figure.

Kleck found the results to be astonishing as they strongly confirmed his prior work, which had been attacked by those pushing the gun control narrative:

The final adjusted prevalence of 1.24% therefore implies that in an average year during 1996–1998, 2.46 million U.S. adults used a gun for self-defense. This estimate, based on an enormous sample of 12,870 cases (unweighted) in a nationally representative sample, strongly confirms the 2.5 million past-12-months estimate obtained Kleck and Gertz (1995). …. CDC’s results, then, imply that guns were used defensively by victims about 3.6 times as often as they were used offensively by criminals.

The newly discovered CDC surveys severely damage gun control narratives pushed by the media, including a poorly written piece last week by NPR’s Samantha Raphelson, who just happened to be unaware of Kleck’s discovery of the surveys. Raphelson’s report backed the National Crime Victimization Survey’s ultra-conservative lowball number of only 100,000 defensive uses of firearms per year…

Here is a good portion of what is referenced above via REASON’s article:

….Now Kleck has unearthed some lost CDC survey data on the question. The CDC essentially confirmed Kleck’s results. But Kleck didn’t know about that until now, because the CDC never reported what it found.

Kleck’s new paper—”What Do CDC’s Surveys Say About the Frequency of Defensive Gun Uses?“—finds that the agency had asked about DGUs in its Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System in 1996, 1997, and 1998.

Those polls, Kleck writes,

are high-quality telephone surveys of enormous probability samples of U.S. adults, asking about a wide range of health-related topics. Those that addressed DGU asked more people about this topic than any other surveys conducted before or since. For example, the 1996 survey asked the DGU question of 5,484 people. The next-largest number questioned about DGU was 4,977 by Kleck and Gertz (1995), and sample sizes were much smaller in all the rest of surveys on the topic (Kleck 2001).

Kleck was impressed with how well the survey worded its question: “During the last 12 months, have you confronted another person with a firearm, even if you did not fire it, to protect yourself, your property, or someone else?” Respondents were told to leave out incidents from occupations, like policing, where using firearms is part of the job. Kleck is impressed with how the question excludes animals but includes DGUs outside the home as well as within it.

Kleck is less impressed with the fact that the question was only asked of people who admitted to owning guns in their home earlier in the survey, and that they asked no follow-up questions regarding the specific nature of the DGU incident.

From Kleck’s own surveys, he found that only 79 percent of those who reported a DGU “had also reported a gun in their household at the time of the interview,” so he thinks whatever numbers the CDC found need to be revised upward to account for that. (Kleck speculates that CDC showed a sudden interest in the question of DGUs starting in 1996 because Kleck’s own famous/notorious survey had been published in 1995.)

At any rate, Kleck downloaded the datasets for those three years and found that the “weighted percent who reported a DGU…was 1.3% in 1996, 0.9% in 1997, 1.0% in 1998, and 1.07% in all three surveys combined.”

Kleck figures if you do the adjustment upward he thinks necessary for those who had DGU incidents without personally owning a gun in the home at the time of the survey, and then the adjustment downward he thinks necessary because CDC didn’t do detailed follow-ups to confirm the nature of the incident, you get 1.24 percent, a close match to his own 1.326 percent figure.

He concludes that the small difference between his estimate and the CDC’s “can be attributed to declining rates of violent crime, which accounts for most DGUs. With fewer occasions for self-defense in the form of violent victimizations, one would expect fewer DGUs.”

Kleck further details how much these CDC surveys confirmed his own controversial work:

The final adjusted prevalence of 1.24% therefore implies that in an average year during 1996–1998, 2.46 million U.S. adults used a gun for self-defense. This estimate, based on an enormous sample of 12,870 cases (unweighted) in a nationally representative sample, strongly confirms the 2.5 million past-12-months estimate obtained Kleck and Gertz (1995)….CDC’s results, then, imply that guns were used defensively by victims about 3.6 times as often as they were used offensively by criminals.

For those who wonder exactly how purely scientific CDC researchers are likely to be about issues of gun violence that implicate policy, Kleck notes that “CDC never reported the results of those surveys, does not report on their website any estimates of DGU frequency, and does not even acknowledge that they ever asked about the topic in any of their surveys.”

NPR revisited the DGU controversy last week, with a thin piece that backs the National Crime Victimization Survey’s lowball estimate of around 100,000 such uses a year. NPR seemed unaware of those CDC surveys.

For a more thorough take, see my 2015 article “How to Count the Defensive Use of Guns.” That piece more thoroughly explains the likely reasons why the available DGU estimates differ so hugely….

North Carolina 2nd Amendment Defense by Mark Robinson

Published by Papa Giorgio

Via the DAILY WIRE:

On Tuesday, while speaking during a city council meeting on curtailing gun violence, an African-American gun owner in North Carolina blasted government officials who want to restrict gun rights of law-abiding citizens.

The city council meeting was held to determine whether the community should cancel an upcoming gun show which is “held twice yearly at the Coliseum, a city-owned building,” WFMY News reported…..

 

Democrats Say They Aren’t Grabbing Our Guns… Well…

Published by Papa Giorgio

Leftist Democrats in two cities start grabbing guns, literally.

Michael Medved discusses another lie from the left, “we aren’t trying to grab your guns!” Um, yes you are… literally! Here is an excerpt from the WASHINGTON TIMES:

  • A unanimous vote by village trustees Deerfield, Illinois, this week is primed to turn many legal gun owners into criminals on June 13. Fines of up to $1,000 per day will face citizens this summer if they ignore a ban on “semi-automatic rifles, pistols and shotguns with certain features.”

There is a longer video of some council meeting video from Deerfield, HERE.

UPDATES

This comes by way of the DAILY WIRE:

Second Amendment Foundation Files Suit Against Chicago Suburb For ‘Assault Weapon’ Gun Grab

On Thursday, the Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) filed a lawsuit against the Chicago suburb of Deerfield, Illinois for their recent gun ban passed by the Village Board of Trustees.

As reported by The Daily Wire earlier this week, the ban passed Monday night “outlaws any weapon the village leaders deem ‘assault weapons,’ including AR-15s. But the ban also includes ‘semi-automatic rifles, pistols and shotguns with certain features.'”

Those who do not comply with the ordinance — which is set to take effect on June 13 — will face up to $1,000 fines per day.

In a press release announcing the lawsuit, SAF confirmed that the Illinois State Rifle Association and a gun-owning private citizen from the village named Daniel Easterday would be joining them in their legal action.

The suit was filed in the 19th Judicial Circuit Court in Lake County and the plaintiffs are represented by Glen Ellyn attorney David Sigale.

“The lawsuit challenges the village ban under a 2013 amended state statute that declared ‘the regulation of the possession or ownership of assault weapons are exclusive powers and functions of this State. Any ordinance or regulation, or portion of that ordinance or regulation, that purports to regulate the possession or ownership of assault weapons in a manner that is inconsistent with this Act, shall be invalid…'” explains the news release.

SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb said the gun ban “flies in the face of state law.”

“While the village is trying to disguise this as an amendment to an existing ordinance, it is, in fact, a new law that entirely bans possession of legally-owned semi-auto firearms, with no exception for guns previously owned, or any provision for self-defense,” Gottlieb said.

“The new ordinance also provides for confiscation and destruction of such firearms and their original capacity magazines,” he continued. “What is particularly outrageous about this new law is that it levies fines of up to $1,000 a day against anyone who refuses to turn in their gun and magazines or move them out of the village by the time the ordinance takes effect in June. THIS CERTAINLY PUTS THE LIE TO CLAIMS BY ANTI-GUNNERS THAT ‘NOBODY IS COMING TO TAKE YOUR GUNS.'”……..