The Smallest Minority |
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The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. - Ayn Rand "I don't just want gun rights... I want individual liberty, a culture of self-reliance....I want the whole bloody thing." KdT
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Wahabism Delenda Est   
Hey, FEC!  BITE ME! I'm a Member of the McCain-Feingold INSURRECTION!   "Jeez, Kevin... calling you an asshole would be a huge understatement, wouldn't it?" -Jack Cluth, The People's Republic of Seabrook (Coming from you, Jack, it's an honor.)  email: gunrightsAT comcastDOTnet INVITATION: If you have never shot a firearm, regardless of your position on the right to arms, and if you live near or visit the Tucson, AZ metropolitan area, I invite you to go shooting for a day. I will provide the arms, ammunition, targets, safety equipment, range fees and instruction. All you have to do is show up. 4 Takers To Date DO YOU LIVE SOMEWHERE ELSE and want to try shooting? Click HERE  Proud Gun-blogging member of the Pajamahadeen since May, 2003!
Debates: "The Commentary" A OLD discussion on gun control between me and an Irishman living in London Start here. UPDATED! Now with archive! Post #1 by Alex, a Guest A multi-post discussion hosted here at TSM My short exchange with Professor Saul Cornell of the Second Amendment Research Center Best Posts: The "Rights" Discussion: What is a "Right?" What is a "Right"? Revisited, Part I Part II Rights, Morality, Idealism & Pragmatism, Part I Part II Part III Part IV The United Federation of Planets Is the Government Responsible for Your Protection? Part I & Part II 1975 in Washington, D.C. vs. 2004 in Canton, Ohio Go Ahead, Rely on the Government for Your Protection The Other Side Liberal vs. Conservative: Both are Necessary The Blog that Ate Poughkeepsie Updated and restated as: Of Laws and Sausages Militias A Mistake a Free People Get to Make Only Once This is NOT What I Wanted to Read TRUST The Lying "News" Media, Pt. II Say WHAT? Bias? What Bias? Agenda? What Agenda? The Church of the MSM and the New Reformation Let's See if I Can "Germinate an Intelligent Thought" Here The ACLU Hasn't Changed its Tune They Never EVER Stop It is Not the Business of Government Five Reasons Why It ISN'T They Keep Making Better Fools Five Month Investigation, 10 Tracer Rounds, Two Felony Convictions That Sumbitch Ain't been BORN! On Guillotines and Gibbets England Slides Further Towards Bondage Pressing the "RESET" Button Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothin' Left To Lose A Terrible Resolve The Courts Will Not Save Us Trilogy: The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions "Game Over, Man. Game Over." An Important Question And the denouement: Hudson Was Wrong The Dangerous Victims Trilogy: "(I)t's most important that all potential victims be as dangerous as they can" Violence and the Social Contract Governments, Criminals, and Dangerous Victims In the same vein: Those Without Swords Can Still Die Upon Them The True Believers Trilogy: True Believers March of the Lemmings Reasonable People Also in the same vein: Tough History Coming Technical Dissertations Why Ballistic Fingerprinting Doesn't (And Won't) Work Spin, Spin, Spin Speaking of Teddy Kennedy... This is the Kind of Thing That REALLY IRRITATES ME Questions from the Audience?
BLOGROLL:
PROTESTWARRIOR Some people who are taking the fight to the Left. And some GREAT T-shirts, too. DAILY READS I need a longer day! Day by Day InstaPundit Lileks' The Bleat Kim du Toit Mostly Cajun View from the Porch Of Arms and the Law TFS Magnum Ravenwood's Universe Irons in the Fire Say Uncle TRUE EXCELLENCE American Digest The Belmont Club The Volokh Conspiracy Michael Yon Varifrank Eject!Eject!Eject! Eternity Road Oleg Volk Personal Effects ON INDEFINITE HIATUS USS Clueless The Safety Valve Ipse Dixit The Lopsided Poopdeck Acidman (RIP) Skywritings Publicola D.C. Thorton Smoke on the Water OTHER GUN/RIGHTS BLOGS Airborne Combat Engineer AlphaPatriot Alphecca American Dinosaur A Day in the Life of an Ambulance Driver The Anarchangel The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler Argghhh! The Bitch Girls Boots and Sabers The Breda Fallacy Call Me Ahab Carnaby Fudge Clayton Cramer Cogito Ergo Geek Countertop Chronicles Cowboy Blob Critical Mastiff Cryptic Subterranean FreedomSight From the Heartland Fun Turns to Tragedy!!! The Geek with a .45 Gunwatch Heartless Libertarian Hell in a Handbasket Individ Justin Buist's Blog The LawDog Files Lead and Gold Les Jones Mad Ogre The Michael Bane Blog Moral Flexibility Mr. Completely Murdoc Online The Munchkin Wrangler Ninth Stage No Looking Backwards No Quarters Oscar Poppa Outrageous Malfunction Pass the ammo Posse Incitatus Random Nuclear Strikes Reasonablenut Resistance is Futile! Sandcastles and Cubicles SlagleRock's Slaughterhouse Snowflakes in Hell Surly Curmudgeon Texican Tattler The Ten Ring South Park Pundit Triggerfinger The View From North Central Idaho Vox The War on Guns Weck Up To Thees! Wince and Nod Xavier Thoughts .45 Caliber Justice BLOGGERS I'VE MET Cowboy Blob Kim du Toit Mrs. du Toit Serenity Smoke on the Water The Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler On the Patio Fodder of Ride Fast & Shoot Straight Rivrdog Say Uncle JimmyB, The Conservative UAW Guy KeeWee Mr. Completely Og the Neanderpundit USCitizen of Traction Control World Examiner Joe Huffman Chris & Mel John and Beth Donovan Sebastian of Snowflakes in Hell DirtCrashr of Anthroblogogy Rob of The Kitchen Maj. Chuck Ziegenfuss of From My Position... On the Way! Matthew of Triggerfinger Sarah of Carnaby Fudge KevinP who maintains this excellent Wikipedia entry on the Joyce Foundation Dave Hardy Clayton Cramer Primeval Papa FURRINERS Kiwi Pundit The Policeman's Blog Free Market Fairy Tales Samizdata Musing The Second Version OTHER GOOD READS Baby Troll Blog The Winds of Change Sense of Events The Everlasting Phelps Knowledge is Power QandO Blog Radio Blogger THE PSYCHE BRIGADE Dr. Sanity Dr. Helen One Cosmos ShrinkWrapped Neo-Neocon Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred OTHER AZ BLOGS Useful Fools Zonitics Jackalope Pursuivant Primeval Papa DEPT. OF OUR COLLAPSING SCHOOLS Joanne Jacobs EducatioNation Teacher, Teacher The Irascible Professor OTHERS KIND ENOUGH TO BLOGROLL ME Adding to the Noise America's North Shore Journal Anthroblogogy Atomic Nerds Baboon Pirates Bad Dogs and Such The Bastidge Blognomicon Charming, Just Charming Chublogga! Classical Values Common Sense and Wonder Combs Spouts Off Conservative Scalawag The Crazy Rants of Samantha Burns damnum absque injuria David Drake Digital Retrograde The Dougout The Emigre with a Digital Cluebat Empire of Dirt Ether Mind The Fabulous Mint 400 The Freeholder Heinleinblog Impearls Interested-Participant Isaac Schrödinger Josh's Weblog Keith Devens Kill Righty Libertopia The Liberty Zone The Liberty Papers Living in the Surreal World Mike's Eyes Miss O'Hara The Mind of Mog The Ministry of Minor Perfidy MonkeyWatch Adam Lawson NashvilleFiles Near the Salty City PervasiveLight Pierre Legrand's Pink Flamingo Bar Practical Penumbra The Passing Parade Right As Usual Rough Diamond Rules for Rulers Sharp as a Marble She Who Will Be Obeyed! The Speculist Sperari Striderweb A Trainwreck in Maxwell Upbeat Cynicism (Ian Hamet) The Warren Warthog's Rants Wasted Electrons Wheels within Wheels Wicked Thoughts  
| Tuesday, February 17, 2004 Sorry About the Lack of Posting Work is overwhelming at the moment, and I am running a discussion over at The Fabulous Baker Boys which is growing at about a post a day. I think I'm winning. | Monday, February 16, 2004 The (Considerably Less Than) Million Moms are Going to Try Again According to this press release: On Mother's Day Weekend, Million Mom March Will Gather in DC, Urge Congress to 'Halt the Assault' on Child SafetyOh, right. Fighting idiotic gun laws is an "assault on child safety." You want to protect children? Teach them how to swim. Keep them away from household chemicals. PUT THEM IN CAR SEATS AND MAKE THEM WEAR SEAT BELTS. Finally, STAY THE HELL AWAY FROM FELONS. With children at risk in their schools, their playgrounds and their communities, America's mothers and others will gather this Mother's Day weekend, May 8-10, in the shadow of the Capitol in Washington D.C., to demand gun violence solutions, Million Mom March members announced today."Demand gun violence solutions" = "Demand sweeping gun bans." Not a solution, but that's what they want. Concerned citizens, community leaders, gun violence victims, and a coalition of state-based gun safety groups gathered with Million Mom March members in New York today to announce plans for the Mother's Day 2004 Halt the Assault Weekend, May 8-10. The announcement was made outside Martin Luther King Jr. High School, where two students were shot on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday in 2002.What?!? At a gun-free zone?!? "There are war casualties all around us. We need to stand up and say we've had enough," said Shikha Hamilton, official spokesperson for the Mother's Day March to Halt the Assault. "America's mothers have had enough. We are calling a timeout in the war against the next generation -- our children."Ms. Hamilton, then I suggest you direct your attention towards the problem of drug trafficking, because that's what's driving the violence that's killing your children. The Million Mom March, a chapter-based, grassroots organization with thousands of members and many more thousands of supporters (Even they no longer claim anywhere near a million.) throughout the nation, announced the support of Essence Communications Partners and ESSENCE magazine, which have agreed to underwrite some of the event's costs and to reach out aggressively to attract supporters over the next three months.Really? "Aggressively"? Does that mean junk-mail and dinnertime phone calls? TV propaganda ads? What? The main element in the Halt the Assault weekend plans announced today is a public gathering at the West Front of the Capitol starting in the late morning of Mother's Day, May 9. Following an interfaith service at the start of the program, a number of speakers and entertainers will fill the afternoon. Informational booths and other visual elements will be scattered throughout the area.And hopefully the 2nd Amendment Sisters will be there too. Maybe this time they won't be harassed and threatened, and their literature won't be stolen and thrown away by the nice Mommies. The weekend will be preceded by events throughout America urging rational steps to reduce gun violence through legislation, public education, lobbying (REDUNDANCY ALERT!) and other activities. Locally based chapters of the Million Mom March will hold press conferences and other events in their cities to call attention to the need for action to protect America's children.Best estimates I have seen give the attendance at something over 100,000. Max. But who are we to dis a good soundbite? "Since our last march, 120,000 Americans -- almost 14,000 of them children -- have died from gun violence.Numbers that have declined steadily, year by year, until just recently. But because they can't point to a gun control law (or six) as a cause of this decline, it's not "progress." Never mind that the CDC's study couldn't find any correlation between gun control laws and changes in gun crime statistics. We are deeply disappointed that Congress hasn't made progress -- and instead is trying to turn back the clock on the progress we've made," said Mary Leigh Blek, president emeritus of the Million Mom March. "We are resolute, and we won't rest until our children are safer."As I've said, they equate "progress" to "more gun laws." Nothing else. And "safer"? "Safer" than what standard? Don't want your kids dead of gun violence? Move out of the city. That will be your best single thing to do. The gathering comes at a time of great challenge to responsible gun policies."Responsible gun policies" = "more and more restrictions on the right to arms." Unless Congress acts to renew and strengthen it, the nation's landmark assault weapons ban will expire on September 13 of this year, and AK47s and Uzis will be legal (still are) and easier for criminals to acquire. (They can get them regardless.) Weeks ago, the gun lobby's friends in Congress passed a dreadful law that requires rapid destruction of Brady background check records. (And this was "dreadful" why?) In the coming weeks, those same Congressional allies of the gun lobby will try to pass gun industry immunity that would slam the courthouse doors on gun violence victims and protect reckless gun dealers like Bull's Eye Shooter Supply, the gun dealer that "lost" the assault rifle used by the infamous Washington D.C. area snipers in October of 2002.This is another of my pet peeves. The lawsuit is also against Bushmaster - the manufacturer of the firearm. How, precisely, is Bushmaster responsible for a gun stolen out of, or even legally sold out of any gunshop? If it can be proven that Bull's Eye illegally sold the weapon, the lawsuit against it is not protected under this legislation, but Bushmaster is. And rightfully so. But you will never hear that from people like this. "We are all entitled to a life free of gun violence," said ESSENCE magazine's Editor-in-Chief, Diane Weathers.Like hell you are, Ms. Weathers. Nor are you "entitled" to a life free from cancer, nor a life free from want. This "entitlement" bullshit really jerks my chain. "The magazine will work hard to help spread the word that women of every color and every economic background have an opportunity to be a force for positive change. The Million Mom March will unite these women and show the impact they have in saving lives."I will say that ESSENCE is probably a good forum for this, as the overwhelming majority of both perpetrators of homicide and victims of homicide are the tiny minority of urban black males between the ages of 15 and 35. They are, in fact, suffering from the equivalent of an epidemic of gun violence. But if you're not young, male, urban, and black, your odds of being a victim of gun violence aren't all that much worse than that of any average European. This argues that the problem isn't one of guns, but one of culture - especially as recent black immigrants from African and Carribean nations have about the same risk as the general caucasian population. Want to end it? Address that problem. Oh, and stop defending Barbara Lipscomb. At least be consistent on that. | Sunday, February 15, 2004 Anybody Know Anything About This? Seems the BATF has indicted Oliver M. and Ulrich H. Wiegand, owners of InterOrdnance "on 83 counts alleging conspiracy, illegal importation of machineguns, illegal possession and transfer of machineguns, structuring, and money laundering." Really? Only 83? The ATF press release says: The charges involve the Wiegand brothers' federally licensed firearms business, Interordnance of America, L.P., located in Monroe, North Carolina, as well as foreign companies located in Witten, Germany and Ferlach, Austria, at one time owned and controlled by the Wiegand brothers.So, what they're saying is that some 3500 illegal machineguns are now in circulation? Good job ATF! A two-year investigation! Job security! I seem to remember something about torch-cut FAL receivers that the BATF was running around trying to collect from people who had purchased parts kits. Oh, and of course here's another example of asset forfeiture at work: The indictment includes a Notice of Forfeiture that asks that the defendants be required to forfeit to the United States all of the property involved in the offenses charged in the indictment and all property traceable to such offenses.Which means, effectively, "everything they own." InterOrdnance has a response up at their web site. The response is here. Key quote: Interordnance maintains that its actions regarding the importation and sale of the parts kits were at all times legal and in accordance with BATF regulations. Presently, none of the parts kits are offered by Interordnance pending resolution of the formal charges, even though similar parts kits can be found for legal sale by other firearms dealers.Problem is, the BATF has such a bad reputation with me that I tend to believe almost anybody over them. | Saturday, February 14, 2004 Dept. of Our Collapsing Schools Via Clayton Cramer comes this A School Engineered for FailureRead the whole thing. Move the breakables first, though. | An Interesting Email Exchange Ok, so I found it interesting, but I thought you might, too. When I started The Fabulous Baker Boys, Swen Swenson of Coyote at the Dog Show was the first to comment (and the first to link), and he took exception to my characterization that "rights are whatever the majority says they are." Thus began an email exchange that ran the better part of a week. I asked him about it, and we decided that posting the exchange might be interesting to others, so here it is, my comments in blue, his in grey (and no, I don't mean anything by that color combination.) Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2004 8:53 PMSo, your thoughts? | I Want a BUNCH of THESE! Do you work at a place that has those "motivational posters" on the walls? You know, beautiful cibachrome shots of gorgeous scenery with an inspirational message at the bottom like this one on leadership?
I find these things annoying. Apparently someone else does too, and in an excellent example of free market acumen, he has started a business to address (and create!) that market. The business is Despair.com and it produces DEmotivational posters, "Demotivators," most of which are absolutely hilarious. Here are a few of my favorites:
Anyway, you can see the entire catalog here, so go and peruse. But put a towel over your keyboard. There are some funnier than these. | SMILE! You're on Candid Camera! (Don't You Feel Safer?) This is one of the most disturbing trends that I've seen building over the last few years - more and more cameras being used by governments to observe the people they supposedly work for. These cameras take two forms: closed circuit TV where a few officials sit in some dark room and observe banks of monitors (or videotapes run for later review); and unattended cameras such as those used in speed traps which are checked periodically and used as revenue-gathering devices. In each case the cameras are installed with the promise of increasing "public safety," yet the facts are that they do no such thing. I touched on this topic very briefly in "England Slides Further Toward Bondage" back in November, but I want to expand on this topic now because it was a closed-circuit TV camera that caught footage of the abduction of Carlie Brucia and led to the capture of her killer. But it's hardly all up-sided. I came across this Christian Science Monitor article in a link at FuturePundit that claims Britain has one (government run) CCTV camera for each 14 inhabitants, yet the evidence is that such surveillance only makes people think they're safer. Read the entire FuturePundit piece, as Randall Parker goes into more detail concerning the effectiveness of these systems than I am going to. Go ahead, I'll wait.... Finished? Good. Then I discovered that new blogger Gunner, proprietor of No Quarters, also had something to say on the topic (scroll down to "Burn Baby, Burn"). He links to two groups who are resisting the other kind of cameras, the ones used as revenue devices, and news stories of these cameras destroyed by "resisters." Finally, there's a post by the Geekwitha.45 on just one example of the idiocy of CCTV's as a deterrent. His take on the subject has more to do with the death of jury nullification, but in "This is what happens...", he tells the story of one Richard Albert who had the temerity to drive around the gate at a closed U.S./Canadian border station so he could go to his chosen church on Sundays. He faces a $5,000 fine for that. As the Geek put it: Since the gate is "duck aroundable", the border station is pretty useless, isn't it? But no, they installed cameras, and started taking pictures and handing out $5000 dollar fines to residents.Well, yes. But don't you feel safer? And isn't that what matters? In Orwell's 1984 Big Brother put a camera in every room of your home. You never knew if you were being observed, but you knew you could be. In England today, they haven't gotten to that point, but a ratio of one camera per 14 If you live in London, you can't get through a typical day without being captured on tape at least eight times - and possibly as many as 300.and "What you're looking at in Britain, with saturation CCTV coverage in every nook and cranny of the country, is what you'll be seeing all over the United States in the next 5 years."So sayeth Simon Davies, head of Privacy International, which predicts 6 million CCTV cameras in the U.S. in five to seven years. The Christian Science Monitor piece points to two incidents where CCTV was used to apprehend violent criminals, one in which a "knife wielding assailant" was captured shortly after his crime was taped for posterity, and another more heinous crime in which 2-year old Jamie Bulger was abducted and murdered by two other children. But here's the difference: In the case of both Jamie Bulger and Carlie Brucia, the cameras that captured the footage were not run by any government agency. They were owned by the businesses at which the children were abducted. In none of these cases were these crimes prevented by the presence of cameras, though it is true that the cameras made it far easier to identify and capture the criminals. In the case of privately owned surveillance equipment, the implementation of these cameras is restricted by privacy laws, and the information they gather is not the property of any government body. If there is a crime, then the information can be freely given to the appropriate government agency, or that agency can attempt to get it through legal subpoena, but when the government owns and installs the cameras then they have little incentive to follow the requisite laws. For example, the CSM piece notes: (S)erious question marks hang over the technology and its dark Orwellian implications. Many cameras are hidden or not signposted, in breach of regulations. Several cases of abuse have been documented, raising fears of snooping or worse.According to this ACLU piece: Surveillance systems present law enforcement "bad apples" with a tempting opportunity for criminal misuse. In 1997, for example, a top-ranking police official in Washington, DC was caught using police databases to gather information on patrons of a gay club. By looking up the license plate numbers of cars parked at the club and researching the backgrounds of the vehicles' owners, he tried to blackmail patrons who were married.And I should be surprised... why? The proliferation of closed-circuit TV and traffic camera systems is a given, since very few people appreciate or even consider the downsides. I have no answers for you here, though I'm quite enthusiastic about the There is a limit to what technology can do to counteract the decay of a culture that has lost belief in the right of law-abiding people to defend themselves. One of the hardest problems when trying to guess about the future is that there is no way of knowing whether any given culture will partially or totally decay and become very degenerate. More generally, what technology can make possible is a far larger set of possibilities than what people will choose to do with it.What do you think? | THIS is Why I Have Always Lived in the South And why I now live in Arizona.
I do feel sorry for you guys. | Friday, February 13, 2004 Dept. of Our Collapsing Schools I don't know where the hell I was while this was going on, but it seems that Cathy Siepp's daughter Cecile, 14, caught some flak from a teacher at her high school for daring to espouse right-wing opinions in a paper. She was denigrated and called racist by the teacher not only in the class in which Cecile presented the paper, but in other, later classes. In the past, as Cathy says in this National Review Online piece, humiliation by the teacher (and then the students) would have been the end of it. Not so anymore. Cecile has a blog of her own, and she blogged about the incident. Apparently Cecile has been visiting and commenting at right-wing blogs for quite a while, and one of those blogs is the libertarian-oriented Samizdata, based out of England. (Highly recommended, by the way.) Brian Mickelthwait, one of Samizdata's contributors, started a "Support Cecile" effort, and the next day Cecile got an Instalanche from Glenn Reynolds. As Cathy writes in her NRO piece: (E)ven if she hadn't received such an outpouring of support, I think Cecile's regular stops in the blogosphere would have served as an antidote to what happened at school this past Friday. Certainly if a teacher implies a student is a racist idiot one day, and by the next some 200 smart and articulate adults have said she's not and here's why, that rather counteracts the original lesson plan. Now that so many teens have blogs, concerns about doctrinaire teachers may be passé. Our sons and our daughters are beyond their control.One can but hope. Read the whole thing. | Thursday, February 12, 2004 It's Beginning to get Interesting The discussion over at The Fabulous Baker Boys is starting to ramp up. We're up to about ten posts now, and we're discussing specific issues. Give it a read. If you haven't been there before, start here. | Wednesday, February 11, 2004 Spin, Spin, Spin A couple of posts down is the story of Caroyln Lisle who shot an intruder in her Rancho Cordova home. Quoted in the story is one William Vizzard, described as "chair of the criminal justice department at California State University, Sacramento." One commenter called him "a gun control flunky" and suggested Googling to prove it. So I did. I found this interesting transcript from PBS's Newshour from October 18, 2002 where Mr. Vizzard, described as an ex-employee of the BATF was one of the panel. The discussion was about "ballistic fingerprinting," and was inspired by the fact that the DC snipers were active at that time. This will be kinda long, but I'm going to fisk it. RAY SUAREZ: The recent sniper attacks in the Washington, DC, area have revived a debate over a technology that helps authorities trace ammunition found at crime scenes. The technology is called ballistic fingerprinting, and it's based on the idea that every gun leaves unique markings on its bullet casings.Um, not quite so unique. Modern manufacturing methods and tooling mean that guns coming sequentially off a production line are very likely to have very similar tooling marks. Gun makers would be required to register those fingerprints so a national database could be compiled. Until recently, crime labs relied solely on the human eye and a microscope to look at evidence from bullets, but now bullets, bullet fragments and shell casings are scanned into a computer and compared against thousands of other bullets or casings.This assumes that there's enough left of the bullet to allow identification. On top of that, the bullets being compared must also be of similar composition. For example, a .45 caliber 230 grain full metal jacket bullet made by Speer will have much different markings than a 185 grain hollowpoint bullet manufactured by Federal when fired from the same gun. Especially if the first was fired into a water barrel and the second recovered from a corpse after impacting a major bone. A computer probably wouldn't be able to get a match. A human eyeball Mark I might. But the human eyeball takes a lot longer than tenths of a second. RAY SUAREZ: Law enforcement officials back the idea of ballistic fingerprinting and so does the federal Bureau of Alcohol, tobacco and Firearms. Several lawmakers have called for legislation requiring gun makers to record the ballistic markings. The National Rifle Association and other gun rights advocates oppose legislation, saying the fingerprinting is an unproven science.Gee, thanks Mr. President. RAY SUAREZ: While the national debate continues, two states, New York and Maryland, have already enacted laws requiring a ballistic fingerprinting for handguns.Neither of which has yet to have a match that didn't identify a crime gun already in their possession, contemporary with the crimes, and firing ammunition that matched that found at the crime scene. We pick up the debate with Joe Vince, the former chief of the crime guns analysis branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. He now has a consulting company in the Washington area. And William Vizzard, a former ATF agent, now chair of the division of criminal justice at California State University at Sacramento.Note, now, how Mr. Vince artfully dodges answering the question: JOE VINCE: With a database like this, the possibilities multiply. And we have to remember that law enforcement today needs to rely on 21st century technology. In 1890, if you wanted to get in law enforcement, you received a badge, a gun and a club, and said go out there, enforce the law.Simple question, wasn't it? Would the technology help narrow down what firearm? Answer? Evasion, obfuscation, and haystacks. Is he called on this? Don't be silly. RAY SUAREZ: William Vizzard, would this have been a useful tool in this investigation?Hey! An actual answer! No wonder he's no longer in the ATF. RAY SUAREZ: But given the plans that are under consideration now this gun would have had to have been either used in a crime before or purchased and profiled at the time of purchase in order to get a hit in a database, is that right?This, too is factually accurate. So far I'm impressed. RAY SUAREZ: I'm sorry, Joe Vince, go ahead.Yet no one suggests that we fingerprint and DNA scan every single individual so we can pick criminals out of the population from crime scene evidence. RAY SUAREZ: William Vizzard notes that there are some 250 million guns already out there. How long would it take until you had a database that was actually useful, a body of profiles that was large enough to be useful compared to the number that's already out there?And, once again, Mr. Vince dodges the very simple question: "How long?" JOE VINCE: Well, I agree with Bill, there are a lot of firearms out there. But we have to take the next step. (And there is ALWAYS a "next step.") I was in Palm Beach, Florida, last week and I talked to the sheriff's office there. Six months ago they received the IBIS equipment and that has already linked seven or eight different homicides and shootings together that they did not know it was related.Uh, Mr. Vince, you matched crime scene evidence. You did not identify the firearm or its possessor. And YOU DIDN'T ANSWER THE QUESTION. RAY SUAREZ: Mr. Vizzard, you've used the fingerprints analogy. To carry it one step further, it's pretty hard to change your fingerprints. Is it hard to change the so-called fingerprint that a firearm puts on a shell casing?Not exactly true, Mr. Vizzard. For example, take two identical Glock model 17 handguns manufactured three years apart, both of which had been ballistically fingerprinted at manufacture. Run 10,000 rounds through gun #1. Then replace the barrel with a new one you can buy - without a background check, via mailorder. You won't get a ballistic match on the bullet any more. You might be able to get a shell casing match, but after 10,000 rounds I'd imagine the breechface, the extractor, and the firing pin would be quite worn and the last two items might have been replaced. Add to that the fact that the hardness of the brass and the primer cup has a significant effect on the markings put on the case and you just decreased the possibility even more. Finally, swap the slides and barrels between gun #1 and gun #2. It's the frame of the pistol that's considered the "gun." But it's the slide and barrel that leave the ballistic markings. Your trail just went cold. WILLIAM VIZZARD: I think the real issue probably here is that the devil is in the details. It's a question of cost/benefit analysis, not a question of whether it would be desirable to have this data. I think it would be. I'm not an apologist for the NRA. I'm not morally opposed to the idea.And a good one it is. RAY SUAREZ: Well, Joe Vince, how would it work? A lot of the firearms sold in the United States are made overseas. There are domestic makers and sellers as well. At what point in the life cycle of a gun would we check the markings that it puts in the firearm?Like, say a gun registration database? That would be the logical "next step" would it not? JOE VINCE: The idea is that law enforcement collects enormous amounts of information. This is just one piece and DNA is another. But it's getting knowledge from all that information. That's what we have to look at. So it is integrating this so we can get those leads consistently and so that crimes like the sniper in Maryland can be swiftly apprehended.Thus endeth the transcript. All in all, I thought Mr. Vizzard was quite fair, and Mr. Vince was the typical official-line-spewing, job-justifying government flunky. For further reading on the efficacy of a ballistic fingerprinting database for identifying firearms in the general population, I strongly recommend the initial ballistic fingerprinting study report to the California legislature, Feasibility of a California Ballistics Identification System , the follow-on AB1717 report - Technical Evaluation: Feasibility of a Ballistics Imaging Database for All New Handgun Sales, and the Maryland State Police Forensics Division IBIS report (a 2.5Mb scanned document in PDF format. Maryland never officially released this report as far as I can tell.) When Vizzard said "Nobody, I think at this point, can estimate the cost" he wasn't kidding. What he didn't say was nobody can estimate the effectiveness, either. Without those two crucial bits of information, it's damned hard to do a cost/benefit analysis, isn't it? UPDATE, 2/12: Reader Kevin P., who was the commenter that characterized William Vizzard as a "gun control flunky" has withdrawn that comment, and instead states: "I withdraw that term unreservedly and apologize to Mr. Vizzard should he ever read this. "However, I will stand by the assertion that he is a gun control advocate. He is a rarity, an informed and knowledgeable gun control advocate, probably because of his career in the ATF. His performance in the PBS ballistic fingerprinting debate was fair and accurate - but it is something that should be expected and demanded of everyone." Yes, it should. Kevin P. also links to this quite interesting review of Mr. Vizzard's book Shots in the Dark: The Policy, Politics, and Symbolism of Gun Control by Dave Kopel. Give it a read. Thank you, Kevin. Stuff like this makes my day. Labels: fisk, gun control, media | Dept. of Agenda? What Agenda? AGAIN via Instapundit, more evidence of media bias and agenda. We all knew about it, but it's refreshing to see journalists talking about it for a change. Bernie Goldberg bore the brunt of being the first to protest publicly, but now we're seeing more. Anyway, it seems that Dr. Bob Arnot, NBC foreign correspondent, hasn't had his contract renewed, and he's a might perturbed about the stories he's pitched that the network has rejected. And he's got something to say about it. In a 1,300-word e-mail to NBC News president Neal Shapiro, written in December 2003 and obtained by NYTV, Dr. Arnot called NBC News’ coverage of Iraq biased. He argued that keeping him in Iraq and on NBC could go far in rectifying that. Dr. Arnot told Mr. Shapiro that NBC had alienated the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad since it shot and then aired footage of correspondent Jim Miklaszewski at the scene of the November bombing of the Al Rashid Hotel, in which a C.P.A. staffer was shown injured. That incident, he wrote, "earned the undying enmity of the C.P.A."Much more. Read the whole thing. I wonder if FOX is looking for a Geraldo replacement? | OUTSTANDING Suggestions Via Instapundit comes this excellent list of suggestions for gun rights advocates. Go. Read. And do a couple of them (or more!) this year. | They Keep Missing the POINT The Baltimore Sun reports that Maryland's Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee heard testimony yesterday on a proposed state "assault weapon" ban. Leading the BAN 'EM ALL! charge was testimony that "One in five law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty is killed with an assault weapon." The piece reports: There's just one problem with the ratio, according to gun rights advocates: It isn't true.That's a surprising thing to hear from a high official of any law-enforcement department. Usually these people are politically savvy and anti-gun. In Maryland it's especially refreshing. However: Roots of the 20-percent figure lie in the Washington-based Violence Policy Center, a nonprofit group that works to curtail gun violence through research, advocacy, education and litigation. The group analyzed unpublished FBI data on fatal police shootings from Jan. 1, 1998, through Dec. 31, 2001. During the period, 211 officers nationwide were killed in the line of duty, 41 of them with weapons the group determined to be assault weapons, such as M1 Carbines, AK-47s, Tec 9s and AR-15s.One quibble - "research, advocacy, education and litigation"? The VPC is unabashedly in favor of banning handguns. If they can get "assault weapons" banned first, they're all for it. Here's where I get to insert my favorite VPC quote: Although handguns claim more than 20,000 lives a year, the issue of handgun restriction consistently remains a non-issue with the vast majority of legislators, the press, and public. The reasons for this vary: the power of the gun lobby; the tendency of both sides of the issue to resort to sloganeering and pre-packaged arguments when discussing the issue; the fact that until an individual is affected by handgun violence he or she is unlikely to work for handgun restrictions; the view that handgun violence is an "unsolvable" problem; the inability of the handgun restriction movement to organize itself into an effective electoral threat; and the fact that until someone famous is shot, or something truly horrible happens, handgun restriction is simply not viewed as a priority. Assault weapons - just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms - are a new topic. The weapons' menacing looks, coupled with the public's confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons - anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun - can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.Yeah, they're really dedicated to honesty and full disclosure. People are confused about the difference between semi-autos and machine guns? Great! Works for us! Plastic firearms? Don't exist, but boy, what a fear-inspiring soundbite! Armor piercing ammo? Who cares if any rifle round will penetrate a police vest, we can use that to slip in a backdoor ban! Spin, twist, mislead, obfuscate, exaggerate, lie! It's for a righteous cause! Ok, what we've got here is both sides offering "sloganeering and pre-packaged arguments" for the purpose of influencing lawmakers. (Big surprise.) I covered the VPC's report back in May when the Atlanta But the point everybody misses is the one I made in that May piece: The underlying implication is that the "assault weapon ban" would result in officer's lives saved, but the statistics show that's a conclusion you can't draw. According to this table provided by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, there is no evidence that the proliferation of "assault weapons" has caused any increase in officer deaths. In other words, you cannot honestly conclude that banning these guns would save anybody. If someone's willing to shoot a cop, they're willing to shoot a cop. Choice of weapon is apparently immaterial. And an "assault weapon ban" is a useless exercise, as Lt. Col. Moyer correctly stated. | Tuesday, February 10, 2004 A Liberal I Could Live Next Door To Though I think he'd be wary of ME. Barry of Inn of the Last Home has written an excellent piece (permalinks | |
