Frustration is getting to me. That frustration is seeing the same lies over and over again, even though they’ve been thoroughly debunked. Like this one:
From 1791 until 2008, the supreme court refused to touch gun-control laws.
[…]
All that changed in 2008 with the court’s 5-4 decision in District of Columbia v Heller. In striking down a Washington DC ban on handguns in the home, the court’s conservative majority held for the first time that the second amendment “protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia.”
It’s particularly frustrating because that comes from “James J Grosfeld professor of law” Lawrence Douglas. Either Douglas is remarkably ill-informed for a law professor, or he’s a liar.
* 1857, Dred Scott
The Supreme Court ruled against Scott because — among other reasons — if Scott was a free man, he’d have the right to bear arms just like every other citizen. Not that he’d have the right to join a militia, but to bear arms at all.
*1876, Cruikshank
The Court found that the Bill of Rights applies to all people. The limitation was on which governments were forbidden to infringe on rights. In this case, they found that it did not apply to state governments.
* 1886, Presser
Admittedly, this was militia related, but the Court found that everyone capable of bearing arms is in the militia. Everyone; all individuals.
* 1939, Miller
This was an odd case, and not just for a dead defendant going to the Supreme Court. The final ruling held that the Second Amendment only protected those weapons suitable for military use. Since deceased Miller’s lawyers didn’t bother showing up, the Court bought the prosecution’s absurd claim that short-barrel shotguns are not military-grade and thus could be regulated under the National Firearms Act. Weapons suitable for military use cannot be regulated. Sadly, they limited that to the shotgun in question.
And that’s something to throw in victim disarmers’ faces when they shriek about “weapons of war.”
The Supreme Court long recognized the Second Amendment as protecting the right of individuals to keep and bear arms. Heller didn’t change that; the Court acknowledging a preexisting, individual right was not new. They said so in their decision, citing multiple cases. What was new was incorporation.
Up until Heller, court rulings as to the applicability of various parts of the Constitution and Amendments to state and local governments was inconsistent. Heller should have settled the matter: The Second Amendment applies to all governments, not just the federal government.
But Chicago politicians ride the short bus, so the Supreme Court revisited the subject in McDonald. The Court slapped down the claim that Heller only applied to Washington, DC, and explicitly stated that it applies to all levels of government.
Is Douglas ignorant or a liar? I think he’s a liar, because this recently-common talking point has been debunked repeatedly. But VDs keep pushing it anyway, just as the cite Kellerman.
It’s frustrating. We’re stuck with the truth. The rights-violators are free to lie at will.
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The short form is that Kivisto et al claimed to have found a definite relationship of more firearms ownership = more domestic firearms homicides. But, somehow, not nondomestic homicides.
First, I had an issue with their “validated proxy” for firearms ownership, and wondered just what that is.
Thus, a recently developed proxy measure of firearm ownership that integrates the FS/S ratio with per capita state hunting license data (firearm ownership % = (0.62 × FS/S) + (0.88 × per capita hunting licenses) − 4.48)8 was used.
They created a model (ding!) of gun ownership rates by mathematically manipulating suicide and hunting numbers.
“FS” is suicide by firearm, and “S” is total suicides. Then they used that to create a model by multiply it by a fudge factor of 0.62. (ding!)
Moving on to the “hunting license” part of the equation; once upon a time, I sold “hunting licenses,” so I see a potential problem there. Depending on the state, there are a lot of “hunting licenses.”
Firearm hunting
Non-firearm muzzleloader hunting
Non-firearm archery hunting
Combination hunting and fishing
I know I sold combo licenses to people who said they didn’t have a gun, but wanted to keep their future options open. I sold muzzleloader licenses to people who said they couldn’t own a firearm. Just saying “hunting license” means squat. And I can’t find anything in the paper or supplemental data to indicate they used only some form of firearm-specific hunting license.
For that matter, I sold hunting licenses to adults and minors who didn’t own a firearm, but would be borrowing one.
Then there are resident and non-resident licenses. Did they break that out? They don’t say.
So they created another model (ding!) by using an undefined number of licenses, which may or may not involve firearms and multiply that by yet another fudge factor.
So firearms ownership rate equals a proxy based on fudge-factored value plus fudge-factored value.
I think there may be just a little uncertainty in that.
Moving on, I had wondered how they got domestic firearms homicide numbers from the UCR. They didn’t.
From Table 10 theycan get victim/perp relationship numbers, but not weapon type. Table 9 breaks murders down by weapon.
So they made a model (ding!) of “domestic firearms homicides” by guesstimating that those followed the same weapon percentage as all murders.
But… the model is incomplete because most states don’t report victim/perp relationship. So they created another fudge-factor and applied that to all states. A model based on a model. (ding! ding! We got a two-fer!)
No uncertainty there at all; no, sirree.
Let put all this plainly in case you lost track. They compared…
Firearms ownership (fudged suicide rates plus fudged license numbesr that may not have anything to do with guns)
Domestic firearms homicide (a fudged estimate of two-thirds of the “data” based on an estimate of total in a few states)
And got numbers precise to three decimal places, with overlapping confidence intervals (domestic and non-domestic homicides) and determined a definite relation of domestic to ownership, but not non-domestic to ownership.
Again, definitely different even though CI overlaps. The “difference” is lost in the statistical noise.
Modified models of modified models compared to modified models of modified models.
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Added: And I finally found it. Looks like I’ll be going over it today.
The paper purports to find a definite link between domestic firearms homicide and firearms ownership. However, without seeing the whole paper and supplemental material, I’m inclined to doubt this link.
Let’s start with the results.
State-level firearm ownership was uniquely associated with domestic (incidence rate ratio=1.013, 95% CI=1.008, 1.018) but not nondomestic (incidence rate ratio=1.002, 95% CI=0.996, 1.008) firearm homicide rates, and this pattern held for both male and female victims.
When you have to run your ratio out to three decimal places, I begin to wonder, unless you’re modeling statistical quantum interactions between elementary particles. Shouldn’t need to be done with a few thousand documented events. When your 95% confidence intervals overlap, I really wonder if the “difference” is merely statistical noise.
But, again without seeing the data, I see more problems in the methods sections
Firearm ownership was examined using a validated proxy measure and homicide rates came from the Supplemental Homicide Reports of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports.
What “validated proxy measure” of firearms ownership? I’ve recently seen both the General Social Survey and YouGov.com used. Other estimates range from 45,000,000 gun owners to — seen this past Monday morning — 124,000,000. CBS actually estimated ownership by registered NFA items, not quite comprehending that’s not a proxy for states that don’t allow NFA items to be possessed.
You think a range like that might throw off incidence ratios a bit?
The next problem is that “homicide rates came from the Supplemental Homicide Reports” part. You might get the impression they got domestic firearms homicide numbers from the UCR. I don’t think so.
I’ve never been able to find a UCR table that broke that out. So what I think they did was “estimate” what percentage of firearms homicides (which are reported) were “domestic.” That’s another element of uncertainty.
Frankly, if one could reliably estimate firearms ownership, I would expect more domestic and nondomestic firearms deaths with more ownership, for much the same reason that a place with more cars per capita is likely to see more car crashes. But I can’t figure out what “data” they used to prove it.
This has the feel of just another anti-rights hit piece. But if Kivisto can show they used hard data and models somewhat more accurate than a kindergartener’s Play-Do sculpture, I’ll apologize.
If someone really wants to compare gun ownership to domestic firearms incidents, I’ll explain how to go about it.
Don’t make up estimates based on anonymous phone surveys.* Select just states with handgun registration (long guns are a small enough percentage of murder weapons to disregard for this). That ignores unlawful possession, but it’s something.
In those states, go to the state courts for domestic violence conviction records, and sort for those involving firearms. You want both fatal and nonfatal. Using fatal alone doesn’t tell you how often they happen, and incidents could be masked by good medical care or poor aim. You want convictions to weed out good self-defense cases, because some otherwise helpless woman eliminating a thuggish “boyfriend” who thinks trying to kill her is justifiable pest control and a good thing.
Graph each state, incidents on the X axis, ownership on the Y.
If you really want to drill down into the data, look at the convictions and see how often the weapons were lawfully possessed (i.e.- were unlawful possession charges present). (I’ll give you a hint: over 90% of crime guns used — per inmate surveys for decades — were unlawfully possessed.)
Now you can compare lawful firearms possession to domestic firearms homicides.
But wait, as Ron Popeil would say, there’s more.
Look up nonfirearm domestic homicides for those states, and compare that to ownership. Now you’ll see whether, as some suggest, people without guns simply kill with something else. Or maybe they just declare, “Aw, heck; I don’t have a gun. Guess I won’t do anything about you sassing me. Ain’t like I could beatcha to death with a skillet.”
* Anonymous phone surveys on ownership of politically incorrect tools are unreliable. Those disinclined to tell faceless pollsters what easily stolen goods they have often don’t answer the phone. Or they lie. After all, was that really the University of Chicago doing the GSS by wardialing pseudorandom phone numbers? The ATF with a list of potential investigatees? Or merely a burglar pre-casing the neighborhood? Caller ID is so easily spoofed.
Even if you got a gun ownership question into the oh-so-reliable American Community Survey… Let me tell you about the guy who answered those snoopy questions…
By filling it out as his D&D player character. Castel with suites, ballroom, feasting hall, jakes, stables; you get the idea. People in the home? Domestic retainers and soldiers. Commute time? Those quests can range for hundreds of miles.
Or all the crazy cat people listing their pets as children.
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For those discomfited by my point of view, and for liberals that entails maniacal hatred, don’t get your Garanimals’ training undies in a twist. I’m in the extreme minority. I’m so “old-school” and normal, nothing more than shirt and trousers will ever emerge from my closet and I managed to reach middle-age sans tattoos, never involved in drugs, and without carnal knowledge of Madonna. Is that rare or what? I’ve never won a popularity contest either and am not about to start now. So why sweat me? Like-minded Americans could fit in one room without a shoe horn.
Unbeknownst to me how, I was added to the email blast alert list of Democrat Party Panjandrum Nancy Pelosi known affectionately in some circles as Bela Pelousy. My first impulse was to hit delete and unsubscribe followed by multiple showers and a round of antibiotics. Wait a sec. Imagine the immense loss in entertainment value not reading lunatic emails penned behind the Tofu Curtain by Bela’s neo-Bolshevik scribes out in California. I reconsidered. Pouring a beverage and popping popcorn, I began reading. Hysterical. What a hoot. I stopped laughing. Radical Trotskycrats couldn’t fund-raise through preposterous wild-eyed frothing at the mouth emails, spewing claims unmoored from reality, unless significant numbers of the Great Unwashed are gullible and ignorant enough to believe such rubbish. Or went to public schools. Or both. G-d help us all.
Based on radio and television discussions, online articles, and conversations with Millennials, in general they seem to oppose abolishing the 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms. But they also tend to support so-called “assault-rifle” bans and believe safer guns and more training are the remedies for “gun-violence.” If true, their knowledge of firearms and understanding of crime issues needs to be addressed. What is the best approach?
All too-often Millennials propose gun control laws whose underlying premise is grossly naïve; people are incompetent with respect to self-defense so shouldn’t fight back against criminal attack. And “because,” they claim, an armed woman is more likely to shoot herself than the bad guy, she should submit to rape. Could these gutless arguments stem from an unwillingness by TSNAGs (Typical Sensitive New Age Guys) to shoulder a responsibility once embraced by men; protecting society’s most vulnerable? Is cowardice behind their claim disarming all but cops will create safer communities? Making matters worse, people proposing more gun laws sometimes know little or nothing about guns. They employ incorrect terms, trade in urban legends, and rely on internet disinformation. Maybe they ask where’s the safety on Ruger’s GP100, call AR15s “assault weapons,” refer to magazines as “clips,” claim anyone can walk in and out of a gun store in five minutes with a machine gun, say the Constitution “gives” us the right to keep and bear arms, or claim gun-registration will never lead to confiscation. Can gun-owners be faulted in believing when a liberal man marries a liberal woman, it’s a same-sex marriage? How does one address their ignorance and misinformation? Understandably those in the self-defense community often respond to the ill-informed with insults but, is this the best approach with Millennials? Is treating them as lunkheads for not knowing what the rest of us were taught the best way to win converts? No. Instead, with gentleness and patience, take them under your wing. Guide them to a saving knowledge of the truth about self-defense. Teach them the 2nd Amendment protects the right to save their lives and those of loved ones from bad guys who’d take them in a second without remorse. They’re smart. As they learn, questions will arise and your answers will lead to more questions and soon you’ve taught them what used to be common knowledge. Let’s start here.
Deceitfully calling them “assault-weapons,” and “assault-rifles,” liberals would ban America’s rifle, the AR15/AR10 and their derivatives. But these are semiautomatic not assault-rifles, (no firearm is classified an assault weapon). They comport with the type of firearm Alexander Hamilton had in mind observing in Federalist #46 that an armed citizenry is the chief bulwark against infringement and oppression by a federal government, and an army it might raise for that purpose.1 Those calling for “safer” guns and more training are apparently unfamiliar with firearms. Considering approximately 124 million people own about 270 million guns,2 (or more), and there were 505 deaths due to “accidental or negligent discharge of a firearm” in 2013,3 (not even half of a half of a half of a percent, you get the drift) safe gun handling is not a problem in America. Would guns complicated by additional safety devices and more training impair the thugs shooting up Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia,4 and Washington, D.C. among others?
In the past several decades, various firearm manufacturers began attaching unnecessary function-retarding devices (magazine disconnect safety) aimed at fending off slip-and-fall lawyers, buying goodwill among anti-gunners, and saving from themselves, people too stupid to unload their gun before cleaning it. Remarkably, even self-defense gurus piled on teaching CCW holders not to carry guns with personal hand-loaded ammunition because it made them appear more blood-thirsty. Editorialists for firearm magazines, gun forums, pro-gun attorneys, and those training citizens at various shooting schools and academies echoed these proscriptions as well. These admonitions took on the life of hoary old clichés everyone accepts but never questions. With all due respect to ThePersuaders, as a policeman, when I heard someone utter the cliché; there’s a fine line between love and hate, it was always after husbands or boyfriends beat, stabbed, or murdered their wives or girlfriends. There is a huge chasm between love and hate. I am no fan of hoary clichés. If you get worked up over what comes next, keep in mind, drugs, tattoos, Madonna, extreme minority…
I’m acquainted with the PARDs (Pistol Rescue Doctors) who perform operations transforming liberal guns into conservative guns. They surgically remove from pistols magazine disconnect “safeties,” an unnecessary handicapping mechanism. I realize liberals enjoy taking sharp objects to everything from fences to babies, but, in this case, patients emerge from operating rooms feeling much better. These surgeons have rescued pistols from both domestic and foreign marques. A minimally invasive procedure, each gun is able to return to a normal life the same day, without prescription Opioids. What is this safety? A magazine disconnect safety prevents a pistol from firing unless a magazine is firmly inserted and locked in place. It doesn’t matter if the magazine is loaded with rounds or not. Unless the magazine is in place, the pistol is inoperable.
In an ongoing campaign to limit the type of firearms which may be sold and possessed, down to, well, none, California created an ever evolving list of “safety” features and attributes firearms must have in order to be legal in the Rainbow state. To the ever shrinking list of legal guns was added in 2007, the requirement of a visual and tactile loaded chamber indicator and a magazine disconnect “safety.”5 It remains unclear how such mechanisms reduce crime by identifying, apprehending, and bringing violent criminals to trial. In order to continue marketing guns in California, and placate lefty anti-2nd Amendment politicians (the beard and ponytail crowd), Sturm Ruger and Smith & Wesson (metal pistols) added magazine disconnect “safeties” not typically found on pistols manufactured by Beretta, CZ, Glock, H&K, FN, SIG Sauer, Springfield, and 1911A1s, or Smith’s modern plastic pistols.
Self-anointed “gun-experts,” among the most insufferably arrogant people I’ve ever encountered, and Neosporin scraped knee spraying worry warts argue that, before cleaning a pistol, someone might forget to check to see if it’s loaded and suffer a negligent discharge [ND] with tragic consequences. Do they assume everyone, other than them, is too ignorant, stupid, and irresponsible to safely handle guns so as many function retarding devices as possible must be added to them? The rarity of gun-accidents puts a lie to this notion. For everyone I’ve trained with, at police and public ranges, the approach is much the same. Training is 100% focused on safety. A standardized step by step protocol is taught and pounded into the heads of new shooters. Range Masters are unforgiving. 1) all guns are considered loaded, 2) guns at all times must be pointed in a safe direction, 3) shooters must know their backstop meaning, what you’re shooting at and the dangers of shooting in that direction, 4) don’t touch or load guns until conditions are safe to do so, 5) When done firing, place the pistol on the bench, table, etc. with the slide locked back and the ejection port up so anyone can see if it’s loaded. Rounds, fired or not, are ejected from the cylinder of revolvers and the gun is placed on the shooting table with the cylinder propped open for inspection, 6) before disassembly for cleaning, the pistol’s magazine must be out, the slide locked back, and the chamber inspected to ensure no rounds remain in the gun, 7) never point even a disassembled gun at anyone, 8) when unloading an unfired gun, whether back from the range or a day of concealed carry, you must account for each round. By always following these or similar steps in the same order, they become part of what’s known as “muscle memory.” Simple. For those finding these steps too complex or mentally challenging, no amount of safeties will make their firearms safe. For them a safe gun is none at all. But don’t punish the 99.99% who handle firearms responsibly with useless feel-good beanbag lava lamp “safety” devices. An on-line Ruger Forum reveals there are Henny Pennys among gun-owners.
Magazine disconnect safety deactivation opponents argue, although removing them makes pistols no less safe, the why of it would not be understood by juries. Others contend that, even in cases where use of deadly force is justified, prosecutors will use removal to paint defendants in the worst possible light. Forum member ‘Sandlapper’ wrote; “It is a safety device you are removing and I’ve always thought safety and gun are too (sic) words that worked well together.” When another forum member asked if this had ever been an issue in a court case, removal opponent ‘Storm40’ delivered what he thought was the coup de grace citing People v. Superior Court (DU) Los Angeles County, (1992). In this case, an LAPD ballistics expert testified the snub-nosed Smith & Wesson revolver used in the shooting case had been crudely altered and it’s “trigger pull dramatically reduced.” Storm40 added that the revolver’s “safety mechanism” didn’t function.6 Having fired snub-nosed revolvers from Colt, Sturm-Ruger, Smith & Wesson, and Taurus over the years, I never encountered a “safety-mechanism,” left-wing novelist Stephen Kind notwithstanding.
Great Scott, has America descended so deeply into Henny Penny emasculation that the blood of America’s rugged, individualistic, and self-reliant forefathers has evaporated from everyone’s veins? Have Neosporin wielding moms patrolling playgrounds ever vigilant for scraped elbows turned Americans into the sky is falling ninnies?
Back in the day, a young man’s first car was typically a tired old jalopy. He soon went to work tossing out performance inhibiting parts replacing cams, intakes, carburetors, exhaust manifolds, and gears with those designed to wring from the car its true performance potential. At least outside of Palo Alto. When liberal environmentalists, who pee their pants at the mere mention of horsepower, employed the tyrannical power of government to foist all manner of unconstitutional performance crippling “pollution” devices on cars, sons and daughters of pioneers and settlers did what free people always do. They chucked them. None of their modifications rendered cars any less safe. Whether driving a 1974 Ford Pinto pumping out 80 horsepower or a 2018 Dodge Demon with 840 screaming horses on tap, what makes cars safe or unsafe is how they’re operated. For those driving sewing machines (electric cars), time among aficionados of real cars is highly recommended…and fun.
Removing magazine disconnect safeties does little to alter trigger pull weight on hammer or striker fired pistols and renders them no less safe. With Ruger’s SR9, removal actually smooths trigger press resulting in a more accurate gun. No one wants to shoot innocent bystanders. Won’t prosecutors use this modification to vilify defendants? Let’s be frank. If a prosecutor has charged you in a self-defense case, they want your scalp. Ethical or not, fair or not, they’ll throw anything they can at you to win conviction. District Attorneys are politicians. Even If you do everything right; approved factory ammo and a totally bone-stock gun, and you’re a pillar of the community completely justified in the use of deadly force, a D.A. who chooses to bring charges will so blacken your character and reputation, your own family won’t recognize you. Trial lawyer Gordon Cooper, an experienced attorney who represents gun-owners, observes the legal system is biased and stacked against gun-owners. And that’s whether you tuned your gun to be more efficient or not. In his experience, “many law-enforcement officers, district attorneys, and even jurors seem to think that if you own or carry a firearm, you are inherently guilty in some way.”7 It won’t matter whether or not you added clearer sights, replaced the grip panels for a better fit, had a trigger-job to improve a horrendous pull weight, Cerakoted the frame for rust prevention, or removed a magazine disconnect “safety.” Ultimately the issue to be decided is, was the use of deadly force justified? Prosecutors attempt to load juries with as many gun-ignorant Oprah watching malleable Neosporin nitwits as possible. It’s the defense attorney’s responsibility, through the voir dire and trial process to block this and provide expert counter-witnesses. As to Ruger Forum member Sandlapper’s cliché about guns and safety going together, Confiscationists use the words “gun” and “safety,” together all the time. Are you going to allow those who know nothing about and or hate guns, dictate what does or doesn’t belong on your gun because the word “safety” is attached to it? For liberals “safety” means national gun-owner registration, restrictions, bans, forced-buy backs, and confiscation. Is that what you want, Sandlapper? If you allow Confiscationist Henny Pennys to build a “safe” gun, chances are it won’t fire. Messages on T-shirts, bumpers stickers, and social media pose a much greater threat to a defendant in a self-defense case than a finely-tuned gun.
Ruger Forum member “Spring” noted disconnect “safety” removal does not lighten trigger pull and the same dire warnings were applied to gun-owners using hollow point rounds; they’re “designed to kill” and make gun owners appear “blood-thirsty.” You’ll get hammered by prosecutors if they discover you used hollow-points in your self-defense gun, people warned. Another Forum member observed that, with respect to the California snub-nosed revolver case, modification of the revolver’s trigger was not an issue and played no role in determination of guilt or innocence. Two women were engaged in a physical altercation (sounds like a high school cafeteria at lunchtime), one turned to leave, and the defendant shot her in the back of the head.8 Anyone with a modicum of common sense knows immediately what the defendant did wrong. If not, don’t touch a gun until you get some serious legal training.
As much as I respect Massad Ayoob, I take issue with his admonition against disconnect safety removal.9 As a policeman, I and other officers were issued Smith & Wesson Model 19 revolvers. By the 1980s, new specimens typically came with heavy gritty triggers and large wooden grips. It was routine for officers to replace wooden stocks with rubber grips, change the sights, and pop for a department legal trigger job. Like performance mods on a car, this didn’t make the gun any less safe, it simply ran better.
Prosecutor: “Isn’t it true officer Goldstein, getting an action job indicates you intended to shoot the deceased?”
Goldstein: “No, pulling the trigger does.”
Gaston Glock’s masterpiece has no magazine disconnect safety and is perhaps the most customizable pistol on the market. From slide hold-open levers, magazine release buttons, springs, barrels, slides, name it, the performance of off the shelf guns can be greatly enhanced. This can make for more confident and accurate users. Ultra-light triggers aside, in self-defense situations, employing a finely tuned and accurate gun means less chance of bullets striking unintended targets. Gun owners who experiment with various loads are more likely to know which bullets might over or under penetrate in given situations allowing them to choose wisely. This makes them and the gun safer.
It’s possible, sitting in a car, at a desk, or reaching for items on grocery store shelves, to bump the magazine release button just enough to unlock the magazine of some pistols. With the magazine still in the well, nothing appears amiss. Attacks by criminals are often sudden and violent, allowing victims but a second to pull their gun and fire in self-defense. Only, the gun won’t fire. The magazine is unlocked. What about the fact a round is already chambered. It won’t matter. The gun is inoperable due to the magazine disconnect safety. For naysayers who might argue this would probably be a rare occurrence, how rare will it be if it’s you? Gun Writers note most attacks and self-defense uses of pistols occur at handshaking distances. Suppose a scumbag makes a grab for and gets his hand on your gun and, in the ensuing struggle, the magazine release button is bumped sending the magazine flying. No sweat, you still have one in the pipe. Weren’t you paying attention? Without the magazine locked in place, the pistol is inoperable. While the Scrote is stabbing you with a knife or bludgeoning your skull with a crowbar, you’re on hands and knees, scrambling around on the sidewalk, trying to find the ejected magazine so it can be re-inserted into the pistol to make it work. Only, you won’t be able to do that. Because you’re dead.
Finding time and money to practice frequently at the range is a challenge for anyone. “Dry-firing” is a method for practicing trigger skills, hand and eye coordination, and building muscle memory. Third generation Smith & Wesson pistols, alloy and steel models, had hammers and a double action trigger pull weight designed to build great forearms. Like a revolver, one can practice “staging” the overly heavy trigger learning to control and fire it at the proper “break” enhancing accuracy and effectiveness. But this requires lots of practice, including long dry-fire sessions. To dry-fire these hammer fired Smiths, one has two options; thumb back the hammer and pull the trigger but, it won’t drop without the magazine in place (Smith 908, for example), or rack the slide. But the slide can’t be racked to the rear and returned to battery if an empty magazine is in place. The slide has to be retracted, allowed to return to battery, and then the magazine re-inserted. Unless you thumb the hammer with a magazine in place, if you dry fire 50 times, you’ll have to repeat this process 50 times. But that’s impossible with magazine disconnect safeties. It’s the same for striker-fired pistols. Dropping the magazine, working the slide, reinserting the magazine, pulling the trigger, and repeating is not conducive to training and, we have a magazine always in the gun. Wouldn’t it be safer during dry fire practice for a magazine not to be part of the equation?
For those clinging to the, what’s the harm with more safeties argument, how many will be enough? At what point does the firearm’s intended purpose become compromised? The way to improve driving skills is through practice, not making it harder for people to drive their cars. In both cases, firearms and automobiles, one learns a set of safety protocols from which not to deviate. I am aware of a man who was killed when the jack holding up the car he was under failed. Anyone who works on cars learns early on this is a hideously dangerous no-no. The same “everyone knows you don’t do this” type of maxim also applies to guns. Those who violate safety protocols, face tragic consequences. The good news is, most of us do follow them.
What would guns designed by Henny Pennys look like? Big and heavy, festooned with a padlock, proof all 29 warning labels were read, owner fingerprint keypad, microphone and voice recognition software, chip reader, DNA blood-sample collection needle, video-screen on which to take a required test, google search for any racist, sexist, bigoted, etc. comment ever made on social media, and an automatic call to the FBI for authorization to use the gun.
In America, when a respected greybeard in the 2nd Amendment and shooting community theorizes from his pedestal this or that handgun modification could be used by prosecutors to hang an innocent person, other sages nod in cross-pollinating agreement. Soon the theory circulates becoming accepted wisdom one dares not question. In the real world, rounds fired at violent attackers in self-defense, from .380s to .44 Magnums, don’t automatically drop knife or gun-wielding Scumbags like a sack of potatoes. You’re in a fight for your life. You must do whatever it takes to prevail. Failure means you die. But, snivels the Henny Penny, they’ll say when you fired your gun, you meant to kill the bad guy with the knife.10 When it comes to saving lives, we can’t let fear mongering and the massive egos of firearms “experts” cripple our ability to defend ourselves. We can’t allow Confiscationists to normalize hamstringing guns with function inhibiting devices in the name of “gun safety” and “sensible laws.” None of this will hamstring violent criminals but may cost you your life.
11 Clinton Rossiter, Editor, The Federalist Papers, #46 (New York, N.Y., A Mentor Book from New American Library, 1961), 294-300.
22John R. Lott, Jr., More Guns Less Crime, Third Edition, (Chicago, Illinois, University of Chicago Press, 2010), 1.
1010 People who rob, rape, and murder, are intentional predators. Unlike animals whose predation is based on feeding, these predators are motivated by evil hence monsters and no longer part of the family of man and should be treated as such.
A Childrens National doctor claims to have found that universal background checks reduce child firearms deaths by a whopping 35%. That’s rather astonishing.
State Gun Laws and Pediatric Firearm-Related Mortality
The presence of these laws was associated with a >35% lower rate of firearm-related mortality, even after adjustment for socioeconomic factors and gun ownership.
I was going to do an all-out analysis of this paper, since just from the press release I knew it had problems (cross-sectional analysis, without longitudinal; 18-21yo “children”), but this persuaded me to not waste that much time.
These data were used to select firearm-related deaths per year for those aged ≤21 years by state, except in states with <10 annual firearm-related deaths where the counts were suppressed.
Allow me to summarize: We compared death rates in states with gun control laws to state without, and found those states with the laws had fewer deaths once we tossed out the low death/no-law states.
You see, we can look up the states with the laws in question and see that their numbers of deaths exceeded the threshold for inclusion. Therefore, it had to be states without those laws that they tossed.
When I thought I was going to write all this up, I took a look at their supplemental information. Look at Table 5.
They confused a firearm owner identification card requirement for actual background checks on transactions.
Table 6, and even the inclusion of a microstamping/ballistic fingerprinting law, was simply pointless. Maryland and New York gave up fingerprinting because it never worked (pro-tip: the average “time to crime” for a firearm is over ten years, by which time the rifling and firing pin have been changed by a decade of wear or replacement, so it’s useless). California’s microstamping law is even more pointless because no commercial gun has it (and would be subject to the same wear).
So, starting with bad data, and excluding data that would invalidate their thesis, they did a cross-sectional comparison only, with no longitudinal analysis to find an effect of implementation of background check laws on in-state trends. A UC Davis study found no effect on homicide or suicide rates in the ten years after California’s passage of a universal background check law. More recently, California has seen an increase in firearms homicides.
The firearm homicide rate, which adjusts for population changes, increased by 15 percent from 2014 to 2016.
I can only speculate why they excluded 2016 and 2017, for which WISQARS data are available. Particularly since those years saw a 17.25% increase in 0-21yo firearms deaths over the 2011-2015.
And even so, a 35% decrease in fatalities seems odd, since approximately 96% of guns used in crimes were obtained through theft or trafficking, bypassing background checks; and at least 75% of murderers were prohibited persons due to felony convictions (60% alone), misdemeanor domestic violence convictions, rulings of mental illness, or court orders. Add in drug users (like this guy) and the percentage is even higher.
Just another BS paper with a pre-set agenda, lacking in anything resembling science.
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You know, it seems more and more often I hear the left justify their criminal behavior as “fighting hate”, “fighting evil” “fighting fascism” or another one I hear from time to time, “Trump is so evil”. No, I don’t believe President Trump is evil, misguided and screws up? Yep. But I notice those that claim he is “evil” usually do so because he is denying them something they want such as illegal immigrants voting, or on welfare, or how about just coming here illegally, un-vetted and we have no idea who they are, what diseases they have or what their character is.
Recently a conservative journalist was attacked in the city of Portland Oregon. A shame and disgrace, Portland used to be a very beautiful city. I very much enjoyed my trips there when I was younger. But Portland has become a liberal haven, like Berkeley. And like Berkeley, antifa flourishes. What is antifa like?
I’m reading a book right now called Women Heroes of WWII.
He instituted the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth), a state-run program for all children ages 10–18. The Hitler Youth program was geared to make Germany’s children proud, militant Nazis. They engaged in warlike games, killed small animals (to become insensitive to suffering and death), sang songs about German streets running with Jewish blood, and were encouraged toward fanatical, personal devotion to Hitler, a devotion that was to take precedence over their relationships with their parents. (Children were encouraged to turn in their own parents to the Gestapo if they heard them say anything against the Führer.)
The members of antifa certainly fit that description! My Mom and I were talking the other night and she was telling me a statistic she thought she had heard about the percentage of people that want socialism vs the people that don’t, and want capitalism. And in their public educatioindoctrination centers skools they learn what is “social justice” and “victimhood” 300 level classes in this are available at most universities, along with BDS and anti-Zionism against the one Jewish state in the world, which is in no way of course, antisemitic. In addition to physically attacking their victims, they strive for fear, intimidation and humiliation. Again, familiar.
But adults can have differences of opinions, they can discuss ideas. Very spirited discussions can result between two adults that argues their points, theories and ideas.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.
Brainstorming is a beautiful thing. Antifa doesn’t brainstorm. I’m not sure they really think, they seem more like violently programed robots. They are absolutely indoctrinated to hate. How else can you scream “Love trumps hate” as you try to beat another living being?
Some of this just seems so familiar, it’s like a memory ringing in the back of my mind.
I’m seeing a pattern. Conservatives, especially in this time of Trump have been de-humanized to the point that the liberal tolerant left feels perfectly justified in physically attacking them. Women alone, old men, doesn’t matter. They function as a feral pack, they seem to single out one person and go after them. Because of they have different ideas than that of the left and that is no longer permitted. Stores are boycotted, careers are ruined, jobs are lost. All because someone expressed an opinion that the left doesn’t allow them to express or believe. Which goes with the pattern, it’s why Russia and Germany had to lock up and isolate leaders of the opposition, be they teacher, doctors, sailors, soldiers or the neighborhood grocer.
Antifa sympathisers are ‘whitewashing’ violence: Andy Ngo
You notice this report came from outside the U.S.
Also like the days of old, those in authority are telling the police to “stand down” and not protect the Trump supporters. Whether it was Berkeley, the lady in San Jose when the police blocked the door and wouldn’t let her in as antifa surrounded her or the attack on Andy Ngo which occurred right in front of a police station. The authorities are not doing the “serve and protect” thing. Well, not if you’re a conservative anyway.
Have you noticed another similarity between the cities where antifa seems to be flourishing? Yeah, I thought you probably had. They all have strict gun control. While that will affect conservatives who tend to be law abiding, it does not affect antifa who show up armed with crowbars and bats. And while the liberal talking heads aka #FakeNews tend to belittle the milkshake thing, the “milkshakes” often have quick drying concrete which makes them capable of blunt force trauma as well as chemical acid burns.
The point of the all this intimidation is something gun owners have seen for a long time. The media tells us some massive percentage of the people support further restricting our Second Amendment rights. And while we know it’s crap, many others, the Fudds out there will believe it. Especially if there is a collaborating story from the VNRA. With the stifling of free speech, and the ability to safely assemble at a political rally the tolerant, progressive anti-fascist fascists are ensuring only one opinion, theirs, is safe to express or will be heard.
And while some say “Love Trumps Hate”, I say love may well trump hate, but these days love and a AR-15 are a way better way to go.
I ran across another research paper regarding gun control. I was expecting the usual biased crap, but…
That title.
Mathematics ties media coverage of gun control to upticks in gun purchases
Through the analysis of time series from 1999 to 2017, we identify a correlation between the occurrence of a mass shooting and the rate of growth in firearm acquisition. More importantly, a transfer entropy analysis pinpoints media coverage on firearm control policies as a potential causal link in a Wiener–Granger sense that establishes this correlation. Our results demonstrate that media coverage may increase public worry about more stringent firearm control and partially drive increases in firearm prevalence.
The actual paper is paywalled. The available abstract… makes sense, and confirms what everyone has known empirically for years: Threats to restrict rights drive people to exercise them while they can. Maurizio Porfiri et al quantified it.
The study itself doesn’t use garbage “synthetic controls” or inappropriate “cross-sectional analysis.” It’s straight temporal analysis of real data looking for cause and effect. I had to see who Porfiri is; he’s not your usual social “science” type.
He certainly isn’t. He’s an engineer; mechanical, not social. You know, the guys who comprehend that you have to get facts right, or the airplane won’t fly.
In fact, when I looked at some of his other paper titles, I realized I’d heard of his work. He’s done some really neat stuff with robotic fish. That work.
Like his seemingly realistic analysis of how gun control threats drive sales.
If academia really wants to understand “gun violence” and how that relates to the Second Amendment, they need to dump the social scientists (and social justice weasels), and hire more reality-based engineers.
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Jill Filipovic, of no discernable expertise in firearms policy, thinks outlawing guns will disarm criminals because there wouldn’t be anything to steal.
Welcome to reality.
Fewer guns mean fewer killings, and we all know it
The NRA and other “gun rights” proponents claim that if guns are restricted, only outlaws and bad guys will have guns. But if it were harder to buy guns, they would also stay out of the hands of irresponsible men and women, whose negligent treatment of their weapons results in a great number of deaths and injuries every year, many of which involve children. Many criminals, too, aren’t the plotting masterminds we imagine them to be. A tougher road to gun ownership would mean that impetuous gun crimes, or crimes of passion, would simply be less likely to happen.
So let’s guess that in the past ten years, 2,324,000 guns hit the streets. Could be a lot more; some estimates of stolen guns run as high as 600,000 per year. And of course, there were plenty already out there before those. Based on trends, I’d guess at least 1,300,000 were stolen in the next ten years back.
So just in twenty years we have in the neighborhood of 3.5 million completely unaccounted for guns in criminal hands. (Plus all the years before that; I suspect the stolen guns total for my lifespan is in excess of 5 million.)
That, Ms. Filipovic, is why we tell you that if you somehow managed to outlaw all guns, the outlaws will still have them.
Heck, you victim disarmers have never managed more than a 13.44% compliance on simple registration, from otherwise law-abiding people. Do you think you can get 100% compliance on a ban from actual criminals with untraceable weapons?
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I knew this was coming as soon as reports came out that the Virginia Beach chumbucket used a suppressor. Here’s one example of many.
Why the shooting in Virginia Beach sets an ominous precedent
But the Virginia Beach killer seemed to want the anonymity of silence, a tool of the coward, not one seeking fame or a blaze of glory. None of the videos or manifestos we’ve seen from New Zealand to Las Vegas appear to be part of the Virginia Beach story. The killer wanted silence.
If he wanted silence, he should have used something silent; maybe a machete. Even suppressed, a .45 (reportedly used) is hardly silent. The Obsidian 45 suppressor, billing itself as “the Quietest 45 Pistol Suppressor on the Market,” claims a “mere” 129.3 dB.
129.3dB. That comes in just under the sound of a jet fighter taking off on afterburner, and louder than a thunderclap, chainsaw, car horn, jackhammer, and even a DC-8 airliner.
I suspect people could hear the asshole’s shots. Oh. Wait…
A .45 shot is around 157 dB in loudness. A good suppressor can reduce that by as much as 32 dB, leaving a loud noise. The point of suppressors is usually hearing protection and safety. A suppressor can do the job of ear muffs, without reducing your awareness of the environment surrounding you.*
Fearmongering Juliette Kayyem might be a smart lady who is knowledgeable of international security, but she demonstrably knows zilch about firearms and suppressors.
One report has it that the scumbag prepared for his spree by brushing his teeth. Perhaps Kayyem wants toothbrushes outlawed because folks in the building really couldn’t hear that. Or car mufflers, because I understand he drove to work.
* I know someone will bring up the De Lisle. True, it was a .45 ACP, and officially came in at 85.5 dB. But 1) it was a carbine with a large suppressor, it was a bolt action (fully suppressing a semi-automatic such as the VB shooter allegedly used is very problematical), and 3) the action and suppressor were designed as a single, purpose built, integrated unit.
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Locking Up Guns Could Reduce Teen And Childhood Firearm Deaths By A Third
Most US households with children do not safely store firearms in the way the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends: locked up and unloaded. If parents simply locked up all their guns, then up to a third of gun suicides and accidental deaths among children and teens could be avoided, researchers estimate in a new study.
This modeling study using Monte Carlo simulation estimated that 6% to 32% of youth firearm deaths (by suicide and unintentional firearm injury) could be prevented, depending on the probability that an intervention motivates adults who currently do not lock all household firearms to instead lock all guns in their home.
So the researchers actually came up with an oddly wide range of 6% to 32% (which is less than a third). So far, so good. That would be nice to know. How did they do that?
DESIGN, SETTING, and PARTICIPANTS: A modeling study using Monte Carlo simulation of youth firearm suicide and unintentional firearm mortality in 2015. A simulated US national sample of firearm-owning households where youth reside was derived using nationally representative rates of firearm ownership and storage and population data from the US Census to test a hypothetical intervention, safe storage of firearms in the home, on youth accidental death and suicide.
This wasn’t even a dubious “synthetic control” (make up imaginary states by selectively combining real states) study. Simulation. They didn’t use real data. They made it up. Then they applied “hypothetical intervention” to their imaginary data.
For the record, you can stop right there. The “study” is meaningless. But the fact that their “youth” includes 18 and 19 year old adults would have told you that anyway.
I also found it amusing that they created their imaginary country using firearms numbers and storage methods gathered in the National Firearms survey, in which 45% of selectees declined to participate, leaving only those stupid enough to tell strangers how many guns they have and how they’re stored, if even if they are locked up.
Then there is this:
we assumed that all deaths resulted from firearms kept in homes where youth resided.
Invalid assumption, which even the most cursory web search could have told them. Even The Trace admits that 1 in 5 youth suicides are committed with guns not kept in the person’s home.
I could go about things like them doing a study about 0-19 year olds but using data from studies on 0-17, or that gun-owning adults (18, 19) need only unlock their safely stored gun and do the deed. Instead, let me explain how they could have come to meaningful conclusions.
At least a dozen states have so-called “safe storage” laws. For each state, graph the unintentional firearms death rate per 100,000 for people 0-17, for the period of 1999 to 2017 (years chosen because their readily available in WISQARS).
Then graph the firearms suicide rates for the same group and period.
Now identify the point in time when the safe storage law went into effect in each state.
Note the trend. Did the rate increase or decrease abruptly? Did the pre-law trend simply continue? Are there other discontinuities in the trend at other points in time which you can correlate to some known event (such as a sudden increase during a period of high unemployment)?
Compare the trends of the states. Did each state experience the same trend (more likely to be a correlation with the storage law), or do the differ significantly?
We have 30-something states without “safe storage” laws. Pick a dozen of those, preferably states with otherwise similar demographics as one of the “safe” states; the idea being to minimize the effect of non-safe storage factors.
Graph the same data for the same period, and analyze for the same trends.
How do the “unsafe” trends compare to the “safe” trends?
Now you have data to support a real conclusion.
But wait! There’s more.
Run another set of state by state graphs; this time for number and rate of firearms-related murders. We want to see if locking up one’s security had any negative effects. Saving one kid at the expense of 2-3 murder victims is expensive.
If you really want to be comprehensive, graph home burglaries and violent crime rates for the same period. Did locking up security embolden burglars and rapists?
But real data might not give you the results you want.
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