I’m always surprised when Ryan comes up with a new topic for Handgun Radio.
This week it’s Gas Operated/Gas Delayed Handguns. I thought “No way we can make a whole show on that!” It’s actually a pretty cool subject!
Have a listen!
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Over at Armed with Reason where the authors are attempting to claim using some VERY flawed methods (the biggest being citing reports that don’t support their claims as supporting them) that liberalizing carry laws cause an INCREASE in violent crime.
There is a rather simple way to get closer to settling this issue: are concealed carry holders more likely or less likely than the general public to commit the crimes that Donahue suggests will increase following the passage of concealed carry laws? If we find that concealed carry holders are less likely to commit these crimes, then the credibility of the study would be called into question. It would have us believe that while these laws create a new class of citizens less likely to commit certain crimes, by some mysterious force, the rate of these crimes actually increases.
Now in the video Lott explains why the numbers cited are statistical artifacts. Further in his off-camera rebuttal (where he ignores Lott’s points and moves the goal posts) he cites a number of studies by his own admission that state that relaxing gun laws show “No effect or Increases Crime”. I’ll note the majority of those studies show “no effect” rather than an increase.
Even if the anti-gun postulate is true, the idea that if something is shown to do no measurable harm is reason enough to ban or restrict it is the HUGE difference between people who fight for liberty and those who fight for government authority.
Now the authors on that site, like all anti-gun sites, are simply abusing science to push an agenda, all under the false pretense of being concerned about public safety. Still even if all said in this article is true, we have concrete data that if there is an uptick in violent crime it is NOT being done by those who are directly effected by these changes.
It COULD be argued, as antis do, that all “Crime Guns” start out as “Legal Guns”, so the only way to disarm criminals, is to disarm the lawful. That is both convoluted, dangerous, and anti-freedom.
It could ALSO be argued that if crime is INCREASED by allowing more people access to bearing arms, which I am in no way saying I believe, that this could be because of cultural pressure. Say the massive spike in gun sales in Missouri.
People SAW the writing on the wall, there was MASSIVE civil unrest, and the agitators were encouraging a second riot. So people went and bought guns, and the riots happened.
Now what’s also interesting about this well publicized event is that the riots happened, so violent crime increased MASSIVELY, but there were no stories of the good people of Missouri shooting rioters. Instead we see burnt and looted stores right beside untouched stores where armed people were dissuading rioters from attacking. So the good guys with guns actually DECREASED violence at a time when violence was INCREASING.
Of course this comment, like many others, will go unanswered by the authors, because their concern for public safety is 100% false, all they want is to ban guns.
**UPDATE** Just saw this article from Dr. Lott himself that shows EXACTLY what he was saying in the video debate.
A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill student died as the result of a severe beating to the head, according to an autopsy report made public Friday, nearly two years to the day after she was found dead by her roommate in their off-campus apartment.
They have a suspect, but still haven’t found them, years later.
Also note that this beating death wouldn’t be considered a “Murder” in the UK, just a “Homicide of Interest” since no convictions have been made, tho the charges that will be leveled are quite obvious.
So the antis have been making my job hard as of late.
Generally when there is a mass shooting, the antis don’t even wait for the victim’s arterial pressure to drop before they start making political statements about how their pet laws would have stopped EVERYTHING bad from happening. See if they wait before the facts are known, then the sheer stupidity that background checks, or gun bans would have stopped anything isn’t apparent yet.
Still with France they seem to have known better. France has all the magical gun control, and from all observations that made it WORSE!
Still it was only a matter of time before they bit the hook. Let’s start with Joan:
I have said before, as have many others, all it will take to terrorize cities and countries all over the world is a few terrorists with guns- likely assault type guns. The shooters in Paris appear to be extremists who succeeded in an attack on a group of journalists who had written political and religious satire that they didn’t apparently like. I think we can all remember the attack on Mumbai (164 people dead, 308 injured) where a lot of people were killed by terrorists and the city was paralyzed by the attack. Recently there was an attack in Canada by a “lone wolf” who had a gun and terrorized Ottawa ( 2 dead including the shooter) for hours. And we can’t forget about the DC sniper case (10 dead, 3 injured) which kept cities on the east coast of our country on high alert as the 2 snipers moved from place to place randomly killing innocent people. This was a case of home grown terrorism and we have had more than a number of these kinds of incidents in our very own country. And in Norway, an extremist with a gun killed 77 innocent Norwegians. The shooter purchased his high capacity magazines in the U.S.
Now let’s pull this apart, India, Canada, and Norway are all bastions of strict gun control, further she missed the terrorist attack in Sydney Australia. Of course Joan attempts to tie the Norway attack to the United States, despite the importation of the magazines already being a crime. Also odd that she mentioned the shooting attack in Canada, but not the ramming attack on the same day. Radical Islam, same body count, similar motives…but without the gun, there was no “Gun Death”, so that is totally ignored! See they don’t want to ban cars because they USE cars!
Still let’s look at the beltway sniper compared to all these other attacks. First up all the other attacks were full-on frontal assaults where the killings were done in a matter of hours by shooters in the open. The Mumbai attacks were a tad different as it was an international incident, still the largest bloodshed was all done inside of 24 hours and again in the open. Now the beltway attack was a sniper-style attack where single victims were chosen and engaged before the team moved to a new location, and the shots were taken from a sniper blind constructed in the trunk of a sedan. The killings went on this way for several MONTHS, with the police being totally baffled at how the shooter was operating.
The behavior of these killers were DRASTICALLY different from the other ones. Can you imagine why? If discovered by either civilians or police these killers could have been engaged by people who were armed. Such a threat didn’t exist in any of the other locations except if they were engaged by armed law enforcement. Even in France many of the LEOs who responded did not have firearms.
The worst of this is that known terrorists can actually buy guns and ammunition legally in America. Yes. It’s true. I have written about this many times before. We have what some call a “terror gap” in our gun laws where the names of those on the terror watch list are not sent to the FBI’s list of prohibited purchasers to stop them from buying guns at a licensed gun dealer. And then, of course, anyone can buy a gun from a private seller at a gun show, flea market or through an Internet site. This is the definition of insanity.
Well except these attacks didn’t happen in America! They happened in places where ALL CITIZENS are treated the same as American prohibited persons, and Joan fails to mention the SINGLE US shooting attack the shooters were NOT on a watch list.
After watching the PBS Frontline special on Tuesday night named “Gunned Down” (about the NRA), one would think all is futile. The NRA has won everything and the gun safety groups might just as well pack up and go home to put our heads in a hole.
Given the logic you’re using for gun control, I would say that assessment would be advisable…
Yes, Wayne LaPierre has pulled off something that is pretty unbelievable and bold. He has managed, along with the corporate gun lobby and its’ minions, to convince some Americans and a whole lot of politicians that there is absolutely nothing we can do about terror attacks, domestic shootings, 2 year olds shooting their own family members, suicide by gun, and all of those mass shootings. And this is, according to the gun lobby members who agreed to be interviewed for the show, about freedom. If we pass any common sense gun safety legislation, gun owners will lose their freedoms? Apparently these folks never think about the freedoms lost by those who are killed by guns. Watching the parents of several of the Sandy Hook children on the Frontline special was painful. How can anyone not understand that this is the ultimate loss of freedom?
Well maybe because all of your proposals would have PREVENTED NOTHING, and you yourself have been VERY friendly to the idea of confiscating guns. So in Joan’s perfect world the United States is reduced to where France is right now…disarmed, and people being gunned down by terrorists!
So back to what happened in France and the connection to the American gun culture. The corporate gun lobby has long stood in the way of an International Arms Treaty.
So you’re saying the terrorists in France got their guns from the United States? Yeah, I doubt that!
Also we have a similar article posted from the National Gun Victims Action Counsel:
The brothers were entered into the U.S. government’s Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment (TIDE) system, the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center watch lists and finally into the U.S.’s “no fly” list, reports Yahoo News. The “no fly” list prevents people who are considered a “threat to civil aviation or national security” from buying any ticket for commercial aircraft in the United States.
Yet, because of the U.S.’s insane gun laws, the brothers, if they lived here, could amazingly have gone into any licensed gun dealer and legally bought as many guns as they wanted because being on the “no-fly” list does not make someone a prohibited gun purchaser in the United States!
Yet attacks like this are NOT happening in the United States! That seems to be a big thing missing here.
Other examples of insane U.S. gun laws include gun manufacturers being the only consumer industry exempt from liability lawsuits, guns not being required to be registered or their owners licensed and no background checks conducted for gun show and private sales.
Yeah, that’ll stop terrorists! Just like it did in all the other countries that had licensing and registration. Licensing and registration that has been used to deny access to guns, and confiscate arms. Gee, why won’t we just lie down and play along with them??
One example is the NRA actually agitates for laws that allow soldiers diagnosed with PTSD and people with severe dementia to legally purchase guns. What could go wrong? And, recently, the NRA got guns legalized in national parks and on Amtrak trains–ironically on the property of the same government it says wants to confiscate guns.
And where have the problems been?
The gun lobby also defends sales to civilians of TrackingPoint’s “can’t miss” sniper rifle which has no defensive use and is ready-made for terrorists, insurgents and hate groups. Its ads show a 12-year-old girl hitting a target 1000 yards away–ten football fields–every time.
Again, where have the problems been?
Domestically we see this same flawed logic. They claim that areas with strict gun control have high crime because guns are being smuggled by criminals from gun-friendly states. Of course the evidence doesn’t show that, but even if it DID, why are the smugglers behaving so well in the gun friendly areas? Why aren’t the violent gangs proliferating into these areas? Why aren’t the terrorists conducting these kinds of attacks.
The truth is GUN CONTROL is enabling these attacks, and the lack of response of the antis shows they KNOW this.
Saw this picture on a news site:
French Po-po of some type responding to the terrorists. So that’s a Ruger Mini-14, and if you look it sure looks like it has the fire selector switch…but am I missing something, do these guns not have rear sights???
PS feel free to make jokes about mini-14s not really needing sights.
Remember, guns make it easy for multiple murders!
Two people were killed and another injured in a triple stabbing overnight in Bartlesville, according to KTUL.
The antis always tell us they focus so much on guns and “Gun Death” because without the aid of guns, such horrible events simply can’t happen.
That’s why I do this series.
H/T Jennifer
I’m going to make a political prediction here.
There was a huge sweeping in the latest election, yet despite that “The Mutiny on the Boner”, John Boehner was re-elected as speaker.
Couple that with Romney likely running again, and Christie and Bush for some strange reason still polling well, and giving Scott Brown the time of day, I don’t see the GOP surviving the 2016 election.
Further like Romney’s last run, RINOs are good for suppressing GOP turnout, so we’ll loose seats in the house and senate from right-leaning voters staying home.
Now the media is still talking about Hillary Clinton, but let’s face it, nobody likes her. She’s too much of a war-loving “Conservative” to the left, and too much of a commie for the right. The Left will likely nominate Elizabeth Warren as the 2016 nominee. She has a non-existent resume, she’s big on the “Progressive” talking points, and she’s all Hopey-changey. Plus while Hillary is having a hard time winning over people’s hearts, the fake-indian seems to be making HUGE strides with the “Progressives”.
Who does that sound like to you? Plus she won’t have any of the baggage President Obama did in 2012…where he won against what will be the same song-and-dance from the GOP.
Right here, right now, I can’t call it any other way….
This video made me pucker!
Frankly it was dumb luck that there wasn’t bloodshed. Cop answered a call of armed teen. Teens didn’t comply, plus one was futzing with his MP3 player in his pocket, and the other had a fake gun on him. Cop correctly guessed that none were REALLY armed, and nobody got shot. Still it was just his guess, and his dumb luck that nobody REALLY had a gun that he lived through this.
Saw this awesome video, and I thought I’d add to it.
College, like Health Care will never be “Free” because they all must be services rendered by a skilled professional. What I’m sure Julie is aware of, but didn’t feel to delve in is what the cost of government involvement is.
According to a White House press release on Friday, the America’s College Promise plan would “make two years of community college free for responsible students, letting students earn the first half of a bachelor’s degree and earn skills needed in the workforce at no cost.”
The plan may involve no costs for students, but taxpayers are a different story. The White House estimates that the plan could save as many as 9 million students about $3,800 annually, which translates to an annual cost of about $34.2 billion.
That 34 Billion number was simply done by multiplying the number of students by the estimated cost to be subsidized by tax payers. But it isn’t that simple, as running any sort of program costs money as well.
There are a few examples of stuff like this already working. Look at Health Care. Since the massive overtaking of health insurance in this country, insured people don’t actually PAY for their health care. For somebody like me the actual health care is “Free”, I just pay my insurance company (though the help of my employer) to be covered, and pay a “usage fee” in the form of co-pays when I actually engage their services.
Now if I wasn’t ensured I could negotiate with my doctor what an exam or procedure would cost, have that done, and then pay cash and be done. With Health Insurance my employer has people who manage the group accounts, the insurance company has people who run the account, and the doctor has employees who manage collection of the fees from the provider. All of that costs a very non-trivial number. Further the doctor has no incentive to give me his fairest price, or compete with the office across the street as far as price goes, because I don’t know or care what an exam or procedure costs unless I look at my insurance statement. Either way there is negotiation between the doctor and insurance company (either on accepted rates, or individual services) so whatever number is on my statement is artificial anyway.
Same goes for charities. Your buddy’s house burns down and he asks you and all his friends to help him out. You pay him and the money goes into his pocket. Now many charities work with volunteers, but bigger groups will have some paid management staff, plus overhead costs for fundraising and distribution of goods and services.
Either way the more people that get involved between a simple transaction the more money is lost, and just like the professor at the college isn’t going to giving lectures and grades for free, the people who are collecting and distributing tax monies for subsidized schools aren’t going to do it for free. Further the government is well known for hiring 10 people to do the job of 3, and giving them good benefits and retirement.
And that isn’t going into the people who will be urged by the system to go to “free College” when they have no buisness and/or no interest in getting a higher degree, causing increased demand on the system to be paid for by schools raising rates to build new classrooms and hire new instructors, and the .gov side needing more people to manage the system.
So really the $34 billion price tag is a rock bottom estimate!
BUT FREE!!!!!!
