“Gun Death”: Left in a Van

Sick!

Police say a 2-year-old girl who was left in a van for an extended period of time has died in Virginia.

…Leamon says a preliminary investigation indicates that a parent accidentally left the girl in a car seat in the van. The van was parked in the driveway of a residence.

WTF??? OK I’ve left my daughter in her carseat when I parked the car so I could open the door, and maybe unload some packages without having her get into trouble while I was unloading the car…but this is a few minuets TOPS.

This reeks of “I just forgot” which doesn’t cut the mustard when it comes to a CHILD!

Leamon says the investigation is continuing. He did not say whether the heat was responsible for the death or whether anyone would be charged.

They better be!

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Some Nice Random From Day Job Orchestra!

Enjoy!

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Tonight We Squirrel Like it’s 2015!!!

The first Squirrel Report of 2015!

We decided to have a fun theme. We’ll probably talk a bit about the year in review, but since 2015 was also the setting for the 3rd Best Back to the Future Movie we’ll also look at predictions from old works of fiction on how today would look in their eyes.

Also we may talk a bit about drinking and hangover cures!

So call in tonight 214-530-0036 at 9pm Eastern Time to be part of THE SQUIRREL REPORT 2015!!!!

Sqrpt Squirrel 1

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Images of the Antis: Holiday Spirit

I’ve been so busy around Christmas I haven’t checked Pinterest to see if there were any gems….or really leavings from the antis.

So here’s some post-Christmas tomfoolery:

Yep Santa is so scared for his life he needs a Class III vest and a riot helmet to deliver his presents. Still doesn’t Santa know where the good girls and boys live?

Of course Santa isn’t real, but if you see somebody breaking into your home dressed all in read, a gun might not be a bad idea:

allege he shot two men during a confrontation with them.

Detroit police say they’re investigating a shootout that left two men injured. According to police, the fight may have been over a woman.

Of course what IS real is despite all the news stories the antis like to dredge up, really we’re safer than we’ve ever been. The antis NEED fear to push their agenda, hence images like this.

Second is this:

Of course the lawsuit is utter crap. Antis focus on guns so much that somehow they see this as reasonable, yet fail to notice that when a drunk driver kills a family there are no lawsuits against the makers of the alcohol consumed, nor on the maker of the fatal car. They also ignore anything that isn’t a “Gun Death”, so when somebody brains somebody with a baseball bat, or uses a machete or a kitchen knife to hack somebody to death the makers of the blades (or even the stores that sold them to the killer) never fall into question.

What does suck for Bushmaster is they will need to spend thousands of dollars to make sure it gets dismisses. Which by all accounts it will be, still even such a frivolous lawsuit costs money and time.

Also again the antis stick with the mythical symbol of Santa Clause of delivering “coal” to “Bad Boys”, but really it’s the antis just being obtuse jerks around the holidays, both against Bushmaster, AND the poor families who they are obviously leading on for purely political reasons.

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Weer’d World Review 2014

I’ll skip the stories of the year because we all have our favorites, and tons of other sites are doing that.

So let’s talk about the year for me personally.

First up this is the first full year where I had a baby, and I was working part-time as to be a full-time Dad. I expected this to be a difficult transition in my life, and it was, but in some instances it was more difficult than I thought, and in others it was much easier.

Certainly this change has made this year the happiest in my life.

Also this year I got a LOT more into mixology. I worked as a bartender in my youth, and have enjoyed fine drinks since I was 21, but this year was the first where I’ve become really interested in crafting balanced and interesting cocktails. It’s yet another expensive hobby, but boy it is an enjoyable one.

I’ve also expanded much more into podcasting. Of course the Squirrel Report is ongoing, and an amazing endevor and a dream come true as it really isn’t a podcast but an internet New and Talk show. As a huge fan of this genre of traditional radio, it has always been a dream of mine to be a host of a show like this. This year was the start of the Gunblog Variety cast of which I am very pleased with. Further I did a few more shows with Chaz at the Road Gunner Podcast , and I really flattered at how many times this year I’ve been invited to chat with Ryan on Handgun Radio.

Because of all this time behind the microphone I’ve upgraded my microphone setup which is something I should have done ages ago.

We also had a major renovation done on the house which ended with us having an mudroom, a large coat closet, and a playroom for the baby all out of per-existing space that was poorly added by the previous owners of this house. It was long and challenging but well worth it!

Really the only bad thing that has happened this year is due to the changes in my life due to looking after the baby, the biggest being less time spent at this blog has been diminished, and there has been a pretty severe drop in readership.

Still I don’t blog for clicks. It’s nice to have big readership, but really I blog here for discussion, and those of you who comment here on a regular basis are still here, so really the point is pure vanity!

So yeah, those are the highlights of this year. Something tells me next year will be so much better!

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Why Antis hate Debate

John Lott Debating Evan DeFilippis of “Armed With Reason” in a surprisingly neutral field.

It’s a rough format since both people are heavily citing data, but because of the format can’t actually give live citations. Still I have to call this as a solid win for Lott as he on several occasions gets Devin to backpedal and admit that his initial claims were not true. Also very interesting that every rebuttal Dr. Lott gave really never got a defense from Devin.

Still this doesn’t stop him from claiming victory and calling Dr. Lott a liar on his blog, when even the date he presents doesn’t make the case he’s claiming. More moving of goal posts by the antis.

Still I’m impressed that it was such a balanced forum created by the moderator. I’m not surprised by the end-result.

I am surprised that Mr. DeFilippis agreed to this debate given my personal experience with him. Early this year I was contacted by him because I expressed an interest to debate him. He asked me what topic I’d like to debate. I responded that I was really open to debating a wide scope of topics on the issue and asked for him if he was interested in any particular topic. His response was this:

My co-author and I think three potential topics would be good, and you can choose: “Do guns make us safer?”, “Resolved: Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” and, “Criminals don’t obey laws, so gun control won’t work”

I responded as follows:

Ok last and far from least, GREAT topics, and I think we have something to work with. I like your discussion topics but I think they’re not ideally framed. “Do Guns Make Us Safer?” is great, and maybe something to handle at a later date, as my approach to it would be almost exclusively statistical with little philosophy. Strikes me as a bit dry. “Guns Don’t Kill People”, is really a flawed topic. I mean guns are inert objects that are fueled by VERY stable chemical compounds. I think we both know that guns themselves don’t kill anybody. People kill people, and yes indeed they sometimes use guns. That one again might be a better topic if we want to do this again, but I wouldn’t accept it until you rephrased it to better match what your opening comment would be.

So that leaves “Criminals don’t obey laws, so gun control won’t work”. This is the one I’d like to focus on, still it doesn’t frame the debate at all. Any law can be ignored, and those who ignore laws is a criminal by definition. The only way I could play the gun rights side of that is to take the position of an Anarchist. I’m not an Anarchist, far from it. Might I suggest the the topic be moderately changed to “Criminals don’t obey laws, so FURTHER gun control won’t work” (emphasis only added for clarity) Feel free to refine and adapt that, but I think you get the feel for where I’m going. I feel that better fits the angle that both myself and larger groups like the NRA are debating. Also while there is a laundry list of current gun regulations I think should be either repealed or amended, this would limit the discussion to current laws being debated.

He agreed to that topic and we hashed out the format of opening comments with him going first, then a pair of rebuttals with me having the final word. I agreed to everything, and told him I was anxiously awaiting his opening statement, and started research on what studies I’d cite for mine.

And then I waited and waited. I did get an email saying he was writing several articles and would get to our debate. After a month of waiting I stopped contacting him. In the meantime I started reading their twitter feed and decided the honest debate we had agreed to was probably not in their interest.

In the end Dr. Lott is a vastly more qualified expert to debate him. I’m a scientist, but my understanding of various statistical models could have allowed him to sneak some dishonesty past me that Dr. Lott quickly picked off.

Still I must give him credit, he choose an unbiased forum to debate in, and went up against somebody who was vastly more experienced and qualified on the subject than he. The end results were as expected.

Posted in Freedom, Guns, Safety, Self Defense | 3 Comments

“Gun Death”: Home Invasion

This is a REALLY sad one!

A 66-year-old stroke victim who used a walker was stabbed to death and his wife wounded when they came face to face with a burglar while entering their home after a birthday celebration with their grandkids, cops said.

And what could have stopped this? Sounds like he snuck into the house after the couple parked their car in the garage, so it doesn’t seem like their home security was too lax.

Maybe if somebody in the pair had a gun? Of course they were in New York City, where it is difficult to have a gun, and given they had JUST gotten home, so in most cases the gun used would be their concealed carry gun, which is banned. In the event they didn’t have a conceal carry permit and gun, they would have needed VERY quick access to a gun.

Both of which are essentially illegal in NYC.

Of course the violent criminal is the key perpetrator, but who else is to blame for this?

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Busy Day for a Little Baby!

So after little LaWeer’da’s morning nap we dressed her up, packed a bag and headed for the TRAIN!

Now she LOVES the train, she loves watching it drive by, and points out the window when she hears it pass…but never had she been ON the train.

Floored. She looked out the window the whole time, and it was just awesome watching her little eyes dart back and forth as she attempted to focus on the images flying past the window.

But that wasn’t the the whole morning, but she would have been happy with just that.

Nope we took this day to take her for her first-of-many trips to the New England Aquarium!

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That picture says it all! She was FLOORED by it!

Of course that isn’t the only picture!
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It’s not a huge aquarium, but I’ve been going here since I was a little kid, and now I’m taking my own daughter to see the exhibits for the first time, and to see the excitement I had as a child (and let’s face it, I was having a ball too. You can’t put a Marine Biologist in an aquarium and NOT have them giggle like a kid) definitely had tears streaming down my face.

Still for a 1-year-old we covered only about half of all the exhibits before fatigue started setting in, and then it was time for lunch anyway so we beat a hasty retreat.

Also I’ve been a member of the aquarium for several years now which gives me and an ample party free unlimited access, which is awesome, but what REALLY payed off was we got to side step the HUGE line of visitors who were standing outside in the 20 degree weather.

So what were the big hits of the Aquarium for little LaWeer’da? Well in short EVERYTHING! She was just OUT OF HER MIND the moment we stepped inside and was pointing and hollering with joy at all the magic she was seeing. Still if I had to guess what she got the biggest charge out of, it was the central reef tank just for sheer scale, but the wife declares it was….the penguins!

I don’t know if I could disagree with her. First up little LaWeer’da was constantly pointing at the birds and saying “Ducks!” (she knows best!), and second she REALLY wanted to dive in and swim with them…except that isn’t allowed…and she can’t swim.

It was an amazing day for her, and certainly for us!

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Blame the NRA Because….Reasons

On a lesser note first if anybody hasn’t seen this thread over at Joe’s, it’s an interesting read at the madness of a “Progressive”.

Now first Ubu52 is a nobody. She speaks for no group, and has no known affiliates in the political scene. She’s just another messed-up “Progressive” using somebody else’s hard work as her own personal soap box. Still the take-away I get from this exchange and the comments below by Ubu is that she can picture a scenario, no matter how unlikely, that better fits her agenda, and she is perfectly willing to cherry pick through data and discard the majority she reads to find vague gimmes that support how SHE thinks.

Occam’s Razor is insanity to her. Here she is with a simple solution that is unflattering to the initial point she had made that show’s she is wrong. So she crafts a tenuous and vague solution that supports her being RIGHT, and demands the world declare her point equally valid.

Again, she’s just a lone nut, and I don’t want to put any more power to her. If she comments on my Blog the way she does at Robb’s and Joe’s I would have likely blocked her comments in the same method as this troll.

Still think of her mental back flips as we read this disgusting post.

It has been a week since **KILLER**, a deranged man with a long criminal record, killed two New York City police officers, Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos, in cold blood, but so far we haven’t heard a word from the National Rifle Association (NRA).

It was **KILLER** who pulled the trigger on the silver Taurus semiautomatic handgun that he used to kill the two officers, but the NRA and its fanatic Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre also have blood on their hands. LaPierre, who has worked for the NRA since 1978 and served as its top official since 1991, is the organization’s hit man when it comes to intimidating elected officials to oppose any kind of sensible gun control laws, including a federal law requiring background checks on would-be gun buyers and a national registry of guns. LaPierre likes to fulminate about gun owners’ rights. But he’s been silent on the ambush of the two New York cops.

I really haven’t been following the NRA closely on this issue. Certainly the top leaders of the NRA haven’t made a statement, but what is there to say? A mentally ill career criminal with black supremacy ties shoots his girlfriend in Baltimore, and then murdered two police officers in New York City, before killing himself.

The list of laws he broke were countless, and where he broke them were some of the most restrictive places for gun ownership and carry. He speaks of “Universal Background Checks” and a gun registry (hey but remember the antis don’t want a firearms registry, that’s just “Paranoia”!), but both Maryland and New York have registries and a ban on private sales of firearms already in place (at least for a handgun like used in this crime).

We have the ATF Trace data on the gun, but it really doesn’t tell much of a tale. The gun was bought from a Pawn Shop (with a background check) in 1996, and later sold to another lawful citizen in 1998, and there the trail goes cold. A cheap gun like this frequently changes hands, and from all ATF investigation most of those exchanges were legal.

So what does the NRA have to do with this? NOTHING!

This is absurd. For one thing, de Blasio has been a strong defender of New York’s police department, but he has also criticized police abuses and supported people’s right to protest nonviolently. Equally important, Lynch must know that **KILLER** was not making a political statement when he shot the two officers. **KILLER** sister told the media that her brother was “emotionally troubled” and suicidal. “He needed help,” she said, “He didn’t get it.” He killed himself after murdering Ramos and Liu.

Well except he was. I found this account that he was pimping his instagram before the shooting.

Moments before shooting dead two police officers in Brooklyn on Saturday, **KILLER** told two passers-by to follow him on Instagram and said “watch what I am going to do.”

…Chief Boyce said that prior to the attack, **KILLER** had an interaction with two witnesses on the street. He asked them for their gang affiliation before he told them to follow him on Instagram.

This account could be fake, still we DO know what was on that instagram account.

Before the attack, **KILLER** posted two anti-police posts on his Instagram account. The account has since been disabled, but a screenshot of the messages can be seen below, one of which says “I am putting wings on pigs today.”

His motivations were VERY clear. He even stated in that cited post that he was going to specifically kill TWO cops in retaliation to the death of one black man, Mr. Eric Garner.

If Lynch wants to point the finger of blame for his colleagues’ deaths, he should focus on the NRA, not de Blasio. For decades, the NRA has fought every effort to get Congress and states to adopt reasonable laws that would make it much less likely that people like Brinsley would be able to obtain a gun. The NRA even defends the right of Americans to carry concealed weapons in bars, churches, schools, universities, and elsewhere. This poses a huge threat to police and civilians alike.

Well except the NRA is essentially powerless in New York and Maryland, where these laws are in place. Further since we are talking about a handgun, even if he bought the gun out of state he would be committing multiple FEDERAL felonies.

All the “Magic Laws” as far as this case is concerned were in place, yet amazingly a career criminal with murderous intent found a way around them. Much like his long criminal record, it is obvious that he didn’t much care what was legal or illegal in conducting his sordid life.

As of 2010, Georgia was the fifth-largest source of guns used in crimes nationally and the largest source of out-of-state guns seized by the New York Police Department, the Times reported. Of the 2,433 guns used in crimes in New York City whose point of sale can be traced, 90 percent come from out-of-state, most of them from states with few restrictions on selling or buying guns. Officials call the gun trail between Georgia and New York City the “iron pipeline.”

Remember what I said about “Progressives” and Occam’s Razor? Well let’s look at the ACTUAL data! So we have the majority of ATF traces being handguns (again a trace doesn’t mean a crime was committed), and while Georgia does have a lot of traces to it, what’s the #1 state where New York guns are traced to? NEW YORK! And again let’s look at this trace, it goes back to a legal transfer 16 years ago. Most of the traces are of this length of time.

The theory of the “Iron Pipeline” is that criminals in high-crime high-restriction states travel to low-crime low-restriction states, buy guns in bulk and sell them for a premium on the streets.

Now even taking all these facts at face value, the author is discarding much more compelling evidence for less compelling ones to make his story work. And of course the “Iron Pipeline” doesn’t hold up either, because no business model works where the commodities are only traded after total inaction.

Meanwhile the more likely story is people move around this country, and as they move they take their possessions with them. Right here in the Armory I have an old CRT tv that I bought in Portland Maine in 2001 for my apartment there. I have since moved around Maine and Massachusetts, and this old heavy TV is still with me. Why would anybody think guns are any different?

Further, even in the dubious claim of interstate criminal arms traffickers, what law would stop them? It’s already a federal crime for somebody to do black market gun sales…but they claim it happens, and ALSO claim that one more law would magically fix it.

Because Reasons.

Most gun-related deaths are committed by people who purchase their weapons legally. Others purchase or steal them illegally, but their ability to get access to guns is due to our lax laws on gun ownership. The NRA’s job is to make it easier for people to buy and use guns. And so far it has been very successful. Since the 1994 assault-weapon ban expired in 2004, Congress hasn’t enacted any major gun regulations.

“Most gun-related deaths are committed by people who purchase their weapons legally.”? Odd that there is no citation for that. **UPDATE** Given that I am not an illogical “Progressive” I failed to think about the fact that the bulk of “Gun Deaths” are suicides, and yes, those people do it with their own guns which they have every right to own. Given that this whole article is about a MURDER, that really makes this a disingenuous statement. Thanks Jake! **END UPDATE** Still he openly admits that criminals acquire their guns ILLEGALLY as well. I doubt the first statement is true, given that is a myth that there is any reality to idea that most killers are “Virgin Killers”. For more evidence have a look at Sean’s great series of “Felons Behaving Badly”, since North Carolina has all their criminal records in an easily searchable database Sean does that work for us when he reads of a crime in NC. It’s a GREAT project because it shows that somebody committing a violent crime today has a LONG history of not only violating the law, but being CONVICTED of those violations in the past.

This article goes on and on, but the take-away is the author ignores most facts to pick out a thin argument that somehow the NRA is at fault for this.

Because he hates the NRA, and the right to keep and bear arms, and nothing more.

Posted in Freedom, Guns, Politics, Safety | 3 Comments

“Gun Death” More China School Stabbings

Remember, if guns were banned school slayings will stop!

The new school year in China began Monday with a horrifying attack.

A man stabbed to death three children at a primary school in central China and then committed suicide by jumping off a building, state media reported.

…Wielding a knife, the man stabbed eight students and a teacher before he took his own life, the report said.

I’ve lost count on how many school stabbings there have been since I started doing the “Gun Death?” Files, but it’s been a LOT! This one has the added stat that he killed himself, like most spree killers do, but rather than a gun, or even the knife in this case, he jumped to his death.

What laws would have stopped this? Given that China is essentially a giant prison, you can all see the rhetorical nature of that question.

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