To be anti-gun you MUST be isolated from reality. I couldn’t help but laugh at Joan’s latest post:
So 103,000 Minnesotans, 1 in 40, carries a gun. That is about 2% of the population of Minnesota, assuming the writer of this article excluded those under 21 who can’t get a permit to carry, in which case, as I have figured out before, about 3%. Reading the article could lead you to believe that the number of legal gun carriers is large. It is not. It is small
Small huh? Well from the article she’s citing:
Cannon, 59, a gray-haired production artist, is one of 103,000 state residents with a permit to carry a handgun — more than 10 times the number there were a decade ago. They, in turn, are part of a growing “carry’ culture across the country: a record 8 million people who have taken on the means to use deadly force if they decide it’s necessary.
Sorry Joan, its not the number that’s important its the trend. Part of the gun culture is the normalcy of it all. The “Assault Weapon Ban” passed because most gun owners didn’t know anybody with a gun described in ban, so they didn’t feel too threatened by it. The more people in a circle of friends who carries, the more likely the people who don’t carry might consider it, the change is exponential in this case, and over the last 10 or so years the numbers have reflected that.
Also Joan belittles the numbers, by attempting to claim that most of those 100,000 permit holders don’t actually CARRY their guns. First she’s just speculating, but I suspect she’s wrong on this. First, Joan’s wrong about EVERYTHING, but also “Gun Culture 2.0” is self-defense minded, not hunting and target shooting, and that means that while in the 90s most of the people who had carry permits in the states that allowed it (many didn’t back then) only carried occasionally. Today, I suspect there are more people like me who carry whenever they step out the door.
Oh but the denial gets worse:
The problem with Rothman’s statement is that those of us opposed to the law were told that these would be law abiding folks. There would be no trouble. So while there have not been an increase in murders or crime as a result, there is a difference between someone who isn’t carrying a gun getting a DWI and someone who is. Since guns are dangerous weapons designed to kill another human being, if you are carrying while drunk, there is a greater chance for harming another individual with a gun in your hand. Rothman and the reporter left out some other statistics that show a slightly different picture of those “law abiding” gun carriers. Protect Minnesota has recounted just some of them. The Violence Policy Center has been keeping track of the number of “law abiding” permit holders who have killed another human being since 2007. The number is 467. To some that might seem like a small number. To the families of the victims, it is one too many. In addition to the killings, however, there are numerous accidental shootings that sometimes kill, sometimes not, with guns belonging to law abiding folks and some of the permit holders. You can check them out at the Ohh Shoot blog. You can also check out how many times kids find guns in cars or at home where their parents ( many permit holders) leave them around loaded. You can check those out at the Kid Shootings blog.
So 100,000 is small, and 467 is big? Pull the other one, Joan! Of course the Concealed Carry Killers “Study” is 100% bullshit, many of those numbers are people who don’t have permits, or people who haven’t been convicted of committing a crime….also the 100,000 is just HER STATE, and VPC’s padded numbers is NATION WIDE! Also those other Joyce-Funded blogs she cites also don’t filter for legal activities. They’ve cited muggers getting shot as “Children Killed by guns”, as well as people committing crimes when they shot a minor.
Still I must give it to Joan, she’s been struggling to string together a coherent thought for months. I’m glad she kept her addled head clear enough to write this string of stupidity, it made for a fun blog post to write for me!
Is there any wonder why the anti-rights cult is losing so much ground?
