So Much for My Lunch Hour or Preaching to the Heathen

I've responded again to Tim Lambert, but I thought I'd post it here too. If I'm going to do that much work, I might as well take advantage of it. Go read the whole thread if you want the background on it. Here's my latest:

Tim, IT DOESN'T WORK!

Restrictions on weapons, except in rare cases, ONLY make it more difficult to defend oneself. They have essentially no effect on the access to weapons by violent criminals. Had Lindsay been assaulted away from home he would not have had access to the sword. Then what? There's a complete ban on handguns in England, yet one of his assailants had one.

What you characterize as "restrictions on weapons" in England is the complete denial of the ability of anyone to legally possess one, at least outside their own home. Well, that's one definition of "restriction" I guess. When it comes to firearms the laws "restrict" English subjects from using a firearm in self-defense in their own homes by requiring them to store their firearm (assuming they have jumped through all the hoops required to acquire one, and fully cognizant of the fact that the law considers self-defense an unacceptable reason for having one) unloaded, in a locked container, away from the ammunition which is required to be in a separate locked container.

I have described above the cycle of ever-more draconian "restrictions on weapons" as a result of the cognitive dissonace produced from a philosophy that holds that all weapons are offensive and the cause of violence. As an adjunct to that philosophy, the use of weapons is held to be evil, with the sole exception of the use of weapons by an agent of government. The philosophy has further morphed, becoming one in which there is almost no recognition of the concept of a legitimate use of force, at least without a UN Security Council joint resolution. ;-)

In the context of resistance to crime, all a violent criminal need do in order to nearly guarantee himself success is to select a victim that is his physical inferior, or to overwhelm his victim with numbers. If he wants to make it even easier all he needs to do is have a weapon, since his victim will almost certainly not have one and weapons are readily available in spite of the laws against them. (I'm sure Lindsay's attackers never expected him to resist. He was outnumbered and outmatched. I think he was successful as much out of shock as anything.) If the violent criminal actually likes to use force against his victims, he need not fear any effective resistance. As a result of this physical reality, violent crime has been on the increase in England and Wales since the 1950's.

You have (understandably, given the origination of this thread) focused on the assertion that "self-defense is illegal." I'll make my position explicit: There is a legal recognition that the British subject has a right to use legitimate force in stopping a crime against himself. It even acknowledges a right to use lethal force against a rapist. However, the laws of the last fifty years, developed under the philosophy I described above and that you by all indications share, have resulted in a situation in which the actual use of force in resisting crime is legally risky. The carry of weapons outside the home is prohibited, making the defensive use of them prohibited. The use of weapons inside the home might as well be. The bar of "reasonableness" has been raised again and again. The law makes comforting noises about the jury taking into account the "instinctive" reaction of the attacked, but the jury - distanced from the attack in time, location, and emotion - is tasked with determining how "reasonable" that "instinctive" reaction is. Lindsay stabbed his attacker four times - in the back, certainly - and is sentenced to eight years. Here in the States someone gets indicted and tried for shooting a burglar six times, four in the back, and when asked why responds "that's all the bullets that were in the gun." The jury finds this "reasonable" and acquits. (That's an apocryphal example, but I can find a comparable concrete one without too much trouble.)

My apologies for this thread drifting so far away from what you consider the original point, but in my opinion what we're discussing here is the absolute right of the individual to defend himself, his family and his property. That right is given mere lip service, but has no legal force in England any longer. The use of force, even the threat of force, by those who are not government agents is considered illegitimate regardless of the actor. The law-abiding citizen is the victim of that flawed philosophy and the cognitive dissonance that has set up a negative feedback loop resulting in their total disarmament. He (or she) is relegated to being the unresisting victim of violent crime by a system that denies, whether overtly or covertly, a right to the legitimate use of force.

You (inclusive) have avoided a question that I have posed more than once. The law recognizes the right of a woman to use lethal force against a rapist, but denies her any means by which to exercise it. How do you justify this dichotomy? Your last, lame response was "Restrictions on weapons might make self defence more difficult in some cases." Well, it certainly does in this one, doesn't it? The philosophy you defend is perhaps better described by saying that it is more moral for society to allow women to be raped than it is to enable them to stand with a smoking gun over the body of the rapist. That's extreme, but nonetheless accurate.

My argument is that a philosophy that justifies the restriction of all weapons from the general public is WRONG, and that philosophy is spreading. The news report that originated this thread is just another example of the spread of that philosophy, and we American bloggers who flew off the handle recognized it as such. You share the cognitive dissonance that does not permit you to accept that the philosophy has failed, and as a result you fail to recognize the error of that philosophy.

We'll see, I suppose, if that last assertion is validated.


| posted by Kevin at 1:10 PM PermaLink

 
OK, Now I'm MORE Pissed

Somehow, some bastard program changed my homepage to a f&$^ing search page titled "The Best SE." OK fine, I fixed that, and put back my original home page. But now every time I try to access Google.com I get that goddammed page, and it shows "http://google.com" in the address window. I cannot get to Google from my machine, and I don't know how to get rid of the f*%^ing program that isn't allowing me to get there.

Anybody know how to defeat this?

| posted by Kevin at 10:29 AM PermaLink

 
Agenda? What Agenda? (Part "Who can keep track?")

Instapundit links to Mudville Gazette, who reports on the news media debating the use of graphic images of American dead to influence American politics:

"War is a horrible thing. It is about killing," ABC News "Nightline" Executive Producer Leroy Sievers said in an unusual message to the program's e-mail subscribers discussing the issues posed by Wednesday's killings. "If we try to avoid showing pictures of bodies, if we make it too clean, then maybe we make it too easy to go to war again."

--

The pictures from Wednesday's attack, Rosenstiel said, could anger viewers or "engender disenchantment about the war."

"These are the kinds of pictures that will linger," said John Schulz, dean of Boston University's College of Communications and a former faculty member at the National War College.

"They'll be there in November when people go to vote." (From the LA Times)

--

It has got to give the American public pause about this question of how welcome we are there," says Robert Dallek, a presidential biographer who studied Franklin Roosevelt's tenure during World War II and Lyndon Johnson's during Vietnam. "This is not Vietnam, but it is reminiscent of Vietnam." (From USA Today)

So, let me see if I understand this. The media doesn't show us graphic images of Americans killed in, say the Cole attack, or the bombing of the Marine Barracks, or the people leaping from the WTC to their deaths, or the pieces of Israelis blown up by suicide homicide bombers because that might make us want to go to war, but they will show graphic images of dead Americans killed in Iraq so that we'll decide that the war isn't worth the cost, and we won't find it "easy to go to war again."

In other words, the press has now admitted blatantly that its job is not to inform us, but to manipulate us, and their manipulation is directed to keep us from going to war, and to discourage us if we are at war.

Yet this isn't to be considered treason.

Update: The Puppyblender also points to Ed Driscoll, who says very much the same thing I did, but with more links to more examples.

| posted by Kevin at 9:50 AM PermaLink

 
And We Should Pay Attention to the World Court....Why?

Persnickety, author of the blog Ordinary Galoot is on a mission. A mission to spread the word of a House Resolution that is intended to remind the Supreme Court that the Justices are there to decide cases based on AMERICAN law, and nothing else:

I will re-post this and re-post this and re-post this until you get excited about it!!

There is a resolution in the House of Representatives that needs your support. It says, essentially: Bleep You, Sandra Day O'Connor, AND the World Court you rode in on!

Go read the whole thing. Then call your Rep. Then spread the word.

Your Representative can't represent you if he doesn't know where you stand. It's only Populist Authoritarianism if it violates our individual rights.

| posted by Kevin at 7:41 AM PermaLink

 
More Editorial Cartoons

(Well, so much for Photobucket as an image hosting site. I burned 3500MB in bandwidth in less than five days this month. So, anybody: Good, cheap image hosting service for bandwitdth of about 30GB/month?)

This time with a 9/11 Commission theme (for the most part.) We start with three cartoonists who get it. Mike Ramirez (as usual) of the LA Times:

Larry Wright of the Detroit News

Chuck Asay of the Colorado Springs Gazette makes an interesting point:

Robert Arial of South Carolina's The State has another cynical view of Clarke:

Here's someone who doesn't seem to get it, really. J.D. Crowe of the Mobile Register

Should Kerry be successful, Wayne Stayskal of the Tampa Tribune makes a prediction:

And finally, in an interesting illustration of the exercise of Populist Authoritarianism, Chip Bok of the Akron Beacon Journal weighs in:

Yup, we minority pariahs need to join up.

| posted by Kevin at 7:14 AM PermaLink

 
Here's a Short, Descriptive, Remarkably Accurate Term

From Samizdata comes a suggestion that we call a spade a spade when it comes to what our putatively representative forms of government actually are:

Populist Authoritarianism

Property rights? What are those? The tyranny of the majority (or their elected representatives who know what's best for all of us) has spoken! Smoking? Verboten! Fast food? In their gunsights. Guns? You're not qualified! You cannot possibly make a decision for yourself that is not first reviewed and approved by the nanny-state!

Spread the meme.

| posted by Kevin at 6:36 AM PermaLink

 
Logic Over Ranting - Wins Every Time

Wince and Nod lays down a point-by-point logical smackdown on the "BUSH LIED" meme.

Excellent logic and exposition. Outstanding, Wince. Sorry it took me so long to find it.

| posted by Kevin at 6:20 AM PermaLink

 
See? Insomnia Brought on by Allergies is Good for Something!

Since I can't sleep for coughing and sneezing, here I am!

For those of you wanting an RSS feed, apparently this is mine: http://smallestminority.blogspot.com/atom.xml

It's now active.

And Bill Whittle has published Chapter Two in his latest series of essays, It's a Trap! That was worth the loss of sleep all by itself.

And I've posted another response to Tim Lambert's thread on self-defense in the UK.

Who needs more than three hours sleep anyway?

| posted by Kevin at 4:00 AM PermaLink

 
Who's Gullible?

Tim Lambert, who authors the Australian blog Deltoid which is dedicated to the pursuit and exposure of John Lott as a fraud (and I tend to believe Tim is more right than wrong about that), picked up on the outrage many of us felt over a recent short news story I commented on last week. Tim writes that we seem gullible in jumping to the conclusion that "self defence is illegal in the UK." I've taken him to task over this topic in the comments to his post. He seems to be avoiding the pertinent questions here.

| posted by Kevin at 8:54 AM PermaLink

 
Department of Humor, Mental Image Division

Perusing the tracking data for this site, I find that I have had one visitor as the result of a Google Search for "smallest bikini in the universe," and on top of that, in that search The Smallest Minority comes up fourth on the list.

Yikes!

To anyone who has ever seen me, the idea of me in a SPEEDO is frightening.

| posted by Kevin at 5:55 AM PermaLink

 
Photoshoppers RULE!

Reader Steven Nielsen, a Senior from the University of Washington, sent me his latest effort. He explains:

I was inspired by an MSNBC News photo of John Kerry in Texas about a month ago. The picture, as I have doctored it, speaks for itself. With Kerry at the Helm, this is what we can expect...

Damn, that's funny. And I too support the 2004 Bush/Rice ticket.

| posted by Kevin at 5:34 AM PermaLink

 
Dept. of Our Collapsing Schools - Teacher's Lounge

I am a teacher . . . And I am tired.

Tired of......
> > politics, frustrated colleagues,
> > semiconscious students,
> > media hype and especially, ......I am tired of
> > parents who expect me to resolve their children's problems.

I simply do not have the answers.
I have tried everything...... I have hugged your child, listened to your child, bought supplies for your child, and reminded your child of the importance of getting an education ..... as well as the importance of caring about life with heart genuineness.

I have read......Theories on how to teach at-risk students. (this includes the entire student population, because "at-risk" is really defined as children growing up without parental supervision).

I have read....... theories on how to teach pregnant students, students on drugs, abused students, high-energy students, shy students, female students and male students.

I have...... attended conferences for ideas on how to teach hands-on activities, higher level thinking skills, cooperative learning groups, technology, standards-based education and numerous other strategies.

I have...... lain awake at night rolling over and over in my head solutions, and lamentations.

I have..... cried tears, trying to find the answers for motivating your child to have success in my classroom and in life.

I am a teacher.
I am not a doctor,
I am not a psychiatrist,
I am not a former drug addict.
I am not God, and.....
I am, emphatically and unequivocally, not your child's parent.

I am a teacher.

I am tired......
> of politicians blaming policy-makers,
> of state government blaming localities,
> of administration blaming central office
> of central office blaming school board
> of school board blaming city council, and........
> everyone blaming teachers.

But I have to tell you..... the students who have success in my classroom are the ones whose parents I have met at every open house and on every parent/teacher conference day. So, please, do not tell me that educators are the solution.

The solution.... the power and the state of your child's welfare lie in your hands. Not in mine, but in the hands of you, the parent. And if you don't want to lose another educator who cares, who sweats, who encourages your child.....then I suggest you get to your child's school and make education matter in your child's life.

Because I am a *teacher*!

Written by a TEACHER in the Jacksonville Florida Public School System

Copied in whole from Indigo Insights, because I wanted to archive it, and I couldn't figure out where the permalinks were.


| posted by Kevin at 5:00 PM PermaLink

 
More on U.S. v. Gould, aka "The Road to Hell..."

Via Eugene at The Volokh Conspiracy comes a link to this review of the decision by Ken Lammers of Crimlaw. Excerpt:

The court cites a number of cases which it claims support its position that protective sweeps are allowed once valid entry into the residence has been gained by an officer (I have not the time to check them but at least a couple appear to be inapposite plain view cases). Even later in the opinion it blows off the trial judge's finding that the police created any danger to themselves by entering the trailer and not picking up Gould later (ie: in the morning when he left for work). The trial court says they can't create a danger and then rely on it to abrogate constitutional guarantees. The appellate court says all the right things about how the officers cannot do such a thing and then makes an excuse for them doing it in this case.

--

My Opinion: The trial court had it right when it pointed toward the officers placing themselves in danger and then taking advantage of it to do a protective sweep. Herein lies the difference between Buie and it's progeny and Gould. There is quite often danger in serving a warrant and thus the deference to officers acting under the color of one. However, if an officer is acting without a warrant, probable cause, or even a report of immediate criminal activity he cannot be allowed to choose an action which places him in danger over safer courses of action and be allowed to violate the constitution because of the choice. How hard could it have been to have someone watch Gould's place overnight and stop him when he came out the next day? Sure it would have been inconvenient but that's far from the primary consideration in a constitutional analysis. This is the point at which the court errs in its constitutional analysis.

There's a lot more. Essentially he agrees with DeMoss in all the details. There are links to other legal reviews, too.

| posted by Kevin at 2:59 PM PermaLink

 
The Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions

A recent 5th Circuit Court of Appeals decision has hit the radar of those of us concerned over the ever-expanding powers of government in (to us) obvious violation of the Constitutional protections written in to limit that power. I first ran across this latest slip down the slippery slope over at Say Uncle, but the Geek with a .45 and John Donovan have also weighed in. What all three of these bloggers have commented on was this news story from New Orleans, home of the 5th Circuit Court.

Court Opens Door To Searches Without Warrants

It's a groundbreaking court decision that legal experts say will affect everyone: Police officers in Louisiana no longer need a search or arrest warrant to conduct a brief search of your home or business.

Leaders in law enforcement say it will provide safety to officers, but others argue it's a privilege that could be abused.
The decision was made by the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Two dissenting judges called it the "road to Hell."

The ruiling stems from a lawsuit filed in Denham Springs in 2000.

New Orleans Police Department spokesman Capt. Marlon Defillo said the new power will go into effect immediately and won't be abused.

"We have to have a legitimate problem to be there in the first place, and if we don't, we can't conduct the search," Defillo said.

But former U.S. Attorney Julian Murray has big problems with the ruling.

"I think it goes way too far," Murray said, noting that the searches can be performed if an officer fears for his safety -- a subjective condition.

Defillo said he doesn't envision any problems in New Orleans, but if there are, they will be handled.

"There are checks and balances to make sure the criminal justce (sic) system works in an effective manor," (sic) Defillo said.

Our reaction to this story is understandable, I think. We're supposed to trust Capt. Defillo's word that "the power won't be abused" though he says "(t)here are checks and balances to make sure the criminal justice system works in an effective manor." (I think the word "manor" might be a highly appropriate freudian slip.) Yes, we're supposed to trust our overlords who just removed one of those "checks and balances" - checks and balances that aren't there to ensure the criminal justice system works effectively, but there to ensure that the rights of the individual are protected against government abuse. And these words come from a spokesman for a police department with a serious record of corruption. This is not encouraging.

I've just begun reading Professor Randy Barnett's latest book, Restoring the Lost Constitution, which opens with the following:

Growing up, I was like most Americans in my reverence for the Constitution. Not until college was the first seed of doubt planted in the form of an essay by a nineteenth-century abolitionist and radical named Lysander Spooner. In his best-known work, No Treason: The Constitution of No Authority (1870), Spooner argued that the Constitution of the United States was illegitimate because it was not and could never have been consented to by the people on whom it is imposed. Although as an undergraduate I found Spooner's argument unanswerable (and I must admit so it remained until I was in my forties), the problem was largely theoretical. My mind may have doubted, but my faith remained.

Until I took Constitutional Law at Harvard Law School. The experience was completely disillusioning, but not because of the professor, Laurence Tribe, who was an engaging and open-minded teacher. No, what disillusioned me was reading the opinions of the U.S. Supreme Court. Throughout the semester, as we covered one constitutional clause after another, passages that sounded great to me were drained by the Court of their obviously power-constraining meanings. First it was the Necessary and Proper Clause in McCulloch v. Maryland (1819), then the Commerce Clause (a bit) in Gibbons v. Ogden (1824), then the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment in The Slaughterhouse Cases (1873), the the Commerce Clause (this time in earnest) in Wickard v. Filburn (1942), and the Ninth Amendment in United Public Workers v. Mitchell (1947).

Nor were these landmark decisions isolated cases. In countless other opinions, the Supreme Court justices affirmed they meant it when they said the Constitution did not mean what it apparently said.

Now, bear in mind IANAL (I Am Not A Lawyer), but I've read a LOT of case law over the last ten years or so in my study of the legal history of the right to arms and other rights of the individual, and I've found precisely what Prof. Barnett describes here - a slow but steady erosion of the power-limiting restrictions of the Constitution until the Constitution really doesn't mean anything any longer as far as a restriction on government power. Just two weeks ago my opinion was validated by Justice Antonin Scalia, who said during a speech in New Orleans:

It is literally true that the U.S. Supreme Court has entirely liberated itself from the text of the Constitution.

We are free at last, free at last. There is no respect in which we are chained or bound by the text of the Constitution. All it takes is five hands.

Knowing what I know about the accuracy of the press, I decided that I should once again go straight to the source, and read the decision to determine for myself just how bad it was. The case is U.S. v. Gould, and the decision was published last Wednesday. It was an en banc re-hearing by fifteen justices, including justices Garwood and DeMoss, who found in U.S. v. Emerson that the Second Amendment protected a right of the individual - the first rollback of any kind regarding judicial protection of the right to arms in any Federal court since 1939.

The basics of the case are relatively simple:

Louisiana deputy sheriffs, having received on October 17,2000, a telephone warning that Gould, known to be a convicted felon with a reputation for violence, was planning to kill two local judges, went that same evening to the approximately 14 x 16 foot trailer where Gould lived to talk to him, not then intending to arrest him. The officers, who had neither a search nor an arrest warrant, were admitted by another resident of the trailer, Dennis Cabral, who said Gould was asleep in his bedroom. The officers entered and proceeded down the hall towards the bedroom Cabral had indicated. The bedroom door was open, but the officers did not see Gould, and they then conducted a brief protective sweep for him, looking under the bed and opening the door to each of the two bedroom closets, in one of which they saw in plain view, but did not then seize, three rifles. They promptly then ran outside and later found Gould hiding in the woods. In subsequent questioning Gould stated he was keeping the rifles for their owner, a female acquaintance. Gould was then arrested, executed a consent to search, and the rifles were then seized.

Straightforward, no? The cops caught a known violent felon with some guns who had threatened to kill some judges. Score one for the good guys, right? Letting this guy go would have, once again, proven that the courts are "soft on crime," but they did the right thing and now this asshole is behind bars where he ought to be. Right?

The decision goes on some 32 pages, citing case after case of precedent before concluding:

We hold that a protective sweep as authorized by Buie (Maryland v. Buie (1990)) need not always be incident to an arrest. The district court erred in holding otherwise. Applying the standards and limitations articulated in Buie and the general reasonableness criteria of the Fourth Amendment, we conclude that the protective sweep here was valid. The district court’s suppression order is accordingly REVERSED.

This was not a unanimous decision, obviously. No, it was 11-4. There are 30 pages of dissent, and Justice DeMoss's (who was joined by Justice Smith) is the most eloquent and detailed. It starts at page 44 of the opinion, and I strongly recommend that everyone interested in individual right read the whole thing to see the mechanism of incrementalism thoughtfully dissected. Excerpts:

This case presents the difficult issues of: (1) whether the protective sweep exception defined by the Supreme Court in Maryland v. Buie, 494 U.S. 325 (1990), is limited to situations involving the execution of an arrest warrant as we held in United States v. Wilson, 36 F.3d 1298 (5th Cir. 1994); and if not (2) whether the search in this case was reasonable. In addressing these two issues, I think the majority makes three significant errors. First, the majority’s starting point in its Fourth Amendment analysis concerning a warrantless search of a home is faulty and therefore the majority does not fully account for the lack of consent in this case. Second, the majority’s reliance on the so-called "clearly" legitimate "knock and talk" police investigatory tactic is misplaced and therefore the majority’s holding leads to an end-run around the Fourth Amendment’s protections. Third, the majority has misconstrued the holding of the Supreme Court in Buie. I will address these three errors in order.

I.

The Fourth Amendment provides: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

U.S. Const. amend. IV. Further, "[i]t is a 'basic principle of Fourth Amendment law' that searches and seizures inside a homewithout a warrant are presumptively unreasonable." Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 586 (1980) (citing Coolidge v. New Hampshire, 403 U.S. 443, 477-78 (1971)). Additionally, the "physical entry of the home is the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed." United States v. United States District Court, 407 U.S. 297, 313 (1972). Accordingly, our law dictates that unless some exception applies, the search at issue in this case, a warrantless nonconsensual search of Kelly Gould’s bedroom in his home, must be found unconstitutional.

Justice DeMoss goes on for a while documenting his position in detail. On to error number two:

In satisfying its first requirement of this newly created exception to the protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment, i.e., that the officers were legally present in the mobile home, the majority relies on the "knock and talk" police investigatory tactic mentioned in United States v. Jones, 239 F.3d 716, 720 (5th Cir. 2001). The majority refers to this practice as being "clearly... recognized as legitimate." The "knock and talk" tactic is hardly well-established law. The Fifth Circuit case establishing the concept of "knock and talk" merely states that "[t]his investigative tactic is not inherently unreasonable." Jones, 239 F.3d at 720.

Use of the "knock and talk" tactic may be reasonable in some cases, e.g., police may follow-up on a lead and approach a citizen, seeking the citizen's cooperation. In this case, however, the officers conducted an intrusive search of a bedroom with neither consent, nor search warrant, nor arrest warrant, nor any exigent circumstances. The majority has created an exception that permits an officer to ask for permission to enter a home from a third party who may have authority to consent to only part of the home but not all of the home and then immediately contend that he, the officer, is so apprehensive about his own safety that he must conduct a protective sweep of areas where he has no consent to be, when the officer had no obligation or duty to enter the home in the first place. This new exception is really a "knock, enter, maybe talk, and search" police investigatory tactic, all conducted without a warrant, and resulting in an end-run around the protections afforded by the Fourth Amendment.

In addition, the majority has not stated why their new exception is necessary or why we should not find that the officers created a situation that resulted in a Fourth Amendment violation when they in fact had many other permissible ways to pursue their investigation, i.e., seeking a search warrant based on the informant's tip. The majority does address the issue of exigent circumstances that can sometimes make a warrantless search permissible. This search, however, as the majority agrees, is not based on any exigency.

Again, justice DeMoss goes on to make his case eloquently. Finally, error number three:

We decided to review en banc the Gould case to determine: (1) whether the rule established in Wilson that a protective sweep of a home was limited to an arrest situation, as defined by the Supreme Court in Buie, was correct; and (2) if the protective sweep exception to the search warrant requirement is not limited as Wilson and Buie indicate, whether the warrantless search of Gould's bedroom was reasonable.

The majority characterizes the rule outlined in Wilson as a "bright-line" rule; Wilson, however, directly follows the precise language used by the Supreme Court in its definition of the protective sweep exception in Buie. The protective sweep exception as outlined in Buie requires the following three elements. First, the officers must be executing an arrest warrant in a suspect’s home. See generally Buie, 494 U.S. 325 (mentioning over 65 times the concept of arrest in a home when defining a protective sweep). Second, the officers must perceive some danger from another person or persons. Id. at 332-36 (indicating that not every in-home arrest will justify a protective sweep and listing several factors that are used to validate the reasonableness of the perceived danger, such as the nature of the crime for which the arrest is being executed, the likely presence of cohorts, and the time and place of arrest). Third, the search may only be a quick and limited cursory inspection of those places another person might be hiding. Id. at 335-36. Here, the majority has ignored the first two elements and only addressed the third. (Which in my reading of many cases tends to be true. That and the - sometimes apparently deliberate - misreading of cases used as precedent.)

Of course, there is good reason for the limited definition as outlined in Buie and tracked by this Court in Wilson. Such a definition avoids the quagmire that the majority finds itself in after rejecting the language in Buie and Wilson. The majority is forced to fashion a new exception with alternative elements that are vague; and as such the new exception swallows the rule that a warrant is generally required for an in-home search.

--

(T)he element that the officers must be executing an arrest warrant in a home in order to conduct a protective sweep cannot be so easily disposed of and an alternative substituted for it. As the Buie court noted:

The risk of danger in the context of an arrest in the home is as great as, if not greater than, it is in an on the-street or roadside investigatory encounter.... A protective sweep... occurs as an adjunct to the serious step of taking a person into custody for the purpose of prosecuting him for a crime. Moreover, unlike an encounter on the street or along a highway, an in-home arrest puts the officer at the disadvantage of being on his adversary’s "turf."

In place of this element the majority substitutes the following element: the police presence in the home must be for a legitimate law enforcement purpose. The majority's element is an inadequate substitution. There are many legitimate law enforcement purposes that may permit officers to do something short of conducting a warrantless search, e.g., enter a home for the purpose of talking to the person who gave the officers consent and had authority to consent to the entry. Such a legitimate purpose does not somehow give the officer carte blanche to then search the house. In the protective sweep situation, as defined by Buie, the officers must have more than a legitimate purpose to be in the home, the officers must have a compelling reason, i.e., be in the house under the obligation to execute an arrest warrant. This requirement is, in fact, the essence of the Buie holding and this requirement is a limiting factor on the officers’ conduct that is missing from the majority's opinion.

So, once again we have an example of what 9th Circuit Justice Alex Kozinski described in his dissent to the decision not to rehear Silveira v. Lockyer:

Judges know very well how to read the Constitution broadly when they are sympathetic to the right being asserted. We have held, without much ado, that "speech, or . . . the press" also means the Internet...and that "persons, houses, papers, and effects" also means public telephone booths....When a particular right comports especially well with our notions of good social policy, we build magnificent legal edifices on elliptical constitutional phrases - or even the white spaces between lines of constitutional text. But, as the panel amply demonstrates, when we’re none too keen on a particular constitutional guarantee, we can be equally ingenious in burying language that is incontrovertibly there.

They're obviously able to do the same thing with prior case law, as well.

But here's the kicker in the dissent that really got my attention:

Finally, in my view this case should have never been prosecuted in federal court. The original criminal conduct which precipitated the arrest was strictly local in nature: one Louisiana resident (Forehand) reported to the sheriff of one Louisiana parish (and not to the FBI, the DEA, the ATF, or the U.S. Marshall Service) that another Louisiana resident (Gould) had made oral threats to kill two Louisiana judges (not federal judges) and some other Louisiana residents (not residents of another state) apparently because of a proceeding of some sort in a Louisiana court (not a federal court) relating to a state law claim (not a federal question). If the admonitions in United States v. Lopez, 514 U.S. 549 (1995) and United States v. Morrison, 529 U.S. 598 (2000) about drawing a line between local and national interests have any meaning at all, then this criminal investigation would have undoubtedly fallen on the local side of the line. All of the law enforcement actors in this case were state officers.

Furthermore, I think it would be ridiculous to conclude that the firearms found as a result of a warrantless search in Gould’s closets in Gould’s bedroom in Gould’s trailer home in the woods of rural Louisiana had any effect whatsoever, much less a substantial effect, on interstate commerce as Lopez and Morrison require for a federal prosecution.

The events which precipitated this case occurred on October 17, 2000. The federal indictment in this case was not handed down until August 9, 2001, more than 9 months later, which clearly indicates that the federal indictment was an afterthought.

--

...I would suggest that the following conclusions should be readily drawn:

A.

The dismissal on March 5, 2001, of the state solicitation for murder charge for "no probable cause" pulls the rug out from under the government’s assertion that Gould’s "threats to kill" were sufficiently real and immediate to justify talking with him even without any warrant; and

B.

The decision of the state court on July 25, 2001, to grant Gould's motion to suppress pulls the rug out from under the subsequent federal indictment based on identical facts; and should have been disclosed to the federal district court addressing the federal suppression hearing. Had it been, the federal district court might well have based its decision on the alternate ground that the state had already ruled the seizure of the firearms was unconstitutional.

In summary, the Fourth Amendment is the keystone that holds up the arch of our Bill of Rights which in turn is the unique contribution of our founding fathers to our system of government which has now survived longer than any other representative government in the world. In his famous dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Justice Brandeis called privacy - which he defined as: "the right to be let alone" - "the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men." Justice Brandeis argued that the framers knew that Americans wanted protection from governmental intrusion not only for their property, but also for their thoughts, ideas and emotions. Take away the Fourth Amendment and the right of privacy disappears.

The deputy sheriffs here in Gould made no attempt to develop a sworn affidavit in writing from the purported informant, Forehand, and they therefore made no attempt to get either a search warrant or an arrest warrant from an independent third party magistrate on the basis of probable cause. I have no doubt that the deputy sheriffs believed that they were acting reasonably and with good intentions. But the old adage warns us that "the road to hell is paved with good intentions." In my judgment, that is precisely where the majority opinion wants to put us - by unhooking the "protective sweep" from its connection with the execution of an arrest warrant in a home, which is where the Supreme Court framed the concept. In my view the gambit of getting permission to enter a citizen's home in order to talk to someone and then conducting a protective sweep search under the guise of sensing danger to the investigating officer will effectively eliminate the need for complying with the Fourth Amendment and at that point we will all be, literally and figuratively, on the road to hell.

It has been a continuous theme on this blog that I believe that, through a slow but steady incrementalist approach, we have been stripped of the rights we as individuals are supposed to have under the Constitution as it was originally framed. This is the "slippery slope" argument, perhaps now the "road to hell" argument, and it is not limited to just the right to arms. Decisions like this one are but larger blips on a radar screen that is completely fuzzy with the chaff of earlier, less alarming but prerequisite decisions. We've had over 200 years of case law to fold, twist, spindle and mutilate to get where we are today.

I cannot put it more plainly - our freedoms are disappearing, and they are doing so through the conscious and unconscious machinations of all three branches of government, and in the majority with "good intention" on the part of the lawmakers and the judges who interpret those laws. Justice Brandeis also said in Olmstead,

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

We are frogs in the pot, but the mechanism that turns up the heat is human nature - the desire for immediate safety and security, without regard to future effect. In this case, a known violent felon was found to be in possession of firearms after he allegedly threatened to kill. He's off the street, we're all safer. But we're all less free than we were on March 23.

In University of Texas Law professor Sanford Levinson's Yale Law Journal article The Embarrassing Second Amendment he wrote:

One would, of course, like to believe that the state, whether at the local or national level, presents no threat to important political values, including liberty. But our propensity to believe that this is the case may be little more than a sign of how truly different we are from our radical forbearers. I do not want to argue that the state is necessarily tyrannical; I am not an anarchist. But it seems foolhardy to assume that the armed state will necessarily be benevolent. The American political tradition is, for good or ill, based in large measure on a healthy mistrust of the state. The development of widespread suffrage and greater majoritarianism in our polity is itself no sure protection, at least within republican theory. The republican theory is predicated on the stark contrast between mere democracy, where people are motivated by selfish personal interest, and a republic, where civic virtue, both in common citizen and leadership, tames selfishness on behalf of the common good.

Yes, our Constitution was written by men with an inherent distrust of the State, and it was written as a mechanism to limit the power of the State in favor of the rights of individuals, but that mechanism has failed. As Professor Barnett puts it in the introduction to Restoring the Lost Constitution:

Had judges done their job, this book would not need to be written. Since adoption of the Constitution, courts have eliminated clause after clause that interfered with the exercise of government power.
--
Without these missing clauses, the general scheme of the Constitution has been radically altered, which is precisely why they all had to go. The Constitution that was actually enacted and formally amended creates islands of government powers in a sea of liberty. The judicially redacted constitution creates islands of liberty rights in a sea of governmental powers.

Captain Marlon Defillo of the NOPD tells us not to worry, the new police power to search without a warrant won't be misused. Trust us, we're from the government, and we're here to help you. If you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear. It's for your safety and security that we take another bit of your rights away. You're not responsible enough for them, anyway.

Let me conclude with another bit from Judge Kozinski's dissent in Silveira:

The prospect of tyranny may not grab the headlines the way vivid stories of gun crime routinely do. But few saw the Third Reich coming until it was too late. The Second Amendment is a doomsday provision, one designed for those exceptionally rare circumstances where all other rights have failed - where the government refuses to stand for reelection and silences those who protest; where courts have lost the courage to oppose, or can find no one to enforce their decrees. However improbable these contingencies may seem today, facing them unprepared is a mistake a free people get to make only once.

The courts long ago lost their "courage to oppose" if they ever really generally recognized their responsibility to. They've been aiding and abetting the expansion of government power at the expense of the Constitution since shortly after ratification, and if they can eventually no longer find anyone to enforce their decrees, it might be because of decisions like the 5th Circuit's Gould finding of last week. We are, as time goes on, less and less a free people, and we are less free because we allow our government to expand its power. We're too busy living our lives, and we're too human in our desire to be safe and secure. Freedom is dangerous. Freedom is risky. And freedom must be paid for, either through "eternal vigilance," as Jefferson warned, or through conflict, as Robert Heinlein wrote in his novel Starship Troopers,

As to liberty, the heroes who signed the great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is the least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost.

We've abandoned our vigilance. Our islands of liberty are constantly shrinking in the ever-rising sea of governmental powers. In Prof. Barnett's book there is supposedly a way to restore our "presumption of liberty" without armed conflict. I hope there is. Because without a way to reverse this trend peacefully, the only choices left to us are submission or armed revolt. I don't know yet if we've proceeded down the slope to the point of no return, and I don't think we can know until we get that empty feeling in the pits of our stomachs that free-fall induces.

But by then, the road to hell will have reached its destination.

| posted by Kevin at 11:02 AM PermaLink

 
AllahPundit Nails It

I might just have to add the Creator of Worlds to my blogroll.

His screamingly funny Dean photoshops were one thing, but this latest piece defines the Kerry campaign.

Which is why I believe the Dems are going to Torricelli us and run Hillary, instead.

| posted by Kevin at 6:31 PM PermaLink

 
France Raises its Terror Alert Level

(Just received via email):

France has elevated its Terror Alert Level from from Courez! (Run!) to Peau! (Hide!) as a result of explosives found buried under railroad tracks outside of Paris.

There are only two higher alert levels in the French system, Reddition! (Surrender!) and Collaborent! (Collaborate!).

| posted by Kevin at 5:49 PM PermaLink

 
Can Someone PLEASE Explain This to Me?

The mentality of women who go back to their abusers is absolutely beyond me. I have referenced the case of Riss v. New York before, in Part II of Is the Government Responsible for Your Protection? I'll repeat the pertinent portion of the story:

Linda Riss, an attractive young woman, was for more than six months terrorized by a rejected suitor well known to the courts of this State, one Burton Pugach. This miscreant, masquerading as a respectable attorney, repeatedly threatened to have Linda killed or maimed if she did not yield to him: "If I can't have you, no one else will have you, and when I get through with you, no one else will want you". In fear for her life, she went to those charged by law with the duty of preserving and safeguarding the lives of the citizens and residents of this State. Linda's repeated and almost pathetic pleas for aid were received with little more than indifference. Whatever help she was given was not commensurate with the identifiable danger. On June 14, 1959 Linda became engaged to another man. At a party held to celebrate the event, she received a phone call warning her that it was her "last chance". Completely distraught, she called the police, begging for help, but was refused. The next day Pugach carried out his dire threats in the very manner he had foretold by having a hired thug throw lye in Linda's face. Linda was blinded in one eye, lost a good portion of her vision in the other, and her face was permanently scarred. After the assault the authorities concluded that there was some basis for Linda's fears, and for the next three and one-half years, she was given around-the-clock protection.

Riss met Pugach in 1957, not knowing that he was already married. When she discovered he was married and broke off the relationship in 1959, Pugach promised reprisal. He carried out his threat. A thug threw lye in her face blinding her and disfiguring her face. Linda Riss sued the NYPD and the City of New York for failing to protect her, and lost. Burton Pugach was sentenced to 15 to 30 years in prison for the crime in 1962.

Guess what? When he got out of prison in 1974 they met, and eight months later she married him. (New York Times story, registration required. Use 'newslinks' for both user ID and password.)

But that's not all! Sometime prior to 1997 Pugach got a mistress, and apparently repeated his earlier behavior. He went to trial for threatening her the same way he threatened Linda Riss.

Pugach Calls Ex-Wife As Witness

A Queens man on trial for allegedly terrorizing his mistress is defending himself today by calling the wife he blinded in a similar feud 38 years ago as a witness, reports WCBS' Irene Cornell.

Burton Pugach , a 70-year-old ex-lawyer accused of terrorizing a former lover has rejected a deal to serve 60 days in jail and three years probation, choosing instead to become his own lawyer.

Pugach would face a one-year sentence if convicted on charges of aggravated harassment and sexual abuse.

According to the Associated Press, in 1959, Pugach, who was married to someone else, was convicted of hiring three thugs to throw lye in the face of girlfriend Linda Riss because she threatened to leave him. He served 14 years in prison. Then, after divorcing his first wife, he married Riss.

A disbarred Pugach then allegedly began a campaign of harassment when his 42-year-old girlfriend tried to end their five-year affair and started dating a younger man.

The woman has testified that Pugach threatened to hire someone to kill her.

Pugach Affair Still Getting Straightened Out

A jury in Queens today begins sorting out the case of Burton Pugach, charged with threatening a former girlfriend with death after she broke off their affair, reports WCBS' Irene Cornell.

The 70-year-old disbarred lawyer defended himself. His chief character witness was his wife Linda. In 1959, when he was a young attorney, Linda was the girlfriend who dumped him after discovering he was already married.

Pugach hired thugs to throw lye in her face, scarring and blinding her, but she married him after he got out of prison in 1974.

Now she says she's forgiven him for his affair. And she says the only reason he's been charged in this case is because of his past.

Gee, YA THINK???

What is it that makes some women behave this way? The New York Times piece, published March 21, 2004, says very little about that 1997 prosecution, but it does say this about their relationship:

Over the years, Mrs. Pugach credited a number of factors for her decision to marry the man responsible for blinding her: a Christian sense of forgiveness, the advice of a fortuneteller, her increasing belief that the police were to blame, the fear that another woman would scoop up Mr. Pugach. "One friend told me," she said, "that Burt could leave his shoes under her bed any night." But mostly, she cited her need to move forward. "If you're going to remain bitter and obsessed,'' she said, "it will destroy you."

Moving on, I understand. Forgiveness, I understand, a little. But marrying the man who blinded you? That, I don't understand, and never will.

| posted by Kevin at 8:45 PM PermaLink

 
Go Ahead, Rely on the Government for Your Protection

(I don't have time for this, but...)

Mr. Free Market reports on another case where doing that resulted in the unnecessary death of a citizen. Doing a little Googling, I found this report on the case:

This frail ex-soldier was killed minutes after dialling 999 - but the police failed to respond

Sandy Clark was in fear of his life from a criminal with a violent record, yet as Daniel Foggo reports, his call for help was given the lowest possible status

Police failed to respond to pleas for help from a disabled Army veteran who dialed 999 minutes before he was brutally murdered in his own home. The operator at West Mercia police who took the call decided no action was required, even though it was the third time that day that Alexander "Sandy" Clark had told officers of his fears about the man who killed him.

Mr Clark, 63, who lived alone in Worcester, told the operator that he was being pursued by a man who had already stolen from him and who had stated, in an angry telephone call, his intention to come to his home and confront him. Instead of help being sent, Mr Clark was told simply to keep his door shut and dial 999 again if the man materialised. The call was officially logged as having the lowest possible status.

About 20 minutes later, Mr Clark was brutally beaten to death by Martin Rauwley, a career criminal who was the subject of Mr Clark's frantic calls. Rauwley, 39, got into Mr Clark's home and savagely beat him with his own walking stick, stabbing him to death with the fragments of the stick when it broke. His body lay undiscovered for more than 24 hours.

Mr. Clark's assailant didn't need a (prohibited) firearm or a (prohibited) knife to kill Mr. Clark. But Mr. Clark was denied the only weapon with which a frail 63 year-old man might defend himself from a strong, healthy 39 year-old assailant.

Mr Clark's son Mark and daughter Andrée believe that the police decision effectively to ignore their father's call cost him his life.

There's more to it than just the police dispatcher's decision. It's a long, long chain of things. But remember, the State isn't responsible for protecting any specific individual, just the public at large.

Although Mr Clark died two years ago, full details of his attempts to get help before his death have now been released by his family. They did not emerge at the trial of Rauwley, who had a string of previous convictions for fraud and violence. He was jailed for life for Mr Clark's murder in October 2002.

On the day of his death, March 4, 2002, Mr Clark spoke to West Mercia police three times about his concerns about Rauwley. The two had met in a pub and become friendly, but two days earlier, Rauwley had stolen some of Mr Clark's military medals. Mr Clark dialed 999 on March 2 to report the theft and was subsequently visited by officers.

Mr Clark first called 999 on March 4 at 10.53am to relate that Rauwley had pushed a note through his letterbox saying he was looking for him. The police later rang Mr Clark back but since Rauwley had not appeared, no more was done.

That afternoon, however, Rauwley telephoned Mr Clark and they argued about the medals. At 4.29pm, Mr Clark called 999 again and had a conversation lasting several minutes. Finishing the call, the operator assessed it as "grade four", the lowest of the possible levels of response. It meant that the operator judged that no police presence was required. Mr Clark was on his own.

Within minutes, Rauwley had entered Mr Clark's home and was beating the former soldier to death in his bedroom. Mr Clark, who had served 22 years in the Signal Corps, was suffering from a severe form of spinal rheumatism, Parkinson's disease and a heart condition. He was no match for his then 37-year-old attacker.

Rauwley left having pocketed some more of his victim's possessions. CCTV footage later showed him walking along a nearby street at 5.10pm. Mr Clark's body lay undiscovered for more than 24 hours.

Boy, those CCTV cameras really prevent crime don't they?

Rauwley, a drug-taking career criminal with convictions for fraud and violence, was quickly caught and convicted.

When Mr Clark's family were told by the police of their father's 999 calls, Mark and Andrée asked to see the transcripts. They were allowed to view them at police headquarters on the understanding that they could take no copies. Andrée, 43, said: "Reading them I could tell dad was scared and Mark felt the same."

Apparently there's no Freedom of Information Act analog in the UK. Why am I not surprised?

The brother and sister engaged a solicitor, Stephen Lodge, who arranged for them to view the transcripts again. On this second viewing, however, they appeared different. "The second time we got no impression that he was frightened," said Mark, 39. "It was like there was something missing."

Penny Fishwick, a solicitor for West Mercia police, explained the discrepancy in a letter to the Clarks' solicitor. She said that after listening to the tapes with a colleague "I requested a few minor amendments with a view to improving the accuracy of the transcript.

Riiiiiight. I believe that.

Unsatisfied, Mark and Andrée asked for Mr Lodge to get access to the tapes of the 999 calls. This he was eventually allowed to do, but only after signing an undertaking not to let Mr Clark's family have access to them, to spare them the distress of hearing their father's voice in his final minutes. More mysterious, however, was an admission from the police that the beginning of the last, and crucial, call had disappeared.

That didn't work for Nixon, why do they think it'll work here?

In a letter to Mr Lodge dated August 14, 2003, Miss Fishwick said: "I have just listened to this [final] tape and noted that the first three lines of the conversation are missing. I am sorry about this but I doubt that the first three lines are in any way controversial."

But we'll never know, will we?

After hearing the tapes, Mr Lodge said that notwithstanding the missing beginning of the tape, the transcripts appeared accurate. He has since moved to another firm of solicitors and his replacement has stated that he sees no point in pursuing the police.

And there isn't. They cannot be held responsible, as I've previously made clear.

Mark and Andrée, however, are anything but satisfied. "Now I suspect we will never know the full story since a part of the tape had just disappeared, which we find extraordinary," said Andrée. "I believe this case raises issues over matters such as the police's response to calls from vulnerable people.

"We feel, however, that West Mercia's response has been arrogant. When we managed to get a meeting with a senior policeman he told us that all the policing would be done exactly the same given the same circumstances again."

Yet the UK government requires its subjects to depend on the government for their protection exclusively.

And they cannot seem to understand why the violent crime rate in Britain is higher than in the the U.S. or the rest of Europe.

"We would still like to sue," she said, "and I will be writing to the Police Complaints Authority to take this matter further. We will not let it drop."

A spokesman for West Mercia said last week: "Following the death of Mr Clark, the grading of his calls to the police was reviewed. That review showed that the manner in which these calls were graded was appropriate in the light of the circumstances of the time. No formal complaint has been received by the force."

Thanks for the pointer, Mr. Free Market.

And if the link works, read this article about the frustration of crime victims in England over the inability of the police to do anything effective. Read this one, too.

Now, back to work.

| posted by Kevin at 11:48 AM PermaLink

 
Which Would YOU Rather Have in a President?

(My one post for today, probably)

I've been watching the ongoing battle between President Bush and the putative Democrat nominee John Kerry, and I'm saddened but not surprised by the polling data that shows them in a statistical dead heat at this time. Dick Morris was on TV last night and made a pretty cogent point - this race is between two issues, not two people. The issues are the war on terrorism, and jobs. People who believe the war on terrorism is most important will vote for George Bush. Among the Undecided Middle, people who think jobs are more important (regardless of the rebounding economy, low unemployment rate, et. al) will probably vote for John Kerry.

But for me, those two issues are beside the point. I am more in agreement with Dubya than I would ever be with Kerry, but then I don't really know where Kerry stands. Apparently nobody does. His positions seem more like probabilistic clouds, ruled by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle - you can't know where he stands, and the act of trying to determine his position affects his position. I want someone in office I can trust, with positions I understand - even if I may disagree with some of his positions on some issues. Kerry never met an issue he couldn't waffle on. Bush says what he means, and does what he says - a political tactic that seems to have thrown the political analysts here and in other nations for a loop. Bush has said he doesn't do nuance.

Which reminded me of this article I found in the Sacramento Bee a while back that is still active. It's from May 27, 2003, and it has the single most illustrative quote I have ever seen defining the difference between President Bush and other politicians - most especially John Kerry:

"What is a little disconcerting for the French is an American president who seems to be principled," said Jean Duchesne, an English literature professor at Condorcet College in Paris. "The idea that politics should be based on principles is unimaginable because principles lead to ideology, and ideology is dangerous."

There's your choice in black and white. Do you want a President with principles, or do you want John Kerry?

Of course, there's still time for Kerry's campaign to implode before the convention. Then the Democrats could pull a Torricelli and nominate Hillary. But the choice would still be the same.

| posted by Kevin at 7:23 AM PermaLink

 
No Time to Post Here, But...

Instead I engaged in a short exchange with a commenter to a thread over at Dean Esmay's:

Stu:

If you're a young, urban, black American male you have a very high chance of being murdered. If you're a young, urban, hispanic American male, your chances are lower, but still quite high.

If you do not fit either of those demographics, your chances of being murdered are about the same as the average Canadian's. Perhaps lower, because young, urban black males in America die of homicide at six times the rate of the rest of our population.

In comparing the US and England, the homicide rate ratio between the two countries has always been in excess of 5:1 - even when neither nation had any gun control whatsoever. I believe the ratio is currently just under 4:1, but I cannot be sure of that at the moment.

And finally, "'The reality is that banning guns does not keep guns out of the hands of criminals;' The logic of that statement completely eludes me. The primary source of illegal guns is theft from legal gun owners. So eliminate ALL of the guns, and criminals have a much more difficult time accessing them."

England has tried that. It made possession of all handguns illegal in 1996. All 156,000 legally-owned handguns (Actually, I think it was 163,000) were turned in, along with 750,000 rounds of legally possessed ammunition. Handgun crime has gone UP every year since. England recently had a "firearm amnesty" where people could turn in illegal weapons, no questions asked. The collected almost 200,000 firearms and over a million rounds of ammo - but in the violence-ridden areas of London and Manchester there was almost no response.

Banning guns makes it more difficult for criminals to acquire them, but it does not make it effectively difficult, as England demonstrates.

It is not physically possible to "ELIMINATE ALL OF THE GUNS" - and since violent criminals represent somewhere around 1% of a population, it doesn't require very many guns to service that population. And they will be served - the first rule of economics is that demand will be met with supply.

Banning guns ignores these simple and obvious facts. And all it does is disarm the people you DON'T need to worry about. The inability to see this logic is what eludes me.


Posted by Kevin Baker on March 25, 2004 at 11:39 AM

Kevin: "If you're a young, urban, black American male you have a very high chance of being murdered. If you're a young, urban, hispanic American male, your chances are lower, but still quite high."

Chopping up demographics in this way is what I meant when I said "tortured statistics". Unless you're saying that this group doesn't count, or something.

Kevin: "In comparing the US and England, the homicide rate ratio between the two countries has always been in excess of 5:1 - even when neither nation had any gun control whatsoever. I believe the ratio is currently just under 4:1, but I cannot be sure of that at the moment."

Britain has had what would be considered to be tight gun control (in comparison to the US) since 1920. And the overall homicide rate ratio is 10:1

Kevin: "England has tried that. It made possession of all handguns illegal in 1996. All 156,000 legally-owned handguns were turned in, along with 750,000 rounds of legally possessed ammunition. Handgun crime has gone UP every year since."

And the homicide rate?


Posted by Stu on March 25, 2004 at 12:09 PM

Stu:

That's not "chopping up demographics" or "tortured statistics" - it's explaining that homicide is not homogenous throughout a society. Handgun ownership, for instance, is largely concentrated in the white male population, but homicide is heavily concentrated in the young, black, urban male population. You are attempting to make the case that "more guns = more homicide" yet that conclusion cannot be logically drawn given the facts. In the United States approximately 1 million handguns and two million long guns are added to the private market each year, yet we've had ten or more years of declining homicide rates.

Homicide in England has trended - slightly - UP since the handgun ban. The proportion of homicides committed with handguns has gone UP since the ban.

This suggests that guns are not the cause of homicide, yet gun bans treat them as though they are.

"Britain has had what would be considered to be tight gun control (in comparison to the US) since 1920. And the overall homicide rate ratio is 10:1" That is incorrect. The U.S. homicide rate in 2000 was 5.64/100,000. England & Wales had a rate of 1.61/100,000, for a ratio of 3.5:1. The firearm homicide ratio is 10:1. What you consider to be "tight" gun control may differ somewhat from mine.

Dean's comment section is not an appropriate place to hold this discussion IMHO. I have a blog that I set up specifically for discussions of this type. Would you be interested in debating this topic with me there?


Posted by Kevin Baker on March 25, 2004 at 1:39 PM

"Dean's comment section is not an appropriate place to hold this discussion IMHO."

I disagree. This is what the comments section is for.

Why did you just post the homicide rate for England and Wales, and not include those of Scotland and NI? Even so, what would attribute the higher homicide rate in America to?

Posted by Stu on March 25, 2004 at 1:57 PM

Stu:

It's inappropriate because it's his bandwidth, and it's an awkward place to make extended points - which a discussion of this type requires.

I excluded Scotland and Northern Ireland because they are not normally included in the general comparison between the U.S. and what most people here think of when you say "Britain." If you average England & Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the rate is about 2.25/100,000. Both Scotland and Northern Ireland have higher homicide rates than England & Wales. That would bring the ratio down to about 2.5:1.

Homicide is a largely cultural thing, but it is exacerbated by the illicit drug trade and consumption of mind-altering substances, both of which are concentrated in specific demographics in both the U.S, the UK, and Canada. The culture of the U.S. is still relatively young compared to Europe, and it is historically violent. Europeans seemed to prefer engaging in killing wholesale (with war after war after war) we tend to do it retail. Canada seems to be more European in nature.


Posted by Kevin Baker on March 25, 2004 at 2:15 PM

I guess that means he won't debate me over at The Fabulous Baker Boys. Too bad. That would have been fun.

| posted by Kevin at 7:25 PM PermaLink

 
Citizen Smash Interviews One of Stalin's "Useful Idiots"

I have no idea how he kept from throttling her, but if you haven't read it already, go now.

These are the people our public school systems are producing.

And Time magazine has the temerity to suggest that homeschooled kids aren't good citizens?

| posted by Kevin at 9:22 PM PermaLink

 
The Next Time Someone Tells You that Self-Defense isn't Illegal in the UK,

(for all intents and purposes,) show them this:

Man Who Killed Armed Intruder Jailed Eight Years

A man who stabbed to death an armed intruder at his home was jailed for eight years today.

Carl Lindsay, 25, answered a knock at his door in Salford, Greater Manchester, to find four men armed with a gun.

When the gang tried to rob him he grabbed a samurai sword and stabbed one of them, 37-year-old Stephen Swindells, four times.

Mr Swindells, of Salford, was later found collapsed in an alley and died in hospital.

Lindsay, of Walkden, was found guilty of manslaughter following a three-week trial at Manchester Crown Court.

He was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment.

After the case, Detective Chief Inspector Sam Haworth said: “Four men, including the victim, had set out purposefully to rob Carl Lindsay and this intent ultimately led to Stephen Swindells’ death.

“I believe the sentences passed today reflect the severity of the circumstances.”

Three other men were charged with robbery and firearms offences in connection with the incident, which took place in February last year.

Manslaughter. For bringing a sword to a gunfight.

Excuse me, Chief Inspector Haworth, but the victim here was Carl Lindsay, and the other three men should be in jail for homicide in the death of their accomplice. Mr. Lindsay should have received a hearty pat on the back for ridding society of a violent perpetrator.

UPDATE - 3/24/04: Reader Ben D comments:

Just a quick note-there is a follow up story on Moorewatch stating that this may actually have been a drug buy gone bad. The man wielding the sword was apparently a dealer. Not that he should be punished for defending himself (especially not for defending himself with a sword-way to go!), but there may be more nuances here.

I responded:

However, were you a reader of this story - provided without nuance - would you not draw the conclusion that defending yourself against attack is legally risky?

That's my point - the general public in the UK is actively discouraged from self-defense, in fear of prosecution.

"You can't protect yourself! You're not qualified!"

(Added to the original post because comments tend to eventually disappear.)

| posted by Kevin at 8:51 PM PermaLink

 
Dept. of Our Collapsing Schools - Homeschooling Starts to Hurt

This month's Time magazine has a three-page cover article on homeschooling entitled Seceding from School. It makes a passing attempt at "fairness," with comments and quotations from both sides of the issue, but (IMHO) it leans towards public schooling with a near declaration that parents who homeschool are being elitist and shirking their civic duty by not making their children suffer through the same educational morass that less fortunate families cannot escape.

Thomas Jefferson and the other early American crusaders for public education believed the schools would help sustain democracy by bringing everyone together to share values and learn a common history. In the little red brick schoolhouse, we would pursue both "democracy in education and education in democracy," as Stanford historian David Tyack gracefully puts it. Home schooling forsakes all that by defining education not as the pursuit of an entire community but as the work of one family and its chosen circle. Which can be great. Despite some drawbacks, there are signs that home-schooling parents are doing a better job than public schools at teaching their kids. But as the number of kids learning at home grows, we should pause to wonder: Better at teaching them what? Home schooling may turn out better students, but does it create better citizens?

That's the fourth paragraph of the article.

That last sentence left my mouth agape.

I think that if Jefferson saw what passed for "education" in many if not most of today's public schools, he'd be in favor of burning the existing "system" to the ground and starting over.

My stepdaughter graduated from high school in 1997. Her knowledge of American history, civics, and even geography is essentially nil. When the movie Pearl Harbor came out, I asked her if she knew what Pearl Harbor was. No clue.

She is hardly an exception to the rule.

Perhaps we should look to what the author might mean by "better citizens," then. Founding Father Thomas Paine (whom my daughter has never studied) said "Reason and Ignorance, the opposites of each other, influence the great bulk of mankind. If either of these can be rendered sufficiently extensive in a country, the machinery of Government goes easily on. Reason obeys itself; and Ignorance submits to whatever is dictated to it."

Connie du Toit once wrote

The other day our Carpenter's helper heard me say something along the lines of, "it is difficult to conclude that incompetence is the reason why our public schools have deteriorated. There comes a point where you have to suspect sabotage, or a conspiracy."

He asked me if I really meant that. I gave him the five minute explanation of John Dewey's known affiliation with communists, his frequent essays and articles about the wonders of the Soviet education system, and his quote, "You can't make Socialists out of individualists. Children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming where everyone is interdependent."

I then went on to tell him about how public schools changed at the turn of the last century. That there were others involved in turning Americans from free-thinking individualists to factory drones. I also added that many people probably went along with it because it seemed like a good idea, but there were certainly enough people behind the scenes, who knew that the goal posts had been moved. THAT is a conspiracy.

Yes. There does come that time when you are forced to don the tinfoil hat.

The incompetence excuse only works once. Incompetence this great is impossible to attribute to accident.

Count me in the tinfoil-hat brigade. Especially when I see peices like this Time one suggesting that it's our civic duty to indoctrinate our children and make them better citizens.

In my opinion, the homeschooled are far more likely to be reasoning, free-thinking individualists, and that means better AMERICAN citizens - the kind willing to make decisions unpopular with the UN.

The Time article continues:

To see how home schooling threatens public schools, look at Maricopa County, Ariz. The county has approximately 7,000 home-schooled students. That's only 1.4% of school-age kids, but it means $35 million less for the county in per-pupil funding. The state of Florida has 41,128 children (1.7%) learning at home this year, up from 10,039 in the 1991-92 school year; those kids represent a loss of nearly $130 million from school budgets in that state. Of course the schools have fewer children to teach, so it makes sense that they wouldn't get as much money, but the districts lose much more than cash. "Home schooling is a social threat to public education," says Chris Lubienski, who teaches at Iowa State University's college of education. "It is taking some of the most affluent and articulate parents out of the system. These are the parents who know how to get things done with administrators."

Get things done? Like what? They seem to be completely unable to alter curricula so that the kids get an actual education.

I've said before that my sister is a teacher, so I have a little bit of insight into just who has the ability to 'get things done with administrators.' It's the ones who threaten lawsuits for not advancing little Johnny to the next grade, even though he's illiterate, because not doing so will "hurt his self-esteem." People are pulling their kids out of public schools because they can't affect the system - it's far too ingrained at this point. The Titanic doesn't take course corrections any longer, even though it's obvious the iceberg is dead ahead.

Look at this example of supposed balance in the Time story:

Despite its growing acceptance, there are nagging shortcomings to home schooling. If you spend time with home schoolers, you get a sense that some of them have missed out on whole swaths of childhood; the admirable efforts by their parents to ensure their education and safety sometimes seem to have gone too far. In 1992 psychotherapist Larry Shyers did a study while at the University of Florida in which he closely examined the behavior of 35 home schoolers and 35 public schoolers. He found that home schoolers were generally more patient and less competitive. They tended to introduce themselves to one another more; they didn't fight as much. And the home schoolers were much more prone to exchange addresses and phone numbers. In short, they behaved like miniature adults.

Which is great, unless you believe that kids should be kids before they are adults. John McCallum, 20, of Wheaton, Ill., began learning at home after fourth grade. On the whole, he valued the experience. But if he could change anything about his teen years, he would want more interaction with people his age. "I don't date, and that's something I attribute to home schooling," he says. Or consider Rachel Ahern, 21, of Grand Junction, Colo., who never set foot in a classroom until she went to Harvard at 18. As a child, she socialized with older kids and adults at church and in music classes at a nearby college. "I never once experienced peer pressure," she says. But is that a good thing? Megan Wallace of Atlanta says if she had gone to high school, "I would have gotten into so much trouble." One could argue that kids need to get into a certain amount of trouble to learn how to handle temptations and their consequences."

They're complaining that homeschooled kids aren't little hooligans. One "could argue that kids need to get into a certain amount of trouble" but I'm not one of them. I prefer to let them mature and see the errors that they missed. I think that eighteen year-old mature adults are, by definition, good citizens, and something to strive for.

We used to get them out of the public school system, not all that long ago.

(Homework assignment: Read Francis Porretto's most recent piece, The Assault on Accuracy for more illustration of the collapse of our schools.)

UPDATE, 3/24/04: Chris O'Donnell of O'DonnellWeb points out that this Time piece is actually a couple years old. I don't know where I first ran across it, but I assumed it was current. All the better, as homeschooling has had a couple more years to irritate the Statists.

| posted by Kevin at 7:37 PM PermaLink

 
Blogging will be Reduced

My apologies. I am absolutely overwhelmed with work, and I will be limited to posting (if at all) in the evenings. Bummer. I have about seven weeks until my one-year blogoversary, and I was really hoping to have 100,000 hits on Sitemeter on or about that date, but lack of posting tends to drop my readership numbers.

Thank you for visiting, and remember the archives off there to the left for your reading enjoyment.

| posted by Kevin at 6:29 PM PermaLink

 
1975 in Washington, D.C. vs. 2004 in Canton, Ohio

This is an odd coincidence.

Quite a while back, shortly after I started this blog, I posted "Is the Government Responsible for Your Protection," a two-part essay on one reason there is a right to arms. In Part I I used the transcript of the 1981 D.C. Court of Apeals en banc decision of Warren v. District of Columbia in which Carolyn Warren, Miriam Douglas, and Joan Taliaferro sued the District of Columbia for failing to protect them from a pair of rapists, even after they had called the police and the police had come to the home. If you've not read it before, I strongly recommend you do.

These women lived in the District in 1975, a short while before D.C. passed its draconian firearms restrictions, but in any case none of them were armed, and they depended on the State for their protection.

Skip forward twenty-nine years, nearly to the day, and shift your coordinates to Canton, Ohio. Clayton Cramer's Civilian Gun Self-Defense Page posts from the Akron Beacon-Journal the following story that I will copy shamelessly:

Man shot to death in Canton

The first time Carolyn Warren called police, she wanted to be rescued from a man she said was trying to break in her door.

Three minutes later, she called back to say the man was in her apartment, but she didn't need to be rescued anymore.

The man was shot dead.

Kenneth G. Riggs, 38, died about 12:30 a.m. Thursday (March 11, 2004) of a gunshot wound to the head. He was shot inside Warren's apartment on Mahoning Road Northeast, less than a block from his home.

Canton Police Lt. Tom Thomas said the two women in the apartment knew Riggs, but he declined to describe their relationship. Police say the shooter is a 31-year-old woman, who Thomas said was identified in the 911 call as Warren's daughter.

The mother apparently made the calls and the daughter allegedly fired a .22 rifle at Riggs twice after he forced his way into the apartment.

Police did not arrest the woman. Thomas said information from the shooting investigation will be turned over to the Stark County prosecutor.

A telephone number listed for Warren was out of order Thursday.

Riggs, who lived in the 2600 block of Mahoning Road Northeast, had a history of arrests in Stark County that stretched back to the late 1980s. Court records include a one-year prison sentence for illegal possession of a firearm and using a weapon while intoxicated. The records also list multiple arrests on charges of assault, aggravated burglary, menacing, drug abuse and violating a protection order.

Is it the same Carolyn Warren? Her daughter would have been born in 1973, two years before the attack in D.C, so I think it's highly doubtful. But notice the stark difference between the two cases - one in which there was a .22 rifle and someone who knew how to use it, and one in which the victims were unarmed.

The name coincidence was just too weird not to comment on.

| posted by Kevin at 3:23 PM PermaLink

 
Tilting at Windmills

But I honor them for it.

Dan of Jackalope Pursuivant emailed me a link to a post at The England Project. It seems that America's Citizens Committe for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) has opened an office in London:

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (CCRKBA) today announced that it is opening an office in London, and joining with embattled British citizens in their fight to restore their firearms rights.


It is the first time an American firearm civil rights organization has opened an office on foreign soil. CCRKBA Chairman Alan M. Gottlieb has appointed veteran Conservative Party activist Greg Smith as the organization's European representative.


"British citizens and gun owners from other European countries will be funding this effort," Gottlieb said. "Just as with America's war against international terrorism, we are taking the fight against international gun control to our enemies. With the attack on gun rights becoming global, it is important to fight these battles on every continent before we find ourselves isolated from an important human civil right.


"Extremist gun control measures have disarmed the British people," Gottlieb continued, "leaving them vulnerable to criminal assault. Incredibly, if they do defend themselves, they can be prosecuted and imprisoned. Since the United Kingdom banned privately owned handguns in 1997, gun crime has nearly doubled. What more appropriate place for the Citizens Committee to be than in the middle of this battleground, offering whatever help we can to British citizens in their efforts to take back their neighborhoods and make their communities safe once again?"

There's more to read in the press release.

Other than outraging some members of Parliament and a bunch of panty-wetting gun haters, I don't see the London CCRKBA office accomplishing much from a legislative standpoint, but hats off to them for at least making the effort.

| posted by Kevin at 12:01 PM PermaLink

 
Tyranny and Its Fringes, Part VIII

Francis Porretto has Part VIII of his essay "Tyranny and Its Fringes" up. If you've not read any of it before, here are the links to the previous pieces:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

Part VII

| posted by Kevin at 10:05 AM PermaLink

 
Another of Those Rarities - A News Report of a DGU With No Shots Fired!

This time from Oakland, Michigan:

Woman's gun may have saved her life

Web-posted Mar 20, 2004


By STEPHEN FRYE
Of The Daily Oakland Press

Four years ago, she was helpless as a man robbed her at gunpoint. On Friday, legally armed with a handgun, she may have saved her life.

And Farmington Hills Police Chief William Dwyer, who dreaded a change in the law in 2001 to make it easier to receive a concealed weapons permit, admits that he's changing his mind about that law.

Yes, after the predicted "blood in the streets" and "Dodge City Shootouts" that never occur, then law-enforcement begins to re-think their opposition.

Why they can't study the other states and draw a similar conclusion prior to CCW passage is beyond me.

Dwyer said the woman could easily have been killed after she was targeted by a couple looking for an easy score. They were waiting at 6:30 a.m. outside an office building at the southeast corner of 12 Mile and Drake roads.

Angela, a married mother of two, was arriving at the office where she has worked for six years. She asked that her last name and hometown not be made public.

She saw a car in the lot that she did not recognize, with two people inside, putting her on her guard. When she left her car, a man got out of that car and walked toward her.

He passed the entrance to the building and continued toward her. The man came within 10 feet of her, and she knew she had to act.

"I didn't get a chance to get in the office," she said. "He had his hands in his pocket with his hood pulled up. I opened my purse and pulled my gun out.

"I felt my life was in trouble. The first instinct was to pull out my gun."

The man turned tail and walked away, and the car pulled up to him near the roadway. He jumped in and they drove off.

No shots were fired.

And THAT's how it's done.

Except in some jurisdictions Angela would be charged with "Brandishing," because they don't allow their proles to carry in self-defense, and doing so is an affront to the State.

Good thing her workplace doesn't have a "no guns allowed" policy, isn't it? Or does it? Does she now face dismissal from the job she's held for six years because she carries a firearm to work? But like Tracey Warner said, "Sometimes you do what you have to do."

Dwyer said there was "no question" she was in trouble.

"She took the appropriate action," Dwyer said. "She probably saved her life. She is a very fortunate young lady. (Also) she did an excellent job as far as giving a description of the vehicle and the suspect. She's a very courageous young lady."

Her calm demeanor and quick thinking - she called police from her cell phone immediately after the suspect drove off - led police to the man and his female accomplice within a minute of the robbery attempt, Dwyer said.

He said the couple - a 21-year-old man and a 28-year-old woman from Detroit - would be charged with conspiracy to commit armed robbery.

Police confiscated a loaded 9 mm handgun from the couple's car. The man has several outstanding warrants and the woman was convicted for receiving stolen property.

Later Friday, Dwyer said a 28-year-old Southfield woman who knows Angela had been arrested for setting up her robbery.

Police are seeking a fourth suspect.

Dwyer, who as head of the state's police chief's association opposed the change in state law that made it easier for residents without criminal backgrounds to carry guns, acknowledges that the law has saved at least one person.

"I always said the CCW (Carrying a Concealed Weapon permit) legislation is somewhat controversial," he said. "I'm certainly rethinking it."

Perhaps because the ratio of people using guns in self-defense vs. those accidentally shooting people is so tremendously high? Remember, the argument against CCW is always that "more guns on the street" means "more wrongful injuries and death."

He credited her for taking the appropriate training and, equally important, using common sense.

"I'm just a woman," Angela said. "You hear about things like this. I didn't want to be a victim again."

Yes, Angela is "just a woman" - who didn't have her gun taken away and used against her as we are repeatedly told will happen.

Good for you Angela.

It's amazing, actually, that I've found two stories in less than a week in which handguns were used defensively and nobody got shot! Usually, unless someone bleeds it never makes print. Actually, unless someone dies it hardly ever makes print, when it comes to defensive gun useage.

UPDATE: 3/21/04 - From Clayton Cramer's Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog comes this typical example of how defensive gun useages are covered in the local media, the same story related above as "reported" by ClickOnDetroit.com

Woman Stops Robbery With Own Gun

Farmington Hills Office Robbers Surprised

POSTED: 4:17 pm EST March 19, 2004

A woman in Farmington Hills stopped a robbery Friday with a concealed weapon she was carrying.

Police tell Local 4 the woman was entering an office building around 6:30 a.m. when two men confronted her. She reportedly pulled the gun and called 911. Police responded and arrested the two men.

The woman has a concealed weapons permit for the gun.

That's it. No blood = no story.

| posted by Kevin at 9:11 AM PermaLink

 
I See One of These Uppers In My Future

The "26 Grendel" - a 6.5mm round for the AR-15 style rifle.

Watch the video. (Windows Media file)

Pushes a 120 grain 6.5mm round out to a realistic 1,000 yards.

Sounds interesting!

| posted by Kevin at 8:04 PM PermaLink

 
More on "Guns for Me, but Not For Thee"

Clayton Cramer reports (as did an anonymous commenter) that Ft. Wayne, Indiana Journal-Gazette editor Tracey Warner wrote an editorial on why he has a concealed-carry permit. Here are the hypocritical parts:

Position A:

On the other hand, the experience has provided insight into why people have weapons. The police are not 24-hour armed guards, and few of us can afford our own. Having a gun reduces one's sense of vulnerability. Indiana's constitution and state law expressly allow me to carry one for my protection. After having long rejected the idea, I have decided to at least have the option.

Position B:

Over the years, The Journal Gazette's editorial page has long called for strict control of guns and opposed state efforts to allow citizens to carry handguns in public. I agree with gun control. Having a gun permit, by definition, is gun control.

Yet the editorial, written by Tracey Warner, that spawned all of this was against OHIO IMPLEMENTING PERMITTED CONCEALED-CARRY.

But "having a permit, by definition, is gun control."

As I said: "Guns for me, but not for thee."

Something Mr. Warner shares with Diane Feinstein, and others enthusiastic about "gun control."

| posted by Kevin at 6:28 PM PermaLink

 
Another Criminal Stopped by a Citizen with a Gun

That won't be reported on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, Fox or any other national news outlet because no child was shot.

Sacramento radio station KTKZ reports that Roseville resident William Castle caught a burglar trying to steal his pickup truck right out of his garage. He held the man at gunpoint until the police arrived. No shots fired. The kicker:

Officers arrested 21-year-old David Cerniglia on suspicion of burglary. Allison says the supect may be tied to a number of similar crimes over the past few weeks.

But

Consider how many stories you read about an armed citizen preventing a crime - and, no doubt it happens. Compare that with the number of stories of people who accidentally shoot someone else, accidentally shoot themselves or purposely shoot someone in the heat of an argument. Common sense suggests that the more guns on the street, the more wrongful injuries and death.

So says Tracey Warner, editor of the Ft. Wayne Indiana Journal-Gazette. But how many stories like this one - where no shots were fired - get reported? And if they aren't reported, how are we to know about them and what does that do to our "common sense?"

| posted by Kevin at 4:21 PM PermaLink

 
Another Friday Five

If you...

1. ...owned a restaurant, what kind of food would you serve?

American. You know; Lasagne, pizza, meatloaf, steak, stir-fry, hamburgers.... Oh, and breakfast anytime. With GRITS.

2. ...owned a small store, what kind of merchandise would you sell?

Guns and ammo and other associated stuff. And I would be strongly tempted to name it BloodBath and Beyond, but I might be convinced to go with Accessory After the Fact.

3. ...wrote a book, what genre would it be?

I keep toying with writing a book on gun control, but it's been done so many times before.

4. ...ran a school, what would you teach?

Reading, writing, math, science, civics, world history - with special emphasis on some dead rich white guys, and philosophy - with special emphasis on some dead rich white guys.

5. ...recorded an album, what kind of music would be on it?

I am personally so unmusical it's not even funny. Any album I recorded would be somebody else's stuff. But rock. Definitely rock.

| posted by Kevin at 3:50 PM PermaLink

 
I Hope One Day to Write This Well

Every weekday morning I have one ritual I repeat if at all possible: I sit at my computer and read first Day by Day, the excellent cartoon penned composed on computer by Chris Muir, then I read James Likeks' Bleat, which he composes on computer Monday through Friday unless he's overwhelmed with working on the writing he does that pays.

Todays Day by Day:

is a perfect example of Chris's skills.

As today's Bleat is of Lileks'. I've been on the road a lot the last couple of days, and when I'm doing windshield time, I try to listen to stuff that engages my brain. Pop music has a tendency to put me to sleep. Country music generally just irritates me (slide guitar and warbly voices can be like fingernails on a blackboard to me.) Music from the Spanish-language stations is annoying as well. (What is it with the accordions? Accordions annoy me.) So, unsurprisingly, I listen to talk radio.*

Yes, I'm a brainwashed toady of the far-right wing, hypnotized by the minions of the vast conspiracy: Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt et al. Except for Michael Savage. I cannot stand Michael Savage. But I blame Savage on his surroundings; perhaps if I lived among the vast hoards of leftist undead of the San Francisco Bay area, I too would become as embittered and vile as Savage.

Which is just one more reason I deliberately won't live there.

At any rate, while listening to talk radio this week, I was able to hear the majority of several speeches given by President Bush, VP Dick Cheney, and James Carville - speeches covered (if at all) with extreme brevity by the standard news media outlets. Talk radio has no such limitations. Getting back to Lileks, I find in today's Bleat a paragraph that sums up precisely my thoughts - a summation so precise that I could not have accomplished it in less than a full essay (thus this piece):

I heard four speeches this week – one by Carville before some firefighters, screaming like cat that had been dipped in turpentine; one from Kerry about something or other (it’s hard to stick with it; he sounds like a 45 RPM record played at 33 1/3, and you keep making revolving-hand motions in the hopes you can somehow, like a butterfly that flutters its wings in Brazil and causes typhoons in Tahiti, cause him to pick up the pace a little); one from Dick Cheney, and one from Bush. Cheney’s speech was tailor-made for his speaking style, which consists of pressing the point of the sword into the opponant’s arguments and slowly pushing the entire blade in with steady force. Bush’s speech had many thick sheets of boilerplate, but it had economy and optimism.

The description of Cheney's speaking style is so perfect, it defies improvement. As does the description of Carville's. Damn.

*(I also listen to NPR, which - like talk radio - when filtered for bias has a surprising amount of useful information contained therein.)
| posted by Kevin at 7:48 AM PermaLink

 
"Guns for Me, But Not for Thee" - More Gun Control Hypocrisy

Via SayUncle, it seems that reporter editor Tracey Warner of the Ft. Wayne, Indiana Journal Gazette objected to Ohio's "liberalization" of its concealed carry legislation in an piece last Sunday. At issue is this quote from the story:

Advocates on both sides will find studies to support their positions. Whom to believe? Consider how many stories you read about an armed citizen preventing a crime - and, no doubt it happens. Compare that with the number of stories of people who accidentally shoot someone else, accidentally shoot themselves or purposely shoot someone in the heat of an argument. Common sense suggests that the more guns on the street, the more wrongful injuries and death.

Except it's obvious to everyone on our side of the argument that the news under-reports incidents of self-defense, but trumpets to the heavens any accidental shooting and every single homicide. Self-defense stories are found on page D-16 of the local newsrags at best, but a child accidentally shot? National news! Tom Brokaw leads with it!

This is known as bias - and it affects "common sense" decisionmaking.

Anyway, the very next day the competing paper in Ft. Wayne, the News-Sentinel published a story entitled Licensed to Carry that listed the names of a few high-profile Indiana residents with concealed-carry permits.

Guess who has one? Tracey Warner! Guess who else?

The Rev. Ternae Jordan Sr., pastor of Greater Progressive Baptist Church and founder of Stop the Violence, an organization devoted to reducing youth violence.

Another example of the elitist "Guns for me, but not for thee" policy.

This story originated at KeepandBearArms.com.
| posted by Kevin at 10:22 AM PermaLink

 
Buy A Gun Day

Last year Aaron the Liberal Slayer created "Buy a Gun to Piss Off Michael Moore Day" in dishonor of Moore's Bowling for Columbine Oscar. The idea was to buy a firearm on or about April 15 with the specific intent to annoy liberals.

I'm all for that, but I jumped the gun a bit. I bought mine on March 13. (Sorry, Aaron!)

Anyway, Aaron intends to make this an annual thing, now, so he's got an advertising campaign all fired up. The post explaining all this is at Aaron's blog, just click on this button:

.

I like that! And there are more buttons here.
| posted by Kevin at 8:31 AM PermaLink

 
More Cartoons

Let's start with a couple on the recent incidents in Spain. First up, Robert Arial of South Carolina's The State:

Yup.

Next, Mike Ramirez of the LA Times hits the bullseye:

Next up, here's my question when it comes to Martha "It's a Good Thing" Stewart's conviction, put in pen and ink by Chip Bok of the Akron Beacon Journal:

If I understand this correctly, they convicted her for lying about a crime they cannot prove she committed. Lesson? Don't talk to the police. Period.

Now let's look at some Kerry cartoons. First up, Chuck Asay of the Colorado Springs Gazette on Kerry's "other leaders" assertion:

What did Kerry expect us to think?

Mike Ramirez (again) on Kerry's solid political philosophy:

That's how I see it.

And finally, Robert Arial apparently reads Steven Den Beste, because he agrees with Steven's assessment of the Democrats 2004 chances:

| posted by Kevin at 8:09 AM PermaLink

 
THIS Might Go On the Other Side

I've said before (somewhere in here, I'm not going looking right now) that I have only one bumpersticker on my truck (besides the NRA, GOA, IHMSA and Tucson Rifle Club membership stickers). It says:

This Bumper Isn't BIG ENOUGH
For What I've Got to Say!

Well, Bill Hobbs has a new one out that might just go on the other side of the bumper:

Complimentary, don't you think?

| posted by Kevin at 8:38 PM PermaLink

 
Range Report on My New Makarov

I posted it over at The Shooter's Carnival - things seem to have tapered off there lately.

| posted by Kevin at 7:52 PM PermaLink

 
There's a Police Force that Still Issues REVOLVERS?

Ladies and Gentlemen, boys and girls, here's another example of the cluelessness of the media when it comes to firearms, and the double-standard between the honorable law-enforcement community and we mere peons.

And, of course, the obligatory reference to evil "assault weapons."

The Corpus Christi Caller-Times reports on the police force's desire to upgrade from revolvers to semi-autos. Let us fisk:

Police may switch to semi-autos

Rank and file police officers could soon holster identical firearms if the police chief gets his way. He's developing a standardized gun policy to better protect officers with concern for not risking public safety, he said.

Remember that point.

"We must provide officers with the tools to combat the crooks who are better armed than we are," said Police Chief Pete Alvarez. Alvarez's officer survey indicates semi-automatic weapons are the gun of choice.

A cost of approximately $500 to $700 per gun for officers will be paid for using drug seizure money allotted for the police department, the chief said. Police officers are initially issued revolvers and now pay for their own semi-automatic weapons.

That's a pretty sucky policy, I'll grant. But here comes the evil "assault weapon" bit:

Police ability to protect and defend the public wanes when they're caught in the open and run out of firepower while facing a bullet-spitting SKS assault rifle wielded by a gang member, Alvarez said.

It's a semi-automatic rifle that fires more accurately from long-range.

"The SKS is a common weapon in Corpus Christi, and police are definitely outgunned," said John Hornsby, 36, Corpus Christi police ballistics' identification supervisor. "But I'm not a fan of the 'one-size-gun-fits-all' mindset."

(*Sigh*)

First, the SKS is NOT an "assault rifle," even by the (admittedly loose) Federal definition. It has a fixed magazine, no pistol grip, and only holds ten rounds.

It is a semi-automatic rifle, but then, so is the Ruger Mini-14 - a weapon excluded from the AWB that does take a detachable magazine. They both "spit bullets."

Aren't all firearms "bullet-spitting?"

And what, exactly, does "fires more accurately from long-range" mean? More accurately than what? What constitutes "long range"? The switch to semi-auto pistols is supposed to make the police equal to SKS-toting gangsters? Um, the SKS is a rifle. A pistol is what you use to fight your way to your rifle.

I'm supposed to believe the author of this is a Texan? Must be a Yankee transplant.

Gun uniformity is a law enforcement agency trend recently adopted by the Texas Department of Public Safety, FBI, Parks and Wildlife wardens and others, Alvarez said.

Because they are often in rural areas and might be chasing vehicles, the Nueces County Sheriff's Department often uses weapons designed for more long-range use. The DPS already uses a semi-automatic weapon.

As a long-range handgunner myself, I call "BULLSHIT!" Revolvers are by far more suitable to long-range shooting than semi-autos, second only to single-shot specialty pistols. Semi-autos are better at "bullet-spitting," though. (Remember that "public safety" quote, now.)

Benefits of standardizing

The benefits outweigh the concerns, Alvarez said. A standardized weapon policy would:

Enhance officer safety

Save costs by not duplicating training

Better protect the public

The Corpus Christi Police Department provides cadets with either a .357-caliber Magnum or .38-caliber revolver that holds six bullets and trains them with this type of gun. But about 80 percent of the 437 officers have received secondary training to carry semi-automatic weapons that have cartridges holding 16 rounds. The department has nine models and calibers approved for use, police officials said.

Uh, right. Well, he didn't call them "clips" at least. Anyway, the cops have the choice of carrying a six-shot revolver, or a sixteen shot pistol. I know what choice I'd take. I'd much rather spit sixteen rounds between reloads.

When officers choose to shelve the department-issued revolver and purchase, out of their own pockets, a semi-automatic weapon, they have to complete a 10-hour automatic weapon transitional course before they're allowed to use it in service. If the department adopts a standardized firearm policy, only the initial 40-hour academy weapons training would be required.

"This standardized firearm policy would save the department about $350 per officer by eliminating secondary training," said Cmdr. Bryan Smith, in charge of police training. It will also reduce the ammunition inventory kept in stock at the firing range, he said.

"The benefit is creating one method of training with one trigger-pull that every officer would be expected to master," Smith said. Guns come with different trigger pressures and grips.

Now there's a newsflash.

Most buy own semi-autos

Most Corpus Christi police officers have chosen to buy their own semi-automatic weapons in the past 20 years, but opinions regarding the use of revolvers and semi-automatic guns are as varied as the types of weapons being used.

Assistant Chief Ken Bung has been reviewing responses from officers regarding a change to standardized weapons and says that most officers seem to prefer a .40-caliber semi-automatic weapon.

"We want a weapon that the biggest majority of our officers can shoot effectively," Bung said. Of 58 responses to the chief's survey, some of which represent several officers' opinions, more than half favor a standardized weapon, Bung said. Twelve respondents thought more than one weapon should be authorized, and almost all wanted a semi-automatic weapon, he said.

The department is also reviewing research material from other police agencies, and Bung said they should make an educated decision "fairly soon."

Surviving with revolvers

Some officers have survived tense situations with the standard-issue six-shooter.

"One officer was shot a few years ago before he cleared leather with his weapon," said Cmdr. Jesse Garcia, the uniform police supervisor. "He emptied his .357 returning fire and had the barrel in the guy's stomach when it finally clicked empty."

But last November Officer Phillip Bintliff, 34, ran out of ammunition in a shootout in the 4000 block of Schanen Boulevard when a suspect shot him in the abdomen, Garcia said.

In the same shootout, officer Jose Smith, 28, was shot in the forehead and dropped his weapon, a 9 mm semi-automatic handgun that holds 16 rounds, and the suspect retrieved it to shoot police officer Israel Carrasco, 32, in the shoulder and leg, Garcia said.

"Hands down, the semi-automatic is the way to go," Garcia said. "But it'd be like the department buying one size rain coat for everyone."

Err, perhaps a poor analogy Commander. That way you end up with some officers enveloped in their raincoats, and some with their limbs sticking out in the rain.

It's more important that the officer be able to shoot what he or she carries, as New Mexico State Trooper Lt. Don Day recently demonstrated when he used his single-action revolver - loaded with only five rounds - to stop a bank robber.

Some semi-automatic weapons have been known to jam.

"It depends on the quality of the gun," Garcia said. "Any automatic has the possibility of a jam, but proper caretaking minimizes it, and officers are trained to clear jamming."

Well, yes and no. If you're wounded and "limp-wristing" the reliability of semi-auto pistols is definitely less than that of revolvers. Revolvers can fail, though it's rare, and they're far less sensitive to ammo quality, but when a revolver fails, it's usually a major failure, not a "tap, rack, bang" semi-auto jam.

Calls for variety of weapons

Other high-ranking police officials voiced concerns.

"We don't buy one size pair of pants," said Capt. Mike McKinney, communications supervisor. "I don't think we can buy one handgun and everyone be able to shoot it competently."

Apparently Captain McKinney isn't fond of the single-size issue raincoat.

McKinney thinks the department should have gun manufacturers provide a variety of guns for extensive testing.

"We need different size officers, with different skill levels, men and women, to shoot several hundred rounds from each firearm," McKinney said. "That's the only way to compare a cross-section and decide what's best for the department as a whole."

There's a variety of ammunition to choose from for use with semi-automatic weapons, and it is an important consideration for public safety, Alvarez said.

Some agencies have different requirements.

"FBI agents use ammunition that penetrates and exits the suspect," McKinney said. "Their thought is that the suspect will bleed out and drop sooner with two wounds."

For local police, the ammunition of choice for semi-automatic weapons is a 124-grain hollow-point bullet made by Federal called Hydra-Shok, McKinney said.

Hollow point bullets take in fluid and tissue while tearing through a body, which causes the slug to expand and slow down, Hornsby said. Depending on the angle of the shot, distance and how it hits, the slug often doesn't exit the body, he said.

Alvarez said the nature of the hollow points lessens the possibility that a bullet could exit an intended target and strike another person.

"We need to select ammunition with enough knock-down power to get the job done," Alvarez said. "But not powerful enough to continue trajectory to others."

"We've got to change with the times," Alvarez said. "Criminals are better equipped and we shouldn't be left behind."

OK, now remember the bit about public safety? Check the graphic that came with the story:

Yet New Jersey makes civilian peon possession of hollowpoint ammo illegal, calling them "cop-killer" bullets, although the NYPD uses the 124 grain 9mm Hydrashok. But this article explains that hollowpoint ammo is safer for the public - that's why the police use them.

I love the ignorance and logical inconsistencies the anti-gun crowd constantly exhibits.

It would be more entertaining if they weren't so dangerous.

Labels: fisk, gun control, guns

| posted by Kevin at 1:55 PM PermaLink

 
Dept. of Geek Humor

Things like this are why I stopped studying Physics and became an electrical engineer. Read this (very) brief lab report entitled:

Electron Band Structure In Germanium, My Ass

Damn, that's funny. Thanks to Geekpress for the link.

| posted by Kevin at 11:41 AM PermaLink

 
Michael Bellesiles' Arming America Still Influencing the Gun Control Debate

At least the evidence leads UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh to that conclusion when he disassembles the Second Amendment chapter of a State Department publication on the "Rights of the People." Excerpt:

"In many states regulations continued [following the Revolution] prohibiting . . . propertyless whites from owning guns." I have seen this claim in several places, all of them in the work of Michael Bellesiles. None of those places gave any citations for statutes that actually banned propertyless whites from owning guns. I tried hard to find any evidence of such statutes -- none, to my knowledge, exists. To my knowledge, there were no such "regulations," in any states, much less many states. (Incidentally, it may well be that the author reasonably relied on Bellesiles' work before it was debunked, as did I; but since the publication is on the Web, one would think that it would be updated to correct the errors that reliance on Bellesiles' work has yielded.)

--

"One scholarly study holds that less than 14 percent of the adult white male population, those otherwise eligible to own guns, actually possessed firearms in 1790." That much is accurate -- but that one scholarly study, unless I'm woefully mistaken, is Michael Bellesiles' now-debunked work. I know of no credible source for such a statistic."

Yet I've seen, over and over, claims that Bellesiles had no political motive in writing his book.

If you believe that, I hold title to this bridge in Brooklyn, and I've got a great deal for you on some prime land in the Everglades...

UPDATE: The web site now shows "(The accompanying essay is under review.)"

I LOVE the blogosphere - a functional feedback loop to political correctness!

| posted by Kevin at 11:05 AM PermaLink

 
I'd Expect Nothing Else from Rolling Stone

A short piece in Rolling Stone's most recent edition discusses the recent brouhaha in the Senate:

The NRA's Gunfight

Gun-control advocates win their biggest congressional battle in years

Uh, right.

Depends on your perspective, I guess, but stopping legislation has traditionally been the gun-rights advocate's definition of "victory." If the gun-control advocates consider it "victory" now, I guess we really have reversed the pendulum.

Bull's eye shooter supply, a great barn of a building in Tacoma, Washington, sells everything from air rifles to the Bushmaster XM15 semiautomatic rifle, a kind of high-class M-16.

Right. Like a Porsche Boxster is a "kind of high class" 959. They're both nice, the classes are obviously inverted.

Upstairs, you can try a gun before you buy it at one of twelve indoor shooting lanes, where children under 12 yrs shoot free when accompanied by adult.

Horrors! Children! Guns! Child abuse!

I'm sure the evil Bull's Eye forces 12 year-olds to pay if they come in alone.

For a building that contains enough firepower to overthrow Kim Jong Il, security is remarkably lax. "It's pretty amazing," says Richard Van Loan, a federal agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. "You have guns not tethered down, no security cameras, nobody checking the doors." According to the ATF, at least 238 guns have "disappeared" from the store -- and fifty-two have been used in crimes. The snipers who terrorized the nation's capital in 2002, for instance, managed to obtain the Bushmaster they used to kill ten people from Bull's Eye without bothering to pay for it.

And only after that did the ATF pull Brian Borgelt's Federal Firearms License. Why was that? Why is the ATF not in some way responsible for ensuring that Bull's Eye do proper record-keeping or risk loss of its license?

Relatives of nine of the victims sued Bull's Eye and Bushmaster Firearms, claiming their negligence led to the killings. Last June, a judge agreed to let the lawsuit go forward, citing Bull's Eye's "allegedly reckless or incompetent conduct in distributing firearms." But if the National Rifle Association and President Bush have their way, the case will never go before a jury. The NRA and the White House are pushing a bill that prohibits lawsuits against the makers and sellers of firearms that end up killing or maiming people. Supporters call it the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. Opponents call it the Bull's Eye Protection Act.

And that is, as far as I can tell, a lie. The bill certainly protected Bushmaster, as even the author of this piece doesn't seem willing to outright accuse Bushmaster of being negligent in this case (though, to be honest he's more than happy to implicate them by association.) However, if, as Malvo admitted and the story states, the gun was stolen from the store, how is Bull's Eye responsible? Because of its history of "losing" firearms? Then why is the ATF not also culpable?

The bill set off the biggest congressional gunfight in years. The House passed the measure by a wide margin, and the Senate seemed all but certain to follow suit. Then, on March 2nd, gun-control advocates managed to tack two amendments onto the bill that are anathema to the NRA: one extending the ban on assault weapons and another requiring background checks on customers at gun shows. "It's the NRA's dream bill -- with some of its worst nightmares attached," said Peter Hamm, communications director of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

He left off "the Sainted," as in "the Sainted Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence."

But I guess that's assumed, now.

Determined to block the amendments, the NRA e-mailed dozens of senators in the midst of the vote, urging them to reject its own bill. Some lawmakers read the messages on their pagers while they were considering the measure on the Senate floor. In one of the most unexpected turnarounds in memory, the Senate voted 90 to 8 to reject the bill.

"I've been around here eighteen years," Sen. John McCain told reporters after the vote, "and I've never seen anything quite this bizarre."

I wonder why he didn't use Feinstein's quote from the New York Times:

"I'm a bit numb," said Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, the lead sponsor of the assault weapons ban, said after the final vote. Of the rifle association, she said: "They had the power to turn around at least 60 votes in the Senate. That's amazing to me."

But it was a gun control victory, right?

But the fight isn't over yet. The Senate must still debate whether to renew the ban on assault weapons, set to expire in September. And Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho, a sponsor of the bill protecting the gun industry from lawsuits, vowed to push for another vote on the measure soon. "This issue," he warned, "will not go away."

Um, no, the Senate doesn't have any need to debate renewal of the AWB. It can just let it sunset without further discussion, though I doubt the gun-grabbers will allow that.

Oh well, at least the article wasn't a complete fabrication of lies.

| posted by Kevin at 9:33 AM PermaLink

 
Blogroll Addition: Free Market Fairy Tales

I just added Mr. Free Market's blog, Free Market Fairy Tales, to my blogroll. I beat on the English government a lot in this blog, but he has to live there under it. He does so with wry wit and extreme patience, by all appearances, and he's one of the few there still willing to jump through all the hoops required to own firearms and shoot recreationally.

When you've finally had enough, Mr. Free Market, remember there's plenty of space over on this side of the pond, and we'd be pleased to have you.

And if you ever visit Arizona, my home is yours.

| posted by Kevin at 7:40 AM PermaLink

 
Good Thing I Didn't Hold My Breath

It's now been at least one week since I wrote to W. John Tritt, Dan K. Thomasson, Stan Hall, and Paul Vitello, informing each that I had rebutted their anti-gun columns, that I had called each and every one of them deliberate liars, and inviting them to respond to my accusations.

Not a peep.

I'm not surprised. I'm just a lowly blogger with a couple thousand hits a week, hardly worth their notice, while their lies are spread by people who by ink by the barrel. Still, I feel better for having vented, and I intend to keep it up.

Fuck 'em.

| posted by Kevin at 8:59 PM PermaLink

 
Are We Descending into World War IV?

Mark Steyn has a retrospective piece up, published exactly one year ago today - The Death of Europe, in which he said:

It's the European argument today: just as the 20th century belonged to America, so the 21st will belong to Europe, a Europe that cannot - and, indeed, disdains to - compete with the Yanks in "aggression" (military capability) or "materialism" (capitalism red in tooth and claw), and so has devised a better way. We've all had a grand old time these last few weeks watching M Chirac demonstrate his mastery of "the arts of peace" and his "lofty moral character", but it would perhaps be fairer to choose a more representative Euro-grandee to articulate the EUtopian vision. Step forward Finnish Prime Minister Paavo Lipponen, who said in London last year that "the EU must not develop into a military superpower but must become a great power that will not take up arms at any occasion in order to defend its own interests."

--

Best case scenario: you wind up as Vienna with Swedish tax rates. Don't get me wrong, I love Vienna. I especially like the way you can stroll down their streets and never hear any ghastly rockers and rappers caterwauling. When you go into a record store, the pop category's a couple of bins at the back and there's two floors of operetta. All very pleasant, though not if you're into surfing the cutting edge of the zeitgeist. I quite like Stockholm, too. Well, I like the babes, but they're gonna be a lot wrinklier by 2050. Its 60% overall tax rate is likely to be the base in the Europe of 2020 and fondly recalled as the good old days by mid-century.

Worst case scenario: Sharia, circa 2070.

Steven Den Beste makes an uncharacteristically short, but typically razor-sharp comment on Spain's reaction to terrorist attack:

The people of Spain marched in the streets on Friday.

Then they crawled on their knees into their voting booths on Sunday.

Amen.

The Feces Flinging Monkey links to two telling comments, the first one here, and I will quote his piece entire:

It Dosen't Get Much Clearer Than This

Romano Prodi, President of the European Commission of the EU:

"It is clear that using force is not the answer to resolving the conflict with terrorists," Prodi said. "Terrorism is infinitely more powerful than a year ago," and all of Europe now feels threatened, he told the paper.

Well, that's it, then.

There are lots of Americans who would agree; they will mostly be voting for John Kerry this fall. Most of the rest of us will be voting for George Bush.

It's not about Red and Blue anymore. The war comes first.

And the second one here:

Dear Spain,

Sincerely, sorrow for your loss.

Sincerely, thank you for your support.

Sincerely, nice knowing you.

I hope that appeasement thing works out, but, it never does.

It appears that Mr. Steyn called it last year. Europe is destined for Sharia, and 2070 might be way, way late.

That will leave us and possibly some of the recently freed Eastern European nations against the forces of radical Islam that now appear to be controlling "old Europe" through immigration and intimidation.

World War III was the "Cold War" - a war of superpowers fought at low-intensity, and by proxy forces in little countries around the world. World War IV will be a different war yet - another low-intensity conflict, but one fought on our own soil for once, and in many other disparate places. Another war without fronts. A war in which the combatants are difficult to identify, and who use our freedoms against us. A type of war that Israel has been fighting for decades.

A type of war that, in its genocidal intent, might provoke a genocidal response.

Walter Russel Mead wrote in The Jacksonian Tradition

Jacksonian America has clear ideas about how wars should be fought, how enemies should be treated, and what should happen when the wars are over. It recognizes two kinds of enemies and two kinds of fighting: honorable enemies fight a clean fight and are entitled to be opposed in the same way; dishonorable enemies fight dirty wars and in that case all rules are off.

An honorable enemy is one who declares war before beginning combat; fights according to recognized rules of war, honoring such traditions as the flag of truce; treats civilians in occupied territory with due consideration; and - a crucial point - refrains from the mistreatment of prisoners of war. Those who surrender should be treated with generosity. Adversaries who honor the code will benefit from its protections, while those who want a dirty fight will get one.

There's a tasteless joke making the rounds of the internet:

At a small airport terminal in Texas, three strangers awaiting their shuttle flight start conversing about the recent worldly events. The strangers were of varying cultures. One was Native American. Another was a cowboy from West Texas. The other person was a devout Arab Muslim.

During their conversation, they began to discuss their cultural history. The Native American stated "once my people were many, now we are few."

The Muslim then chimed in and said, "once my people were few and now we are many."

The cowboy looked at the Muslim, shifted the toothpick in his mouth and said with a sly grin, "that's 'cause we ain't played Cowboys and Muslims yet."

Just because it's tasteless, doesn't mean there's no truth in it.

It is my sincere hope that it doesn't come to that, but better that than Shari'a.

| posted by Kevin at 8:02 PM PermaLink

 
New Jersey Strikes Again

This time they crack down on evil imitation firearms. Seems one Robert B. McManus was pulled over for speeding when the officer saw what he thought was an H&K MP5 submachinegun in the back of McManus's hatchback. The story says:

McManus was immediately ordered out of the vehicle and handcuffed, police said.

Further investigation showed the gun is an imitation firearm used to fire pellets and paintballs.

Ok, I'll go along with the reaction of the officer. But wait! There's more!

Police then found a virtual arsenal of other imitation guns that were properly cased.

Police allegedly found an imitation Remington Model 700 sniper rifle with an imitation silencer, an imitation M-16 rifle, an imitation Beretta .9-mm (sic) handgun, another imitation machine gun and an imitation hand grenade.

All of the guns fired pellets and paintballs, police said.

Police said the guns are legal in New Jersey (For now) except under certain circumstances where they are deemed to pose a threat.

A threat? To whom? I imagine the officer drew down on McManus, so he was the one at risk. What was he going to do, put out the officer's eye?

So, instead of the officer explaining to Mr. McManus why having that piece exposed on his back seat wasn't such a bright idea, they cited him with "a fourth-degree criminal offense." I've no way of knowing if that "fourth degree criminal offense" is a misdemeanor or a felony in New Jersey.

And note the clever use of "virtual arsenal" in the story. Was it virtually an arsenal, or an arsenal of virtual weapons? And did McManus get to keep his "virtual arsenal" or is it now the virtual property of the State? Those things aren't cheap.

(Link received from the proprietor of Feces Flinging Monkey.)

| posted by Kevin at 1:51 PM PermaLink

 
Stick a Fork in England. They're Done

We locked you up in jail for 25 years and you were innocent all along? That’ll be £80,000 please

Blunkett charges miscarriage of justice victims ‘food and lodgings’
By Neil Mackay, Home Affairs Editor 3/14/04


WHAT do you give someone who’s been proved innocent after spending the best part of their life behind bars, wrongfully convicted of a crime they didn’t commit?

An apology, maybe? Counselling? Champagne? Compensation? Well, if you’re David Blunkett, the Labour Home Secretary, the choice is simple: you give them a big, fat bill for the cost of board and lodgings for the time they spent freeloading at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in British prisons.

On Tuesday, Blunkett will fight in the Royal Courts of Justice in London for the right to charge victims of miscarriages of justice more than £3000 (Almost $5,400) for every year they spent in jail while wrongly convicted. The logic is that the innocent man shouldn’t have been in prison eating free porridge and sleeping for nothing under regulation grey blankets.

Blunkett’s fight has been described as “outrageous”, “morally repugnant” and the “sickest of sick jokes”, but his spokesmen in the Home Office say it’s a completely “reasonable course of action” as the innocent men and women would have spent the money anyway on food and lodgings if they weren’t in prison. The government deems the claw-back ‘Saved Living Expenses’.

And this isn't a new idea. They've done something similar before!

Paddy Hill was one of the Birmingham Six. He spent 16 years behind bars for the 1974 Birmingham pub bombings by the IRA. Hill now lives on a farm with his wife and children near Beith in Scotland. He has been charged £50,000 (That's just shy of $90k) for living expenses by the Home Office.

It wasn’t until two years ago that Hill was finally awarded £960,000 in compensation. However, during the years since his release, while waiting for the pay-out, the government had given him advances of around £300,000. When his compensation came through, the £300,000 was taken back along with interest on the interim payments charged at 23% – that cost him a further £70,000.

One hand giveth, another taketh away.

“The whole system is absurd,” Hill said. “I’m so angry about what has happened to me. I try and tell people about being charged for bed and board in jail and they can’t believe it.

“When I left prison I was given no training for freedom – no counselling or psychological preparation. Yet the guilty get that when they are released. To charge me for the food I ate and the cell I slept in is almost as big an injustice as fitting me up in the first place.

Hell, when they released serial criminal Brandon Fearon, they gave him money so he could sue Tony Martin, the farmer who shot him when Fearon tried to burglarize Martin's home.

“While I was in prison, my family lost their home, yet they get no compensation. But the state wants its money back. It’s like being kicked in the head when someone has beat you already.

“I have to put up with this, yet there has not been one police officer convicted of fitting people up. The Home Office had no shortage of money to keep me in jail or to run a charade of a trial.

“But they had enough money to frame me. Nevertheless, when it comes to paying out compensation for ruining my life they happily rip me to shreds.”

Hill is not leading the legal action against the government – instead he has handed the baton to another high-profile victim of miscarriage of justice: Mike O’Brien.

O’Brien spent 10 years in jail wrongly convicted of killing a Cardiff newsagent. His baby daughter died while he was in prison and he was charged £37,500 by the Home Office for his time behind bars.

Hill said he cannot lead the legal fight as the Birmingham Six have fought every legal action together, but now three of them are over 70 and Hill believes it is too much to ask them to join him in taking on the government yet again.

He said he was also worried about the compensation payments for the other members of the Birmingham Six being affected if they joined him in court against the government.

“The establishment hate me and people like me as we proved them wrong,” he said. “They either want to ignore us or hurt us.”

O’Brien took the Home Office to court last March and won, but Blunkett appealed the decision. On Tuesday, the rights and wrongs of the government policy will be decided at the Royal Courts.

I'm not taking bets on that decision.

O’Brien said: “Morally, the position of the government is just outrageous. It shows total contempt for the victims of miscarriages of justice. It makes me livid.

“I really believe if we win the appeal this week, the government is evil enough to take me to the House of Lords. They are trying to break us. I really think this is personal as far as the government is concerned.

“A government really can’t get much worse than this. But I am confident that we will win as the law and morality are on our side.”

Vincent Hickey, one of the Bridgewater Four who was wrongly convicted for killing a paperboy, was charged £60,000 for the 17 years he spent in jail. He said: “If I had known this I would have stayed on hunger-strike longer, that way I would have had a smaller bill.”

John McManus, of the Scottish Miscarriage of Justice Organisation, said: “This is reprehensible. How can we call ourselves a democratic, civilised society when our government is acting like this?

How can you call yourselves a democratic, civilized society when you deny people the right to defend themselves?

“The government seems intent on punishing innocent people. The state wants to be paid for making a mistake. It’s hard to believe someone actually thought this policy up. If you tell a child about this they will think it insane.

“Only a sick mind could have invented this policy, yet the government is fighting to retain the right to act like this. It is cruelty with intent. They seem to want to punish people for having the audacity to be innocent.”

The SNP’s shadow justice minister, Nicola Sturgeon, said: “This is outrageous. It is another assault by Blunkett on the rule of law and on civil liberties. These people didn’t chose to go to prison. They were wrongly convicted, and to charge them for it beggars belief.”

The Home Office said an “independent assessor appointed by the Home Secretary takes into acccount the range of costs the prisoner might have incurred had they not been imprisoned”. The spokes man said the assessor was “right” to do this, adding: “Morally, this is reasonable and appropriate.”

I suggest that, if the Home Office really believes this then their "moral compass" is spinning wildly.

‘I was a hostage, now they are billing me’

ROBERT Brown was just a 19-year-old from Glasgow when he was jailed for life for murdering a woman called Annie Walsh in Manchester in 1977. He served 25 years before he was finally freed in 2002, when the courts ruled him innocent of the crime.

He is now facing a bill of around £80,000 for the living expenses he cost the state. For Brown, it is the final straw. An interim payment he was given pending his full compensation offer is exhausted; his mother recently died; his relationship with his girlfriend has fallen apart and he is facing eviction from his home following a mix-up over benefits.

“I feel like ending my life,” he says. “I’ve tried to maintain my dignity, but the state has treated me with nothing but contempt – now they are asking me for money for my bed and board in jail.

“I never contemplated suicide once while I was in prison, but it’s different on the outside. I have received no counselling or support. Society is treating me like something you’d wipe off the bottom of your shoes, but I’m an innocent man and a victim of a terrible injustice.

“It’s horrific. I’ve been out of jail for 14 months and in that time the state has put me through a war of attrition that it never needed to conduct. I feel my life is disintegrating around me.

“Making me pay for my bed and board is abhorrent. I was arrested, fitted up and held hostage for 25 years and now they are going to charge me for being kept as their prisoner against my will.

“Can you think of a more disgusting way to abuse someone? I really feel that my heart is truly and finally broken.”

First disarm them, then enslave them, right?

| posted by Kevin at 11:07 AM PermaLink

 
Spain Capitulates. Poland Fills the Breach

As Spain surrenders to the terrorists and yanks its troops out of America's unilateral coalition, Poland announces its intention to take up the duties Spain is abandoning, according to this CNN story:

BRUSSELS, Belgium (Reuters) -- Poland has vowed not to pull troops out of Iraq because of "terrorist" attacks and said it was willing to remain in command of a stabilisation force there if Spain, which had been due to take over, withdrew.

Spain was due to take command of 9,000 troops in central Iraq on July 1, but that was thrown into doubt on Monday when Socialist Prime Minister-elect Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said he could bring home the Spanish 1,300 troops currently there.

--

Poland has 2,400 troops in Iraq and has led a 9,000-strong division of troops from 24 nations in a central-south zone since last September.

"If it is necessary, we will continue leading the multinational division," Polish Ambassador to NATO Jerzy M. Nowak told Reuters in Brussels. "We are prepared for that even if Spain is not able to fulfil its promise."

Note Reuter's use of scare quotes when it says "terrorist."

Asshats.

I wonder how those 1,300 troops feel about being pulled out of Iraq now that their countrymen have been the victims of these "terrorists"?

Pissed, I hope.


| posted by Kevin at 9:56 AM PermaLink

 
Bumpersticker Seen on the Back of a Volvo Yesterday

END GLOBAL
WHINING!

Can I get an "AMEN!"?
| posted by Kevin at 8:15 AM PermaLink

 
Another Reason Banning Guns Never Works

Rule #1 of Economics: Wherever there is a demand, there will be a supply.

In this example we have the Pakistani town of Darra - home of gunmakers for over 100 years, according to this page.

Check out those beautiful Enfields!

And how about these detachable-magazine Broomhandle Mausers!

These people don't have CNC machine tools. Hell, they don't have much in the way of tools at all, yet they make perfectly functional firearms.

Guns aren't rocket science. They're pretty simple devices. Banning 'em cannot make them all go away.

| posted by Kevin at 8:58 PM PermaLink

 
"Happy Birthday to Me..."

Actually, it was last week, but I got my present today. I purchased a like-new Bulgarian Makarov pistol, a Fobus paddle holster, and 500 rounds of Wolf 9x18 109gr. FMJ ammo. Range trip tomorrow!

I was going to purchase it through AIM Surplus via an FFL I know through the Tucson Rifle Club, but making arrangements to get AIM a copy of his license and all the other hassles involved in the deal, plus the fact that I'm sometimes not as patient as I should be led me to be sitting in the parking lot of my favorite gun shop in Tucson at 8:50 this morning, waiting for them to open. Sure enough, they had a Bulgarian Mak with two magazines - $174.95. (A reasonable markup, IMHO.) Unfortunately the only ammo they had was CCI Blazer and American Eagle at way-too-much-$$/box, so I went to another shop for ammo - with the same results.

So, I girded my loins (why does that sound faintly risque?) and went downtown to the Roadrunner Gun Show at the Tucson Convention Center.

$4.00 to park.

$8.00 to get in.

ONE ammo dealer, and all he had that was even close to what I wanted was Wolf FMJ at $47.95/500. I wanted to find some Silver Bear 95 grain hollowpoints, but, alas, the entire country seems to be out of stock of that. I also found the Fobus holster. I did manage to avoid buying any beef jerky, and (hold on to your hats) didn't see a single Beanie Baby in the entire arena.

Only regret? I didn't buy the T-shirt that said

Nine Out of Ten
Voices in my Head
Said that I Should
Stay Home and
Clean My Guns

I really like that one. If I hadn't had to shell out $12 just to get in, I would have bought it.

| posted by Kevin at 3:33 PM PermaLink

 
Gun Crime Still Going Up in England

Though just maybe it's starting to peak.

According to this BBC News piece:

The number of crimes involving firearms increased by just under 3% in the 12 months to March 2003, to 10,250.

It was well below the 35% rise in the previous year, when gun crime leapt from 7,362 firearms offences to 9,974.

Home Office minister Hazel Blears said: "The risk of a fatal shooting in England and Wales is still one of the lowest in the world."

But minister, it always has been - even long before the bans on semi-automatic rifles and all handguns. The point is, these laws show no evidence of making England and Wales safer, yet they were accomplished at great public expense.

Also in the story, relating to the move to non-dangerous bar glasses and switching to plastic beer bottles:

Violent crime - excluding robberies and sex attacks - increased by 12% between April and June this year, according to the British Crime Survey quarterly results, also released on Thursday.

Shadow home secretary Oliver Letwin said the statistics presented a "confusing" and "alarming" picture.

"One thing which no amount of statistical manipulation can disguise is that violent crime has doubled in the last six years and continues to rise alarmingly," he said.

Cheery, that - no?

This piece, also from the BBC, reports:

Gun crime has increased in recent years, including a near doubling of handgun offences since 1996, the year of the Dunblane massacre.

Um, make that "since all handguns were banned and all the licensed, registered, legally possessed ones were handed in."

Now, to put this into some perspective:

In 2001-02, there were some 22,300 firearms offences, a rise of almost a third on the previous year. The number of people killed by firearms was 23.

That's a busy weekend in Chicago. Yet we're told constantly by gun control groups that licensing and registration will reduce gun crime and would never be used to confiscate our guns. However, England & Wales had licensing and registration, "safe storage" and all the rest, and when that wasn't enough they confiscated all the semi-auto rifles and then all the handguns.

All the registered ones.

And firearm crime went UP.

Yet if you listen to the Violence Policy Center, the only answer to our gun violence problem is a complete handgun ban.

That worked so well in England, didn't it?

And here's why:

But while it may appear to be rife, it is generally confined to a large number of incidents perpetrated by a small number people in very small areas.

While this is of no comfort to those who may have witnessed gun crime on their own streets, those most likely to be victims are young men.

All the evidence suggests that gun crime is not the problem but a symptom of a huge and well established drugs economy.

And the same is true here. Gun violence is concentrated here too, "to a large number of incidents perpetrated by a small number people in very small areas."

But the VPC et. al want us to take England's gun control path - to the same predictable failure. If you want some idea of the significance of England's gun control failure, when the ban went into effect the number one source of gun violence was Jamaican immigrant gangs called "Yardies." Yet this report states:

So-called Yardie gangs were certainly involved in the growth of crack in the UK.

But Lee Jasper, chair of the Trident advisory group, says the majority of those involved are now British-born.

As their drug trade has become more established, gangs have become more inclined to carry guns to command the respect of rivals, he said.

Now, according to the police, guns are in the hands of regular Brits.

To give you some idea of the futility of banning handguns - even in a nation with strict licensing and registration laws, the report also discusses a recent "amnesty" that allowed people to turn in weapons and ammunition - no question asked:

The Home Office ran a month-long nationwide gun amnesty in April, partly as a response to the outcry following the killings of Birmingham teenagers Letisha Shakespeare and Charlene Ellis in January.

More than 43,000 weapons were handed in to the police over that month - but critics say they were not the weapons on the streets. In London's case, there was an extremely poor response from each of the key Trident areas.

Get that? This story has more detail on that "amnesty." Forty-three thousand unregistered weapons and almost a million rounds of ammunition - but almost none from the "very small areas" that have the "large numbers of incidents." According to the story, when the handgun ban went into effect in 1996 they only collected 23,000 firearms and 700,000 rounds of ammo - from the legal, registered owners. Oh, and Letisha and Charlene were gunned down with a submachinegun - illegal to possess in England since 1934, but available in England, new-in-box, via Eastern Europe.

But we're supposed to believe that licensing and registration will work here to reduce crime.

Just like we're supposed to believe that "shall-issue" concealed-carry legislation will result in "blood in the street" and "road rage" killings over fender-benders.

Why is it that gun control advocates never bother to look at reality?

| posted by Kevin at 3:09 PM PermaLink

 
I Just Discovered...

I'm a Retrosexual!

(Hat tip to Because I Say So! for the link.)

| posted by Kevin at 11:03 PM PermaLink

 
This is NOT What I Wanted to Read

The New Orleans Times-Picayune had a recent piece (minor piddling registration required) on a recent speech given by Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the rightest of the conservative right-wing justices on the Court.

What did Scalia say that I didn't want to hear?

"It is literally true that the U.S. Supreme Court has entirely liberated itself from the text of the Constitution," Scalia said at a conference Uptown on the merit selection of judges.

Well, I've believed that for some time, but hearing it from a sitting Justice doesn't give me the warm fuzzies. He says also:

Ideally, Scalia said he would choose merit selection of judges. But when you have courts trying to rewrite laws, he said, "there's a lot to be said for electing judges."

Scalia blasted the existing system, which he said allows courts to change the laws, and not the people.

"What 'we the people' want most of all is someone who will agree with us as to what the evolving constitution says," he said.

"We are free at last, free at last," he said. "There is no respect in which we are chained or bound by the text of the Constitution. All it takes is five hands."

Scalia, who was nominated by President Reagan in 1986 and confirmed by a Senate vote of 98-0, said these days a so-called conservative judge is politically frozen out of the process.

"What in the world is a moderate interpretation of the text?" he asked, drawing soft laughter from the audience. "Halfway between what it really says and what you want it to say?"

This is supposed to be a nation based on the rule of law. We know what happens to societies in which the rule of law fails, yet what Justice Scalia has said leaves no doubt that the rule of law has been essentially abandoned all the way up to the Supreme Court. Justice Louis Brandeis wrote in his dissent to U.S. v. Olmstead -

Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subject to the rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for the law. It invites every man to become a law unto himself. It invites anarchy.

And we're seeing that, more and more, every day. Aren't we.

| posted by Kevin at 10:40 PM PermaLink

 
Your Negative Attack-Ad Kerry For President Bumperstickers

Just received via email. Spread 'em around:

| posted by Kevin at 6:21 PM PermaLink

 
The Scary Looking Gun Ban

The Laughing Wolf delivers an excellent smackdown on a relative who expressed support for the AWB in his post The Scary Looking Gun Ban. Really, really well done.

And the Laughing Wolf is a Farscape supporter! Outstanding!

| posted by Kevin at 2:10 PM PermaLink

 
Thank You, James

James Lileks, in his extraordinary eloquence, responded to yesterday's bombings in Spain in today's Bleat. James says what I wish I had, the way I wish I could but haven't the talent to.

Go read.

| posted by Kevin at 8:48 AM PermaLink

 
Even Tom Diaz of the VPC Admits the AWB is Useless

I paid $4.95 for the transcript of *hawk, spit* NPR's Morning Edition story about the failure of S. 1805 after the AWB extension and "gun show loophole" amendments were added, after I saw Eugene Volokh's post quoting Tom Diaz of the Gun Ban Violence Policy Center. Here's the complete Diaz quote:

If the existing assault weapons ban expires, I personally do not believe it will make one whit of difference one way or another in terms of our objective, which is reducing death and injury and getting a particularly lethal class of firearms off the streets. So if it doesn't pass, it doesn't pass.

Remember, however, what the VPC said so blatantly about an "assault weapon" ban in 1988:

It will be a new topic in what has become to the press and public an "old" debate.

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.

Efforts to stop restrictions on assault weapons will only further alienate the police from the gun lobby.

Until recently, police organizations viewed the gun lobby in general, and the NRA in particular, as a reliable friend. This stemmed in part from the role the NRA played in training officers and its reputation regarding gun safety and hunter training. Yet, throughout the 1980s, the NRA has found itself increasingly on the opposite side of police on the gun control issue. Its opposition to legislation banning armor-piercing ammunition, plastic handguns, and machine guns, and its drafting of and support for the McClure/Volkmer handgun decontrol bill, burned many of the bridges the NRA had built throughout the past hundred years. As the result of this, the Law Enforcement Steering Committee was formed. The Committee now favors such restriction measures as waiting periods with background check for handgun purchase and a ban on machine guns and plastic firearms. If police continue to call for assault weapons restrictions, and the NRA continues to fight such measures, the result can only be a further tarnishing of the NRA's image in the eyes of the public, the police, and NRA members. The organization will no longer be viewed as the defender of the sportsman, but as the defender of the drug dealer.

Efforts to restrict assault weapons are more likely to succeed than those to restrict handguns.

Although the majority of Americans favor stricter handgun controls, and a consistent 40 percent of Americans favor banning the private sale and possession of handguns, many Americans do believe that handguns are effective weapons for home self-defense and the majority of Americans mistakenly believe that the Second Amendment of the Constitution guarantees the individual right to keep and bear arms. Yet, many who support the individual's right to own a handgun have second thoughts when the issue comes down to assault weapons. Assault weapons are often viewed the same way as machine guns and "plastic" firearms—a weapon that poses such a grave risk that it's worth compromising a perceived constitutional right.

Although the opportunity to restrict assault weapons exists, a question remains for the handgun restriction movement: How? Defining an assault weapon—in legal terms—is not easy. It's not merely a matter of going after guns that are "black and wicked looking."

Charles Krauthammer had one point correct in his editorial "Disarm the Citizenry, But Not Yet":

Ultimately, a civilized society must disarm its citizenry if it is to have a modicum of domestic tranquility of the kind enjoyed by sister democracies such as Canada and Britain.(See Britain's current violent crime rate for some idea of its "domestic tranquility." Hell, now they're trying to get rid of glass beer bottles because they make such handy weapons.) Given the frontier history and individualist ideology of the United States, however, this will not come easily. It certainly cannot be done radically. It will probably take one, maybe two generations. It might be 50 years before the United States gets to where Britain is today. Passing a law like the assault weapons ban is a symbolic - purely symbolic - move in that direction. Its only real justification is not to reduce crime but to desensitize the public to the regulation of weapons in preparation for their ultimate confiscation.

The VPC is at least honest and upfront about its goal of banning all handguns and its willingness to do anything, anything to reach that goal.

| posted by Kevin at 10:40 PM PermaLink

 
Speaking of Teddy Kennedy...

Let's fisk his little rant from his Senate testimony on S. 1805 concerning armor-piercing ammo:

As we all know too well, the debate about gun violence has often been aggressive and polarizing with anti-gun violence advocates on one side of the debate, pro-gun advocates on the other. There are deep divisions in the country on the issue of gun safety, and the current debate on the gun immunity bill has thus far only served to highlight those divisions.

I believe, however, that there are still some principles on which we can all agree. One principle is that we should do everything we can to protect the lives and safety of police officers who are working to protect our streets, schools, and communities.

The amendment I am offering today is intended to close the existing loopholes in the Federal law that bans cop-killer bullets. Police officers depend on body armor for their lives. Body armor has saved thousands of police officers from death or serious injury by firearm assault. Most police officers who serve large jurisdictions wear armor at all times when on duty. Nevertheless, even with body armor, too many police officers remain vulnerable to gun violence.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, every year between 50 and 80 police officers are feloniously killed in the line of duty. In 2002, firearms were used in 51 of the 56 murders of police officers. In those shootings, 34 of the officers were wearing body armor at the time of their deaths. From 1992 to 2002, at least 20 police officers were killed after bullets penetrated their armor vests and entered their upper torso.

Some gun organizations have argued that cop-killer bullets are a myth. The families of these slain police officers know better. In fact, we know that armor-piercing ammunition is not a myth because it is openly and notoriously marketed and sold by gun dealers.

I direct my colleagues' attention to the Web site of Hi-Vel, Incorporated, a self-described exotic products distributor and manufacturer in Delta, UT. You can access its online catalog on the Internet right now. Hi-Vel's catalog lists an entry for armor-piercing ammunition. On that page you will find a listing for armor-piercing bullets that can penetrate metal objects. The bullets are available in packages of 10 for $9.95 each. Hi-Vel carries armor-piercing bullets for both the .223 caliber rifles such as the Bushmaster sniper rifle used in the Washington area attacks in October 2002, and the 7.62 caliber assault weapons. Over the past 10 years, these two caliber weapons were responsible for the deaths of 14 of the 20 law enforcement officers killed by ammunition that penetrated body armor.

Check the sleight-of-hand here. Hi-Vel does indeed sell "armor piercing" ammunition designed to penetrate steel. But police vests aren't made of steel. They are made of kevlar fiber. The police wear relatively soft, relatively flexible National Institute of Justice Class II, IIA or IIIA rated vests at best. These vests are designed to stop 9mm, .357 Magnum, and .44 Magnum handgun rounds, respectively. In order to stop any centerfire rifle round, "armor piercing" or not, would require moving up to the heavy, rigid Class III and Class IV vests worn by our military personnel. You'll remember the Class IV vests from the "embedded" journalists during the invasion of Iraq. They were those very heavy vests with the splatter-deflecting collars that looked so uncomfortable, like this one:

But Senator Kennedy, like all gun control zealots, wants to convince you that it requires special "armor-piercing" ammunition to penetrate a soft Class II, IIA or IIIA police vest. He wants you to believe that the officers killed with .223 and 7.62mm so-called "assault weapons" were using ammunition like Hi-Vel's ammo, and not off the shelf standard hunting ammo or even more common military surplus full metal jacket rounds. He expects his listeners to be ignorant, and to believe what he doesn't say.

In a recent report, the ATF identified three, .223 and the 7.62 caliber rifles, as the ones most frequently encountered by police officers. These high-capacity rifles, the ATF wrote, pose an enhanced threat to law enforcement, in part because of their ability to expel particles at velocities that are capable of penetrating the type of soft body armor typically worn by law enforcement officers.

"Particles"? I think the Senator meant "projectiles." What he doesn't say is that any centerfire rifle "expels particles" at velocities high enough to penetrate soft body armor. That's why the National Institute of Justice classifies vests as it does. But the facts are just too inconvenient for the Senator.

Here's where he really goes off into the twilight zone, though:

Another rifle caliber, the 30.30 caliber, was responsible for penetrating three officers' armor and killing them in 1993, 1996, and 2002. This ammunition is also capable of puncturing light-armored vehicles, ballistic or armored glass, armored limousines, even a 600-pound safe with 600 pounds of safe armor plating.

Say WHAT?

The .30-30 was introduced in 1895 as the .30 Winchester Centerfire, chambered in the "high-capacity assault weapon" of its day, the Winchester 1894 lever-action rifle. This is a '94 Winchester:

Scary, isn't it? It was one of the first commercial cartridges loaded with then-new smokeless powder, but it was stuck with the cartridge naming convention of the era - bullet diameter and black powder load equivalent: A .30 caliber bullet and 30 grains of black powder. According to my copy of Hodgdon's No. 25 reloading manual, the standard .30-30 load pushes a 150 grain bullet at about 2200 feet per second out of a rifle with a 24" barrel. The bullet used in the .30-30 normally has a blunt, flat tip because of the tubular magazine normally used in lever-action rifles. Yet Teddy Kennedy wants us to believe that this magical round - responsible for the deaths of three officers - is capable of penetrating "600 pounds of safe armor plating." Whatever the hell that means. Sounds impressive, doesn't it? Here's some comparisons:

The .30-30, 150 grain bullet, 2200 feet per second.

The .308 Winchester (7.62NATO), 150 grain bullet, 2600 feet per second

The .30-06, 150 grain bullet, 2800 feet per second.

The .300 Winchester Magnum, 150 grain bullet, 3100 feet per second.

The .300 Remington UltraMag, 150 grain bullet, 3400 feet per second.

.30-378 Weatherby, 150 grain bullet, 3500 feet per second

Here's a picture to give you some idea of the cartridges.

From right to left, smallest to largest: .308 Winchester, .30-06 Springfield, .300 Winchester Magnum, .300 Remington UltraMag, and the .30-378 Weatherby.

Remember, the lowly .30-30 is fast enough to penetrate a Class IIIA vest.

Yet Senator Kennedy doesn't want people to think that he's interested in banning hunting ammunition, just ammunition that can penetrate a soft police vest.

It is outrageous and unconscionable that such ammunition continues to be sold in the United States of America. Armor-piercing ammunition for rifles and assault weapons is virtually unregulated in the United States.

"Assault weapons" like the '94 Winchester.

A Federal license is not required to sell such ammunition unless firearms are sold as well. Anyone over the age of 18 may purchase this ammunition without a background check. There is no Federal minimum age of possession. Purchases may be made over the counter, by mail order, by fax, by Internet, and there is no Federal requirement that dealers retain sales records.

Note all these things that the Senator wants: Background checks for ammunition sales. A minimum age for possession of rifle ammunition. Dealer record keeping for ammunition sales - a record keeping requirement that would convince most retailers that it was simply too much trouble to sell ammo.

And now he goes off on the current boogeyman, the evil .50BMG rifle:

In 1999, investigators for the General Accounting Office went undercover to assess the availability of .50 caliber armor-piercing ammunition. Purchasing cop-killer bullets, it turned out, is only slightly more difficult than buying a lottery ticket or a gallon of milk. Dealers in Delaware, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia informed the investigators that the purchase of these kinds of ammunition is subject to no Federal, State, or local restrictions. Dealers in Alaska, Nebraska, and Oregon who advertised over the Internet told an undercover agent that he could buy the ammunition in a matter of minutes, even after he said he wanted the bullets shipped to Washington, DC, and needed them to pierce an armored limousine or theoretically take down a helicopter. Talk about homeland security.

The .50 BMG round, by virtue of its weight and velocity (750 grains at 2800 fps) will pentrate any body armor, and even if it didn't, that much kinetic energy would most probably kill a human being from mere shock. Kennedy has pulled a sleight-of-hand here - he's not talking about protecting officers in soft body armor any more, but he hasn't bothered to tell anybody.

In a single year, over 100,000 rounds of military surplus armor-piercing ammunition were sold to civilians in the United States.

And there were how many officers shot through their vests and killed? Twenty, between 1992 and 2002, according to the Senator. That's two per year, versus one million rounds of "armor piercing" ammunition sold. And not one of those officers was killed with an "armor piercing" round. They were killed with standard, everyday centerfire rifle ammo.

And now he goes off on Smith & Wesson's horrible new .500 S&W Magnum, the new weapon designed, in his eyes, specifically to kill cops:

In addition, the gun manufacturer, Smith & Wesson, recently introduced a powerful new revolver, the .500 magnum, 4-1/2 pounds, 15 inches long, that clearly has the capability of piercing body armor using ammunition allowed under the current law.

Well, it is bigger than the .44 Magnum, I'll give him that.

The publication, Gun Week, reviewed the new weapon with enthusiasm: "Behold the magic, feel the power,'' it wrote.

Many of our leaders will buy the Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum for the same reason that Edmund Hillary climbed Mt. Everest: Because it is there.

Note the ad doesn't say:

Many of our leaders will buy the Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum because it will penetrate body armor and kill cops.

Teddy just hates it because people will want it, and the proles shouldn't own guns.

Current Federal law bans certain armor-piercing ammunition for handguns. It establishes a content-based standard. It covers ammunition that is, first of all, constructed from tungsten alloys, steel, iron, brass, bronze, beryllium, copper, or depleted uranium or, secondly, larger than .22 caliber with a jacket that weighs no more than 25 percent of the total weight of the bullet.

However, there are no restrictions on ammunition that may be manufactured from other materials but can still penetrate body armor. Even more important, there are no restrictions on armor-piercing ammunition used in rifles and assault weapons. Armor-piercing ammunition has no purpose other than penetrating bulletproof vests. It is of no use for hunting or self-defense. Such armor-piercing ammunition has no place in our society--none.

Except you don't need "armor piercing" ammunition to penetrate "bulletproof" vests. Standard soft-point hunting ammo from a .30-30 will do the job, as Teddy pointed out.

Armor-piercing bullets that sidestep the Federal ban, such as that advertised on Hi-Vel's Web site, put the lives of American citizens and those sworn to defend American citizens in jeopardy every single day. We know the terrorists are now exploiting the weaknesses and loopholes in our gun laws. The terrorists training manual discovered by American soldiers in Afghanistan in 2001 advised al-Qaida operatives to buy assault weapons in the United States and use them against us.

Terrorists are bent on exploiting weaknesses in our gun laws. Just think of what a terrorist could do with a sniper rifle and only a moderate supply of armor-piercing ammunition.

Just think what he could do with a .300 Magnum bolt-action rifle and some decent 168 grain match rounds. But Teddy doesn't want to take away sporting ammunition, right?

My amendment amends the Federal ban on cop-killer bullets to include a performance standard and extends the ban on centerfire rifles, which include the sniper rifles and assault weapons responsible for the deaths of 17 police officers whose body armor was penetrated by this ammunition.

My amendment will not apply to ammunition that is now routinely used in hunting rifles or other centerfire rifles. To the contrary, it only covers ammunition that is designed or marketed as having armor-piercing capability. That is it--designed or marketed as having armor-piercing capability, such as armor-piercing ammunition that is now advertised on the Hi-Vel Web site.

Bullets that are designed or marketed to be armor piercing have no place in our society. Ducks, deer, and other wildlife do not wear body armor. Police officers do. We should not let another day pass without plugging the loopholes in the Federal law that bans cop-killer bullets.

This is an issue on which mainstream gun owners and gun safety advocates can agree. I urge my colleagues to vote in support of this amendment.

Except we "mainstream gun owners" understand that standard rifle ammo will immediately become a "loophole" because, by design or not, it can penetrate police vests.

And if the lowly .30-30 is "capable of puncturing light-armored vehicles, ballistic or armored glass, armored limousines, even a 600-pound safe with 600 pounds of safe armor plating" then we know he's going to go after our 7mm Magnums, our .30-06 bolt-actions, and every other centerfire rifle cartridge extant.

All he needs is an open door, and a law that the lawmakers "don't realize all that was in it."

A professional politician is a professionally dishonorable man. In order to get anywhere near high office he has to make so many compromises and submit to so many humiliations that he becomes indistinguishable from a streetwalker.

Henry Louis Mencken

And Teddy's a prime example.

Labels: fisk, gun control, law

| posted by Kevin at 8:55 PM PermaLink

 
"There's No Way to Rule Innocent Men" Redux

The Geek points to this Fox News op-ed on the law and the reaction of Congresscritters to the realities of the McCain-Feingold Incumbent Protection Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act. Selected excerpts:

Last week, Martha Stewart was convicted of lying to federal investigators about a crime with which she was never charged. Most analysts agree that prosecutors never charged Stewart with the crime of insider trading because it’s a law too complicated for most jurors to understand.

Putting your personal opinion of Stewart aside for a moment, the case prompts larger questions about the laws and regulations that govern our land: If jurors can’t understand a law well enough to determine if someone broke it, just how do lawmakers expect citizens to understand it enough to obey it? Do we really want to live in a country where good-intentioned people are required to pay high-priced attorneys to tell them whether or not they’re breaking the law?

America has too many laws, and the laws we do have are tedious, overly complex and sometimes not only impossible to understand, but impossible to comply with. Our elected officials pass laws in fits of whimsy, responding to the latest scare headlines, demands from interest groups or data from polling firms. Reason, freedom or constitutional authority rarely enter into the debate.

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary" - Henry Louis Mencken.

Now think upon the words of the ancient Roman historian Cornelius Tacitus: "Corruptissima res publica plurimae leges." (The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.")

The Federal Registry (search), which records all of the regulations the federal government imposes on businesses (all of which carry the force of law), now exceeds 75,000 pages.

--

It’s even worse with regulation. With the EPA, for example, it’s often impossible for corporations in some industries to abide by one environmental regulation without violating another. That’s fertile ground for corruption, particularly when the same body is charged with making, enforcing and adjudicating the law.

And then there's the Rand quote from Atlas Shrugged:

There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted -- and you create a nation of law-breakers -- and then you cash in on the guilt. Now that’s the system!

It certainly appears to be. And now Congress has done it to itself, in some small degree:

Although Congress generally exempts itself from most of the laws it passes, this law (the McCain-Feingold Incumbent Protection Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act) applies specifically to Congress. The same congressmen who voted for the bill were now required to abide by it. Faced themselves with the burden of complying with the complex, inches-thick laws they pass for others, both parties were forced to hold education sessions with specialty lawyers explaining to them what they could and couldn’t do under the new law. A lawyer who taught the Democrats told The New York Times that his seminars elicited “a sort of slack-jawed amazement at how far this thing reached.” A lawyer who taught the Republicans said: “There's an initial stage where the reaction is, 'This can't be true.' And then there's the actual anger stage." Democratic Rep. Henry Matsui, who championed the bill, told the Times, “I didn’t realize all that was in it.”

That’s how much careful consideration Congress gave a bill it passed that applied to itself. Now imagine how little thought and care goes into bills it passes that apply to everyone else.

The answer, of course, is none.

Now they get some idea of the reaction of those of us "little people" in the flyover states when they pass this stuff without a thought.

No wonder Teddy Kennedy is worried about the limousine-armor-piercing capabilities of the .30-30 cartridge, eh?

We have the greatest opportunity the world has ever seen, as long as we remain honest - which will be as long as we can keep the attention of our people alive. If they once become inattentive to public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, judges and governors would all become wolves. - Thomas Jefferson

Nice idea Mr. Jefferson. But it didn't last.

| posted by Kevin at 7:39 PM PermaLink

 
What's Next? Licensing and Registration for Bar Glasses?

I'm still seething over the bomb attacks in Spain, but haven't got anything printable to say about it, yet.

I did, however, find this unassociated story:

New pint glasses to cut violence

A new type of pint pot is to be introduced into bars to reduce the number of "glassings".
Council licensing officers in Rossendale, Lancashire, are testing safety glasses which shatter into small pieces on impact.

The glass is similar to the type used for car windscreens.

Under new legislation, it will soon be possible for councils to demand bars where there have been disorder problems to stock the glasses.


Lancashire Police officer Pc Chris Adams said: "There are many events this year, in particular, Euro 2004, that could be the sparking point for violence.

"We want to prevent that violence, but if it does happen, this product will reduce the effects of it."

Let's see: They banned guns and knives, don't allow pepper spray, and now are making bars use glasses that can't hurt anybody.

In association with that story comes this one:

Plastic bottles backed by MPs

Welsh MPs want to call time on glass bottles in bars and pubs.
They have signed a motion in the House of Commons calling for glass bottles to be replaced by safer multi-layered plastic ones.

They are backing research by the University of Wales College of Medicine in Cardiff, which shows that thousands of fight injuries could be prevented if clubs served drink in plastic bottles.

The man behind the study, plastic surgeon Jon Shepherd, said the MPs' support was another step in the campaign to see Cardiff bars with a high-risk of violence selling only plastic bottles, perhaps within two years.

Theres's more, but this is the money quote:

"City centres are littered with glass, particularly bottles, strewn everywhere. Anyone looking for a scrap has a weapon readily available."

Thus spake plastic surgeon Jon Shepherd.

Think about that. He's worried that someone just looking for scrap might come upon a weapon in the form of a broken bottle. A weapon that, apparently in his mind, would immediately turn this person into a fiendish killer, as weapons do to everyone since they give off mind-altering radiation.

Jesus!

England, the soon-to-be NERF nation.

| posted by Kevin at 3:18 PM PermaLink

 
More on Guns and Kids

From across the pond, Mr. Free Market weighs in on how he's raising his son to be a future customer of the firearms trade, and the Backroad Blog has something to say about the topic as well (which is where found the link.)
| posted by Kevin at 11:42 AM PermaLink

 
It's Not a GUN CONTROL Problem

Today's Washington Post has this column by Courtland Milloy:

So Many Guns In the Hands Of Children

Police officers George Young and Sylvester Garvin III were on routine patrol last month in the District when they detained a juvenile who was driving without a seat belt. Asked for his driver's license, the boy took off -- only to be caught again.

"We asked him why he ran," Young recalled. "He said, 'I have a gun.' "

In fact, the boy, who is 14, had two guns: a Mac-11 semiautomatic handgun and a .380 semiautomatic pistol, both fully loaded.

First, he's a 14 year-old boy driving a car. No comment about that?

Since the arrest Feb. 3, however, the case has virtually disappeared behind a shroud of official secrecy, behind one set of laws that protects the identity of juveniles and another that restricts the release of information about confiscated guns. But the questions remain: Who was that 14-year-old boy? How did he get those guns? Why did he have them?

According to a 2002 report by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, 57 percent of recovered "crime guns" in the District were taken from people 24 years old and younger.

Handguns accounted for 82 percent of the District's crime guns, with the semiautomatic pistol being the weapon of choice -- especially for those 17 years old and younger, according to the report.

"It's a shock to sensibility," said John P. Malone, the ATF special agent in charge of the Washington field office. "At 14, you're supposed to be a freshman in high school, not driving around with guns."

For one thing, it's a perfect example of the fact that "gun control" doesn't work. DC keeps trading places with that other "gun control" mecca, Chicago, for the highest homicide rate in cities larger than 500,000 population.

The ATF, it should be noted, is neither pro-gun nor anti-gun.

Really? You've obviously not been keeping up with the ATF's actions, then.

Part of its mission is to trace guns that have been used in the commission of crimes and to keep firearms away from ineligible receivers.

Last year, 1,982 guns were confiscated in the District -- where a ban on handgun ownership has been in place since 1979 -- and turned over to the ATF for tracing. Moreover, 77 percent of the city's 243 homicides last year were gun-related.

Then DC is significantly above the national average, because according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, firearms nationwide are used in only about 70% of homicides.

Boy those gun bans really make you safer, don't they?

So far this year, D.C. police have seized 387 illegal weapons. The Mac-11 (which police initially said was a Mac-10 submachine gun) and the .380 semiautomatic were among them.

"I thought, 'What is a 14-year-old doing with this kind of fighting power?' " recalled Young, who is 30 and has been a police officer for two years.

Shouldn't you have asked "What has driven kids like this to create a market that supplies them these weapons?" Nobody just came up and handed the kid these guns. There aren't gun manufacturers going around like drug pushers giving them their first gun for free just to get them hooked (though to hear the VPC, et. al you'd believe that.)

The boy was arrested in the 700 block of Yuma Street SE, in Washington Highlands, the neighborhood where Young grew up.

"We weren't into guns when I was growing up, unless we were playing cowboys with cap guns," Young said. "Firearms were off limits. Kids my age just didn't see guns. But this younger generation is different. Every day that I'm on the street, I expect to face juveniles who are armed. And I know what a 14-year-old is capable of."

When I was growing up, I was exposed to guns, and did see them. And I also played "cowboys" (the politically-correct term for "cowboys and indians") with cap guns and other toy guns - a behavior that the PC crowd today wants to eliminate because it "breeds violent behavior." I doubt this youngster ever played "cowboys" in his neighborhood. He played "gangsta."

Young hastened to add that such youngsters also are capable of doing good and doubtlessly would do much more of it if given the chance.

"Hastened" because to do otherwise would be seen as un-PC.

This is the liberal "all people are inherently good" position, which I disagree with. People are not inherently good. They are inherently neutral, and develop behavior based on their environment. The poor, urban, welfare environment is what's responsible for this, not the "easy availability of guns" - but it's much easier to blame the guns than to face the failure of decades of well-meaning but (literally) homicidally flawed social policy and try to address that. It can't be the fault of liberal social policies! It can't be the result of conservative prohibitions! It must be because of those evil gun manufacturers who make Mac-11's and "Saturday Night Special" .380's!

"What I'm seeing is a lot of children raising children, parents allowing their children to do anything they want," he said. "When you're that young and facing adult situations, you're going to make a lot of wrong decisions. You're going to go for the simple and easy and fast, because you don't see people working long and hard to make it."

At least officer Young is willing to state, and the WaPo is willing to print, that the problem has to do with the fact that these kids aren't being raised, but that avoids the underlying cause of that neglect.

The ATF report notes that 55 percent of the District's traceable crime guns were purchased initially in Maryland or Virginia and that Bryco Arms and Lorcin Engineering 9mm semiautomatic pistols were the preferred weapons of most youths caught with firearms in the District.

Those models can cost as little as $100 if bought in, say, Georgia. But in the District, with its gun ban, they can fetch as much as $300.

See! It's the gunmakers fault! It's the fault of the loopholes in gun control laws! It's the fault of unscrupulous gun dealers!

I'm sure this kid drove down to a gun shop in Virgina and slid past the NICS check when he bought that Mac-11, which sells for in excess of $350, according to GunsAmerica.com.

Anyone wonder where a 14 year-old comes up with, say, $300 to buy a Bryco .380?

Asked about the high demand for guns in D.C., Young said: "For many of these young people, a firearm is like money. It makes you powerful. You can use it to collect so many things the wrong way. A kid with a gun can take a vehicle. He can take someone's livelihood or his manhood or his life. The person who gets violated may want to retaliate, but if he doesn't have a gun, then he's not capable. The one with the gun feels immortal, as if life is stopping for him."

The 14-year-old's mini-arsenal certainly made people stop and think, just not for very long.

And, like this article does, it made them think about the wrong questions.

Young, urban, black males are overwhelmingly the victims of homicide. It's an epidemic among that specific population. Less than 13% of the population provides 47% of the victims of homicide, yet we're told that guns are the root cause of the problem, and are the only vector for fighting this "public health concern."

No, a combination of the misguided "War on (some) Drugs®" and the even more destructive "War on Poverty™" are the primary vectors here.

Unless and until we are willing to face the failures of both of these policies, young urban black males will continue to kill each other at epidemic levels - levels six times that of the general population. But instead, people like Courtland Milloy will continue to push for more "gun controls" that will inevitably fail to affect the slaughter.

| posted by Kevin at 10:56 AM PermaLink

 
Tyranny and Its Fringes, Part VII

Francis Porretto has Part VII up now. The links to the previous six pieces are here.

Go. Read. Ponder.

| posted by Kevin at 7:03 PM PermaLink

 
My Invitation to Paul Vitello

I just sent this email:

Mr. Vitello:

I wrote a hostile dissection of your original piece on gun control, and I called you a blatant liar - pointing out several of your assertions that were, at best, hyperbole. That piece is here:
http://www.smallestminority.blogspot.com/2004_02_29_smallestminority_archive.html#107853301015717758

I have done the same to your most recent piece, where I have again illustrated that you are in error. That piece is here:

http://www.smallestminority.blogspot.com/2004_03_07_smallestminority_archive.html#107885502842211218

I called you a liar, Mr. Vitello. I believe your statements to be deliberate and knowingly wrong, not mere misstatements of the ignorant - though you do appear to be unsurprisingly ignorant on the topic as well.

You said: "I do not know why there are any objections, though, to laws protecting citizens from nuts and criminals - and terrorists - who want to buy assault rifles at any sporting goods store in America."

I'd love to discuss that topic with you, at length. The answer isn't simple or obvious, and it requires quite a bit of background information and education to understand. There's a REASON "(t)he gun lobby is intensely well-organized to fight every single one of these laws, however, and to make each one as ineffective as possible." The "gun lobby," Mr. Vitello, is several million politically active but otherwise average American citizens who happen to believe that the Bill of Rights actually means something. All of it.

So here's my invitation: If you really want to understand the reaction your piece drew, let's discuss gun control, preferably in a public forum. I promise you, you'll learn a lot. I don't expect to "convert" you - but you will understand WHY we believe what we believe when we're finished, even if you do not accept that belief.

I await your response, but don't honestly expect one.

| posted by Kevin at 11:43 AM PermaLink

 
Paul Vitello, Serial Liar, Responds

Apparently the response to Mr. Vitello's Newsday piece drew a lot of fire, metaphorically speaking. Enough that Mr. Vitello felt a need to comment:

Readers' lock-n-load response

Are you lonely? Do you crave attention from passionate and devoted respondents? Would you like to receive letters, e-mails and phone calls by the hundreds, so many that you pine for that lonely old life you used to know?

Well, here's the answer: Write something favorable about gun control. Lament how easy it still is to buy semi-automatic assault weapons such as the one used in the Washington, D.C., sniper case by John Allen Muhammad and John Lee Malvo. Get your hand-wringing piece published in the newspaper.

For good measure, throw in some improper gun terminology - get your AR-15s mixed up with your AK-47s - just to show how little time you have spent in your life killing little leaf-eating mammals. Then, feel the heat as gun enthusiasts from all over the country devote their passionate attention to your once-lonesome self.

"If I hit someone in the head with a hammer, who's fault is it, mine or the hammer's?" wrote one such enthusiast, responding to a column I wrote last week about efforts in Congress to end existing restrictions on the sale and manufacture of assault weapons. The NRA has made ending the assault ban one of its top priorities.

"Personally, I think you are a dumb --, but as long as you are fighting against the freedoms of all Americans, I wouldn't have you any other way."

The letters and e-mails were angry and contemptuous and, I regret to say, too well-written for my taste. All pointed out some errors of fact by me:

The Bushmaster XM-15 assault rifle, used by Muhammad and Malvo to kill 10 people in the Washington, D.C., area in 2002, is not a civilian version of the AK-47 rifle, as I stated, but a semi-automatic version of the automatic AR-15 rifle used by the U.S. military. Excuse me.

It is also, apparently, not killer enough to be termed a "sniper rifle" in the military sense. As one respondent explained: "just because a sniper uses a rifle doesn't make that gun a 'sniper rifle.'" I erred again.

"I once heard that it is better to remain quiet and seem a fool than speak and remove all doubt. Never have those words been more accurate," wrote a Mr. Manos of Springdale, Ariz.

But by far the most serious complaint was about my implication that all a buyer needed to buy an assault weapon is a driver's license and money.

"When you only tell half a story it's the same as lying," wrote L.C. of Woodmere.

Here is the rest of the story, as best I can tell. A federal law was adopted in 1998 requiring a background check for anyone purchasing a handgun or long gun. If you go to a gun store to buy a gun, after asking for your money and your license, they will run your name through the FBI's National Crime Information Center, or NCIC system.known as NCIS.

Gun control advocates and members of Congress have complained since the implementation of the 1998 law that the NCIC is a sieve, however. More than 30 million criminal records are missing from it.

The NCIC depends heavily on information provided by states; and too many states have failed to computerize and update their records. Two cases in point: John Allen Muhammad was able to buy his Bushmaster despite a court order-of-protection pending against him for having threatened his ex-wife, a disqualifier not in the NCIC system. And Peter Troy, despite a long history of mental illness, was able to buy a rifle in 2002 and kill two people at Our Lady of Christ Church, Lynbrook. He wasn't in the system either.

THE LYING MOTHER%*^%&# DOES IT AGAIN!

Malvo has confessed that he stole the Bushmaster. They've already gotten another man for doing a straw-purchase of a Remington 700 bolt-action rifle for Muhammed from the same store! But this sorry bastard claims that Muhammed bought the Bushmaster, and slipped through the NICS check! Peter Troy bought a .22 caliber rifle - not an assault weapon - another case of bait-and-switch. Surely with just a bit of research he could have turned up an incident where a nutcase bought an AK and mowed down a crowd? No? Further, Peter Troy had no criminal record. He had a history of mental illness - a record protected by the doctor-patient relationship. I don't know if Mr. Troy had ever been involuntarily placed in custodial care, which would have disqualified him, but that's the difference between me and Mr. Vitello - I tell you when I don't know - he just goes and makes up "facts" to fit his agenda.

The e-mails have slowed down since yesterday. But I had to stop picking up the phone on Friday because of the many calls from shooters who were earnest or angry or both, and wanting big chunks of my ear.

I heard them. They have their case to make, and they made it.

I do not know why there are any objections, though, to laws protecting citizens from nuts and criminals - and terrorists - who want to buy assault rifles at any sporting goods store in America.

Mr. Vitello, I'd be more than happy to debate this topic with you. You drop me a line. I'll set it up.

The gun lobby is intensely well-organized to fight every single one of these laws, however, and to make each one as ineffective as possible.

That's because we believe "shall not be infringed" means what it says.

That includes deluging with complaints and letters people who argue in any way against their culture of weapons.

I am not lonely, to tell you the truth; and I actually don't like being buried in angry communications. But better that than to be buried at the hands of the next Peter Troy.

There is no Constitutional guarantee of safety, Mr. Vitello. Our Founders understood that.

| posted by Kevin at 11:15 AM PermaLink

 
And Another

A Call (Or Recall) To Arms

Stan Hall is the Director of the Victim Witness Program for the Gwinnett County District Attorney's Office. He is also the host of the Gwinnett County Communication Network's television show "Behind the Badge."

I have never met a conservative who did not support the constitutional rights that we, as Americans, have to bear arms. In fact, most conservatives will tell you very quickly that the right to bear arms is one of the foundations of our Constitution and it is just as important as any of our guaranteed rights.

This right has proved very beneficial on many documented cases when our forefathers were called to defend themselves from everything from tyranny to carpetbaggers and many other threats that were thwarted by fast moving projectiles from the muzzle of a gun.

Not just our forefathers. We're still doing it today.

Our country's history is steeped deeply in the fact that every American has the right to protect themselves, their family, and their homes. This defense has been most often performed by the use of a firearm. I am one of those conservatives that truly believe everything that I have alluded to thus far. If you are waiting for the "however" part; well here it comes!

Personally, I find myself in a position whereby I eschew anything that has to do with the weakening of the rights concerning firearm possession. On the other hand, I have been involved professionally as a law enforcement person who is sworn to do everything possible to protect life and property. An interesting dilemma; don't you think? Is it possible to stand by the principles of your political beliefs and also believe in something that will be beneficial in your sworn duty at the same time? My Libertarian friends would answer that question with a very loud "no." My liberal friends (I do actually have some) would answer just as quickly with, "of course." Libertarians would like to see all waiting periods repealed, as well as, to do away with anything that prohibits an individual to carry a concealed firearm. Liberals think that we should extend the waiting period and that, most often; no one ever needs to carry a concealed weapon.

Hold on, here. What you're saying is that as a "law enforcement person" you see beneficial aspects in weakening the rights concerning firearm possession? Well, then, I'm right with your Libertarian friends. What you're advocating is statism - "big brother knows better." That's in direct opposition to what you state you believe politically. But to continue...

Personally, I find myself somewhere in the middle of all of them. But professionally, I have come to a conclusion that will probably make segments of both groups, not to mention my conservative friends upset. I cannot imagine a reason where there would be a need for a citizen to possess an assault type weapon.

You can't? The Founders could. Legal scholars can. Sitting judges can. I feel for your inability to reason, but why should I allow you to affect my rights?

These weapons are not even issued to police officers with the exception of specialized units.

That is incorrect, Mr. Hall. AR-15 rifles are common equipment in many patrol cars, having replaced the ubiquitous riot shotgun in many jurisdictions. Perhaps not in Georgia, but in many municipalities. There is, for example, a minor brouhaha going on in the Calexico, California police department over whether their officers - all of them - should be allowed "assault rifles" that are denied to the general public. Calexico is hardly a major metropolis. New Jersey has an "assault weapon" exemption for police officers - one that recently bit officer Ken Moose, Jr. on the ass. If you're a law-enforcement officer, you should be aware of this fact.

But, now we have armed robberies, home invasions, and assaults on police officers during the commission of a crime where assault weapons are commonplace.

Another lie. Blatant, unrepentant, out and out lie. The first one I can let go as a mere oversight. This one I cannot.

Long guns - all of them - are used in only about 13% of firearm-involved crime, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and if homicide is any indicator, about half those long-gun crimes are committed with shotguns. Violent crime involving firearms has been declining since 1991, not increasing. Hell, Diane Feinstein claims the "assault weapons ban" caused "assault weapon" useage to decline. You don't get it both ways, Mr. Hall. The use of "assault weapons" in crime is a rarity - not "commonplace."

It seems absurd that criminals are showing up better armed than police officers whose job it is to protect the public.

Why? It's always been that way. It wasn't that long ago that cops carried "service revolvers" in .38 Special, and people protested their "upgunning" to .357 Magnums. Now they carry "high-capacity" semi-auto pistols and "assault rifles" in their cruisers.

It is no longer uncommon for police officers to find themselves in a scenario where their body armor will not even stop the ammunition that is being fired on them.

If the are being shot at with a rifle, no standard soft vest is going to stop the round. But here you're - quite intentionally - raising the spectre (in the meaning of "phantom") of the "cop-killer bullet" fantasy. Another deliberate mendacity?

Quite frankly, when someone buys an assault weapon, it should be assumed that it will be used for some type of an assault. Many gun enthusiasts will dispute this by countering that they maybe (sic) for assaults fro (sic) some, for them the weapons are for competitive shooting, collector series, and all of the other reasons that may be legitimate. Despite these legitimate reasons, the majority of these weapons are being used to kill people in a violent act. They are causing law enforcement agencies all over this country to upgrade their arsenals simply to be competitive with the bad guys.

Willful, blatant, inexcuseable LIE

Our good buddies at the Violence Policy Center have provided an accounting of firearms manufactured in the U.S. According to them, Armalite built 32,504 "assault rifles" between 1995 and 2000. Bushmaster built 150,589 during the same period. Colt built 185,693. DPMS: 18,211. Knight's Manufacturing: 2,611. Olympic Arms: 24,045. Those are just manufacturers of AR-15 clones. That's 413,653 AR-15 "assault rifles" built and sold after the 1994 "ban." Note that this does not include manufacturing during the years 2001 to the present. This also does not include AK-47's, H&K G3 clones, FN-FAL's, or any other so-called "assault weapons." If "the majority of these weapons are being used to kill people in a violent act" then at a minimum there would have been 206,827 homicides since 1994 attributable to AR-15 clones alone. According to the CDC there were 105,142 homicides by firearm for the period 1994-2001. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, handguns are used in about 80% of homicides by firearm.

You're lying to us, Mr. Hall, deliberately and badly. Perhaps you have an agenda?

This problem has led to many law enforcement executives leading the cause to prevent the ownership of assault weapons from being sold across the counter.

I just illustrated that "this problem" doesn't exist. It's been blown to hysterical proportions by lies such as this.

It is not a position that they take lightly, but has become a position that they are forced to support based on the past and potential tragedies that have and will be caused by these weapons in the hands of thugs. It may go against constitutional merit, but stands tall in the common sense department.

"Forced to support"? Even you admit it "may go against constitutional merit."

So how about a constitutional amendment? But you never hear that option bandied about. No, they'd rather strip us of a right because it's too costly - but I just illustrated that the cost they proclaim is false.

So why is it they want to destroy the right to arms through subterfuge?

Every person in this country should have the right to bear arms. (For now.) Every hunter in this country should have the right to bear arms; as many as they like. (For now.) Every person in this country should have the right to use these weapons in an act of self-defense or protection of their properties.

Tell that to Ronald Dixon. Tell that to Hale DeMar. Tell that to Melvin B. Spaulding. Tell it to Lester Campbell.

I would never argue these premises. (Yet) However, in the atmosphere that we find ourselves in, where one horrific act of violence is topped by the next, we have to do something. Policies that would keep assault type weapons off of the streets and out of the hands of those intent on creating a chaotic (sic) is something that I feel necessary to support. Maybe this is a case where the personal and protective rights of the many have to override the rights of the few. It is not a perfect science or formula but what in this world is anymore?

William Pitt once said, "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves." Here is but another example.

Are you afraid enough now to put your shackels on?

Or would you rather buy an "assault weapon" and tell them "Molon Labe!"?

| posted by Kevin at 8:31 PM PermaLink

 
Another Long List of Lies, Untruths, and Deliberate Mendacities

Here we go again.

Talking sense on gun laws

You know with a title like this, the only "sense" will be "non."

By Dan K. Thomasson

Well, here we are again, in the throes of another election-year battle over how to keep guns out of the hands of all the modern Jesse Jameses while not trampling on the rights of the intrepid Elmer Fudds. Don't expect Congress to do anything exceptionally courageous.

Well, they tried to pass the lawsuit exemption, but wussed out and allowed the bill to be contaminated, so I'll give Mr. Thomasson a pass on that comment, but being one of the Elmer Fudds he refers to (those are my rights he's talking about, after all) I'm offended by his belittling. He obviously doesn't care about my feelings. I should sue for pain and suffering.

The vast majority of gun owners in the United States are law-abiding citizens who use their weapons in pursuit of honest activities like hunting or skeet shooting or as an inducement for sleeping easier knowing their trusty six-shooter is nearby. They are no threat to anyone except perhaps themselves, especially during hunting season, when the nation's forests resound with the reports of thousands of rifles all seemingly firing at the same deer.

Largely true, but off by a couple orders of magnitude. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, there are an estimated 19 million active hunters in the U.S. The state of Washington alone issued 13,139 deer permits in 2002, 7,107 elk permits. In West Virginia, over 250,000 deer were taken in 2002. Just deer.

Not thousands of rifles, Mr. Thomasson. Not tens of thousands. Millions. Deer, elk, bear, cougar, bobcat, coyote, prarie dog, wild pig, and more. Trying to belittle us "Elmer Fudds" as being just a few thousand isn't going to fly here.

Many of these citizens spend hours each weekend at one of the hundreds of gun shows staged for their benefits across the nation. They have every right to do so without being hassled by anti-gun forces, including law-enforcement officers at all levels, who increasingly see these events as a main source of the murder and mayhem that plagues our urban society.

And with his next breath:

While gun shows provide legitimate enterprise and entertainment for thousands of good citizens, they also have become a major marketplace for the trafficking in illegal weapons by criminals who can easily avoid the deterrent of a background check through a loophole in the federal law.

Wait just a damned minute here. Even the Bureau of Justice Statistics admits that gun shows are the source of less than 2% of guns acquired by criminals. Criminals can "easily avoid the deterrent of a background check" by stealing a gun, trading drugs for a gun, having a friend or relative buy a gun for them, or any number of different ways. Going to a gun show would be less convenient for most of these people.

But it gets better!

Very simply, dealers in used weapons are exempt from the statute that requires licensed dealers selling new weapons at these shows to put their customers through a record search. So why should a person intent on using a gun for illegitimate purposes buy from an honest, licensed dealer either in his shop or at one of these shows when the guy selling a used semi-automatic handgun from the next booth has no such restrictions?

Very simply, that's a blatant lie.

Dealers in used weapons are required to be licensed just like dealers in new weapons are. If you're a dealer, you're making a living off of selling firearms for a profit. If you attempt to do so, it's the BATF's job to find you, arrest you, and see you're put in jail. If, however, you're a poor schmuck like me who simply wants to sell a gun out of your personal collection, that doesn't require a license. If I want to sell everything in my collection, that doesn't require a license. But if I try that three times a month, I should be expecting a visit from my friendly Federal agents. And licensed dealers are required to run the background check. I, on the other hand, am legally prohibited from running a background check. I'm not allowed to determine if the guy who wants to buy my .357 snubbie is a felon or not.

That's the crux of the problem that has made these weekly events the second-largest source of weapons for criminal activity.

Blatant lie #2. Notice there is no attribution for this lie. I've given you a link to the Bureau of Justice Statistics that states that less than 2% of criminals get their guns from gun shows - yet Mr. Thomasson claims baldly that gun shows are the #2 source of crime guns. Why shouldn't you believe him? He's published in the Washington Times!

The first still is licensed dealers who either ignore the law or unwittingly sell to a straw buyer who can pass the background check.

Note again, no attribution for his claim that bad gun dealers and straw purchases are the #1 source for crime guns. He's just making this stuff up. The inference is that a criminal buys a gun or has one purchased for him, then goes and commits a crime with it immediately. Undoubtedly that happens occasionally, but it's the exception, not the rule. The California Department of Justice produced a report on the efficacy of implementing a "ballistic fingerprinting" database on all new handguns sold in California. In that report is this statement:

In the Crime Gun Trace Reports 2000 from the ATF, average TTC (Time to Crime - the time between the selling of a firearm and actually committing a crime with it.) are mentioned per age of the offender and type of firearm [X, p.30-40]. The following results are obtained for semiautomatic pistols (4.5 years), revolvers (12.3 years), rifles (7.0 years), shotguns (7.6 years) and other firearms (7.1 years). The nationwide average TTC for all firearms for all ages of offenders is 6.1 years.

The average time between a gun being sold and it being used in a crime is over six years. But unscrupulous gun dealers and "straw purchases" are the number one source of crime guns?

But he doesn't stop there:

Congress clearly should deal with the first by closing the gun-show loophole and with the other by vastly improving its prosecution of federal gun-law offenders.

First, there is no "gun show loophole." I just illustrated that fact. Second, I heartily agree that violators of federal gun laws aren't being prosecuted enough. I can't figure out, for example, how Brian Borgelt, the FFL holder who owned Bull's Eye Shooter Supply in Tacoma Washington managed to hold on to his license for so long after "losing" over 200 firearms. What does it take?

Apparently a high-profile crime committed with one of the "lost" firearms.

Let's get one thing straight here: I'm an advocate for the right to arms, but I believe that there is some appropriate regulation of arms sales. I also think the BATF has proven to be incompetent to do that job, and passing more gun laws - especially ones that address phantom issues - isn't going to make them more effective.

At the same time, lawmakers ultimately should extend the ban on the manufacture and sale of assault weapons, which expires in September, and reject a gun-lobby effort to immunize the nation's manufacturers of firearms from the legal responsibility for the rising toll of gun crimes - an act law-enforcement officials oppose as relieving the industry of any obligations to make their weapons safer.

Another blatant lie. The bill is dead, but it didn't relieve the industry of "any obligations to make their weapons safer." It didn't address "making weapons safer." This is bait-and-switch. The immunity bill was designed to protect gun manufacturers and dealers from frivolous lawsuits brought when they did nothing illegal, and a gun one made and the other sold was used criminally. For instance, in the DC Sniper shootings, Bull's Eye and Bushmaster - the manufacturer of the rifle - are being sued. If it can be proven that Bull's Eye sold the rifle illegally, then they would not have been protected by the bill, but how the hell can Bushmaster be held liable for criminal misuse of their product?

And, just out of curiosity, how do you make a device designed to hurl a small metal projectile at high velocity "safe?"

More:

While all three prongs of the attack on firearm misuse are important, tougher enforcement of existing laws probably outweighs the others because of the message it would send to casual violators. Federal prosecutors for years have been looking the other way when it comes to gun-law violations. Only 2 percent of federal gun crimes are ever prosecuted, according to the Americans for Gun Safety organization.

For instance, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives cited the Washington state dealer who sold the sniper rifle that killed so many in and around the District with six violations of federal law and recommended prosecution. But so far no charge has been filed, a disappointing contradiction to recent Justice Department pledges to go after gun violators.

Supporters of stronger enforcement also had hoped the Bush administration would give ATF the prosecutorial support when it was moved to the Justice Department. Somehow, that backing has been slow in emerging and anti-gun forces blame it on the fact Attorney General John Ashcroft has been a strong pro-gun advocate.

This predates Ashcroft by quite a bit. Actually, I view it as a two-edged sword. The BATF has proven to be a grand-standing out of control organization that Michigan Democratic Representative John Dingell called "jack booted thugs" in House testimony over BATF abuses which are many and egregious. Moving the Bureau to the Justice Department wasn't, I think, an improvement.

The ban on assault weapons is regarded as essential in ensuring that the nation's law officers aren't outgunned, as they have been in a number of highly publicized instances recently. The gun-safety group, citing Justice Department figures, says that during the 10 years the ban has been in effect the proportion of assault weapons traced to crimes has dropped by 65.8 percent.

Yet other organizations bitch and complain that the law didn't stop the manufacture of "assault weapons," that more "assault weapons" are being sold today than in 1994, and that one in five officers killed with firearms were killed with "assault weapons." Who do you believe?

Accomplishing anything in the direction of a more responsible national firearms policy during this election year will be difficult, if not impossible, with most politicians from both major parties terrified of the repercussions of supporting such action.

Note that "more responsible national firearms policy" means, well, more laws making it harder for people to acquire and keep firearms. That's the only way these people measure the effectiveness of "gun control." No mention of the fact that without any major "gun control" laws passed before or after the 1994 so-called "ban" that violent crime of all types was on the decline, that passage of the AWB didn't accelerate or retard that decline, and that the level of violent crime now is lower than it's been since the 1960's. Yet we need more gun control laws.

The well-heeled National Rifle Association, despite the fact its membership is largely made up of those law-abiding citizens who use guns wisely, has never been supportive of responsible steps to protect the rights of those who don't hunt, shoot skeet or targets or collect antiques or sleep with a gun under their pillows.

And what rights would those be?

The NRA (more or less) defends one right: the right to arms. And it protects that right even for those who don't exercise it. The NRA leaves the defense of the other rights to other organizations.


| posted by Kevin at 12:33 AM PermaLink