OUTSTANDING Suggestions
Via Instapundit comes this excellent list of suggestions for gun rights advocates.
Go. Read. And do a couple of them (or more!) this year.
Month: February 2004
They Keep Missing the POINT
The Baltimore Sun reports that Maryland’s Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee heard testimony yesterday on a proposed state “assault weapon” ban.
Leading the BAN ‘EM ALL! charge was testimony that “One in five law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty is killed with an assault weapon.” The piece reports:
There’s just one problem with the ratio, according to gun rights advocates: It isn’t true.
Dozens of them testified before the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee yesterday, and a hundred more crammed an antechamber while committee members considered a bill that would give Maryland one of the nation’s strictest bans on semiautomatic firearms by banning 45 named weapons and any subsequent copycats. Though 70 state senators and delegates back the bill, gun shop owners, hunting groups, and assorted police organizations rejected the ban and the statistic.
Lt. Col. Steven. T. Moyer of the Maryland State Police — which opposes prohibiting the sale, transfer and ownership of semi-automatic weapons — told committee members that of the 50 rifle-related deaths in the state over the past decade, none of them were officers.
“The statistics are not here and [don’t] support this legislation,” he said.
That’s a surprising thing to hear from a high official of any law-enforcement department. Usually these people are politically savvy and anti-gun. In Maryland it’s especially refreshing. However:
Roots of the 20-percent figure lie in the Washington-based Violence Policy Center, a nonprofit group that works to curtail gun violence through research, advocacy, education and litigation. The group analyzed unpublished FBI data on fatal police shootings from Jan. 1, 1998, through Dec. 31, 2001. During the period, 211 officers nationwide were killed in the line of duty, 41 of them with weapons the group determined to be assault weapons, such as M1 Carbines, AK-47s, Tec 9s and AR-15s.
“They classified all rifles as assault weapons,” Republican state Sen. Nancy Jacobs, wearing a button with the words “MARYLAND GUNOWNERS VOTE,” complained during the marathon hearing.
Not so, said Kristen Rand, the Violence Policy Center’s legislative director, in a telephone interview.
“All we did was we called the FBI, we asked them if we could get a list of guns used to kill police officers,” Rand said. “We took those instances where we knew for sure that it was an assault weapon and put them together. I think the confusion comes in that this data is not routinely released.”
The data, summarized in the organization’s “Officer Down” report, includes the model number and bullet caliber used in police shootings from Alaska to New York. Among the fatalities is the Oct. 20, 2000, death of Baltimore County Police Officer John Stem, the last Maryland officer to die of wounds inflicted by an assault weapon. Stem suffered the wounds during a barricade shooting in 1977 that left him paralyzed and killed a fellow officer.
One quibble – “research, advocacy, education and litigation”? The VPC is unabashedly in favor of banning handguns. If they can get “assault weapons” banned first, they’re all for it. Here’s where I get to insert my favorite VPC quote:
Although handguns claim more than 20,000 lives a year, the issue of handgun restriction consistently remains a non-issue with the vast majority of legislators, the press, and public. The reasons for this vary: the power of the gun lobby; the tendency of both sides of the issue to resort to sloganeering and pre-packaged arguments when discussing the issue; the fact that until an individual is affected by handgun violence he or she is unlikely to work for handgun restrictions; the view that handgun violence is an “unsolvable” problem; the inability of the handgun restriction movement to organize itself into an effective electoral threat; and the fact that until someone famous is shot, or something truly horrible happens, handgun restriction is simply not viewed as a priority. Assault weapons – just like armor-piercing bullets, machine guns, and plastic firearms – are a new topic. The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over fully automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons – anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun – can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on these weapons.
Yeah, they’re really dedicated to honesty and full disclosure. People are confused about the difference between semi-autos and machine guns? Great! Works for us! Plastic firearms? Don’t exist, but boy, what a fear-inspiring soundbite! Armor piercing ammo? Who cares if any rifle round will penetrate a police vest, we can use that to slip in a backdoor ban! Spin, twist, mislead, obfuscate, exaggerate, lie! It’s for a righteous cause!
Ok, what we’ve got here is both sides offering “sloganeering and pre-packaged arguments” for the purpose of influencing lawmakers. (Big surprise.)
I covered the VPC’s report back in May when the Atlanta Urinal Constipation Journal Constitution ran a story on it. What I found was that the report said that of the 211 officers killed with firearms, 41 were killed with “assault weapons.” The accuracy of this statement depends on the definition of “is” how you define “assault weapon.” Unsurprisingly, the VPC defines it as broadly as possible. Of the 41 deaths, four (4) were with M1 Carbines, eight (8) with SKS rifles, two (2) with Mini-14’s, three (3) M-11’s, and two (2) TEC-9’s. Problem is, the M1 Carbine, the SKS and the Mini-14 don’t qualify under the current Federal ban as “assault weapons,” and neither the M-11 nor the TEC-9 is a rifle. The table indicates that in 2000 a Maryland officer was killed with an M1 Carbine, so somebody is obviously in error.
But the point everybody misses is the one I made in that May piece: The underlying implication is that the “assault weapon ban” would result in officer’s lives saved, but the statistics show that’s a conclusion you can’t draw. According to this table provided by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund, there is no evidence that the proliferation of “assault weapons” has caused any increase in officer deaths. In other words, you cannot honestly conclude that banning these guns would save anybody. If someone’s willing to shoot a cop, they’re willing to shoot a cop. Choice of weapon is apparently immaterial. And an “assault weapon ban” is a useless exercise, as Lt. Col. Moyer correctly stated.
A Liberal I Could Live Next Door To
Though I think he’d be wary of ME. Barry of Inn of the Last Home has written an excellent piece (permalinks bloggered, scroll down to “What to Write, What to Write…”) (Link via Say Uncle) Teaser:
I’m just the average guy who wants to do the right thing and the dutiful thing when voting. Today’s Primary Day in Tennessee. I plan to go to the polls this afternoon after work, and make my choice for Democratic candidate for President.
Trouble is, I’m not sure I want a Democrat as President this time.
In the past, I’ve always considered myself a Democrat, and have mostly identified myself with liberal causes. The Republican mindset has mostly been alien and unfathomable to me.
But things have changed in this past year.
I wrote a couple of pieces about Barry’s position on guns a while back. I accused him, based on his writing, of being mentally unbalanced when it came to firearms, but this piece illustrates beyond a doubt that his logical faculties are quite functional. Read the whole thing.
Agenda? What Agenda? III
Unsigned (naturally), the ABC News “The Note” newsblog had the following admission of liberal bias that I feel (and Instapundit felt) needs to be recorded for posterity, as it’s sure to disappear as soon as some higher-up discovers it, if not it will simply scroll off the page into oblivion:
NEWS SUMMARY
The first version published of yesterday’s Note included what was intended as a SATIRICAL report of a fictional ABC News/Washington Post poll. No such poll was conducted. The questions and results listed were not from a real poll.
But on this day when John Kerry has a chance for wins in Tennessee and/or Virginia that just might get the Southern monkey off of his back — and take an opponent out of the race — and after two full news cycles in which Kerry’s transient upper hand over President Bush doesn’t seem to have been removed by the “Meet” appearance — on this day, let us tell you again what we tried to say yesterday.
Like every other institution, the Washington and political press corps operate with a good number of biases and predilections.
They include, but are not limited to, a near-universal shared sense that liberal political positions on social issues like gun control, homosexuality, abortion, and religion are the default, while more conservative positions are “conservative positions.”
They include a belief that government is a mechanism to solve the nation’s problems; that more taxes on corporations and the wealthy are good ways to cut the deficit and raise money for social spending and don’t have a negative affect on economic growth; and that emotional examples of suffering (provided by unions or consumer groups) are good ways to illustrate economic statistic stories.
More systematically, the press believes that fluid narratives in coverage are better than static storylines; that new things are more interesting than old things; that close races are preferable to loose ones; and that incumbents are destined for dethroning, somehow.
The press, by and large, does not accept President Bush’s justifications for the Iraq war — in any of its WMD, imminent threat, or evil-doer formulations. It does not understand how educated, sensible people could possibly be wary of multilateral institutions or friendly, sophisticated European allies.
It does not accept the proposition that the Bush tax cuts helped the economy by stimulating summer spending.
It remains fixated on the unemployment rate.
It believes President Bush is “walking a fine line” with regards to the gay marriage issue, choosing between “tolerance” and his “right-wing base.”
It still has a hard time understanding how, despite the drumbeat of conservative grass-top complaints about overspending and deficits, President Bush’s base remains extremely and loyally devoted to him — and it looks for every opportunity to find cracks in that base.
But only FOX news is biased, right?
Read the Curmudgeon. The Curmudgeon is Wise
For a couple of weeks now I’ve had an urge to write an essay about just how crappy our government has become and what to do about it. Don’t get me wrong – I think that our system of government is still the best in the world. No other democratic form of government has lasted as long as ours in modern history, nor has any other nation achieved the wealth, the power, nor the standard of living the United States has. However, the defective components of the system – the people who want to manipulate it for their own ends, and those who fail to oppose them – have had a very long time to toss sand and monkey wrenches into the gleaming machinery our Founders constructed, and time has taken its toll. Repair is needed. The question, in my opinion, is whether we’re going to be able to make the necessary repairs while the system is running, or if we’re going to have to dismantle the thing for a complete overhaul. The second option holds the very real risk of not being able to put it back together again, or – possibly worse – put it back together in a form that is far worse than what we have now.
My urge to write that essay was largely inspired by a piece written by the Geek With A .45, because, like me, he sees the mechanisms of oppression being constructed by our ostensible public servants – subassemblies just waiting to be put together into a machine of tyranny. Mechanisms that I believe the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written to prevent.
Thankfully, Francis Porretto has begun a series of essays entitled Tyranny and its Fringes which is up to part four now. If you don’t read The Curmudgeon’s Corner please give these a read:
UPDATE: 2/13 – Part V is up.
UPDATE: 2/20-Part VI is now up.
Francis lays out an excellent background lesson, and has begun to explain how we can repair the damage with the machinery still running. The Constitution has really excellent self-healing properties, but it requires us – the working parts – to do our jobs. We’ve not been living up to the task.
I may still write my piece(s), but I’m going to wait until Francis is finished with his series.
OK, THIS Cop CAN Shoot!
I’ve written a couple of pieces on news stories on cops that can’t seem to shoot straight. It is my opinion that there is a misconception among the general public about the efficacy of the training regimens of police forces and the general level of marksmanship thereof. However, Officer Richard Silva of the Tucson Police Department can shoot. (Last story on the page)
Police wound man, say he fired twice at them
TUCSON – A man chasing his ex-wife with a handgun was injured this weekend when he shot at police and an officer returned fire, police said.
Tucson Police say the man, Bernie Duran, 55, was treated for a gunshot wound and booked into the Pima County Jail on one count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, three counts of aggravated assault on police officers and one count of kidnapping.
At 12:40 p.m. Saturday, a man called police to report that his mother-in-law was being held against her will by her ex-husband.
When police called the home, the woman was evasive on the phone but was apparently in distress, said Sgt. Judy Altieri, a Tucson Police spokeswoman. As officers reached the home, the woman ran out with Duran chasing her, Altieri said.
Duran fired two shots at Officer Richard Silva, 36, and Silva fired three times from about 180 feet away, striking Duran once, she said.
That’s about sixty yards at a running target. That’s damned good shooting, especially when your target is shooting back!
And lest you think I pick on cops too much, you might want to revisit “THIS is Why You Train”.
Carolyn Lisle could use some pointers, I think.
Read this, and Rember Those Left Behind
From the Denver Post comes this touching story of the widow of one of the pilots murdered on 9/11. It opens:
A week after United Flight 93 crashed into a Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001, Sandy Dahl had a dream about her husband, one of the pilots aboard the four ill-fated planes that day.
In the dream, she and her husband, Jason Dahl, were each piloting F-16 fighter jets. The dream was a reminder for Sandy Dahl: Jason had hoped to fly “the Porsche of aircraft” during his life and counted his 25th birthday – the cutoff age for entering flight school for F-16s at the time – as one of saddest days of his life.
Sitting in a briefing room at Buckley Air Force Base in Aurora on Sunday, minutes before living out her husband’s dream to see the world from the cockpit of an F-16, Sandy Dahl recalled “the most real dream I’ve ever had.”
Go read.
“And That’s Just Our Womenfolk!”
This ought to have you laughing. And thinking. Clayton Cramer relates this Sacramento Bee story of a loser who broke into the wrong dad-gummed house in the wrong dad-gummed neighborhood!
Woman opens fire on intruder
A man is wounded as she defends her home with two handguns.
Firing nine rounds from two handguns, a 53-year-old Rancho Cordova woman fended off an intruder Thursday night after he crashed through her sliding glass door.
William Kriske, a 47-year-old parolee, was treated for a gunshot wound to the arm, then taken to jail and arrested on suspicion of burglary and resisting arrest, according to Sacramento County Sheriff’s Sgt. Lou Fatur.
“It was one of those nights. I have a few holes in my glass out front,” Carolyn Lisle said Friday.
“That’s OK, I don’t think he’ll be back,” said Lisle, who emptied one .357 revolver at the intruder before she retrieved a second one and he crashed through another window to flee.
“I was trying to miss my furniture. Priorities, right?” Lisle said.
Lisle, shaken but spirited, recounted her night that started as a quiet evening of TV with three friends and two dogs in her living room.
At about 9 p.m., a noise at the sliding door prompted a male visitor to get up to investigate, but Lisle dashed to a back room to get one of her guns.
“I knew it couldn’t be good,” Lisle said.
When the intruder shattered the glass, Lisle’s three guests fled from the house. Lisle stood her ground and opened fire.
“He was like a mosquito hitting the window. Every time he turned around, poweee,” she said.
Lisle wasn’t sure the intruder was alone so she nervously watched her back as she squeezed off rounds.
When she emptied one gun, she still hadn’t hit him. And he wasn’t gone.
“He was still in the garage, flitting around,” she said.
She went to get another gun — “I like to be prepared,” she said — and waited to see his next move. After tearing up the garage, he finally broke out through a garage window, but he veered toward Lisle’s front door. She fired again, hitting him at least once.
The bleeding intruder ran across the street and tried to hot-wire a motorcycle, but its owners, already armed to come to Lisle’s aid, chased off the would-be thief, she said.
She said one of the men yelled after the retreating burglar: “And that’s just our womenfolk.”
A California Highway Patrol officer stopped the suspect a short distance away and sheriff’s deputies arrested Kriske.
Lisle is still puzzled why someone would break into a well-lit living room with four people and two dogs.
“It was like he was out to hurt someone,” she said.
Fatur said a prowler had been reported moving through neighborhood back yards at about the time Lisle’s house was invaded.
Lisle, who said her guns are registered, will not face criminal charges, Fatur said. California law allows someone to use deadly force whenever a reasonable person believes an intruder poses a threat to kill.
Lisle is the second homeowner in the Sacramento area this year to use deadly force against an intruder.(And it’s only February!) In January, a Sacramento man shot and killed one of two armed intruders who broke into his home. He wasn’t charged.
Studies done to determine whether gun ownership deters crime have only stirred more controversy because of the way statistics are gathered and analyzed, and the way people recall their experiences, said William Vizzard, chair of the criminal justice department at California State University, Sacramento.
“We tend to see ourselves as heroic rather than idiotic,” said Vizzard, who is also a 30-year law enforcement veteran.
Vizzard, who has studied major research and written on gun issues, said two of the most prominent surveys differ dramatically in results, showing anywhere from 150,000 people a year to 2.5 million who claim success in thwarting crime with a gun.
“The answer is, no one can say for sure at the end of the day that the presence of a firearm doesn’t increase your risk of getting injured, nor does it reduce your risk,” he said.
Lisle is pretty sure where she stands: “You need protection in this day and age.”
A retired state worker who once worked as a correctional officer, she did admit that she hadn’t been to a shooting range lately: “After last night, I might go once in a while.”
I’d appreciate it if she went more than once in a while. Nine rounds and one peripheral hit? The odds of one of those misses hitting an innocent are low, but certainly not zero.
This is a surprisingly balanced piece given the source. The quote from Vizzard shows, I think, some bias though. To be really valid he should have said no one can say for sure that the presence of a firearm increases or decreases your risk of getting injured. Read it carefully for the spin he actually put on it: Heads, I win. Tails, you lose.
Consider, though, what might have happened if she had not been armed. A guy willing to break in to a house with three people and two dogs? That could have been very ugly.
“Vermont Carry” in Colorado?
Publicola is all over this one, an effort to get permitless concealed-carry legislation passed in Colorado. The vote in Colorado’s House of Representatives is Tuesday. I wish them all luck.
Agenda? What Agenda? Part Deux.
I ought to make this a department like “Our Collapsing Schools.”
Via Instapundit comes this email from a 1st Leutenant in the First Armored, currently stationed in Iraq. He hasn’t got a lot of respect for the “news” media, and with good reason. Excerpt:
The Fox News crew laid out what qualified as “newsworthy: — Women taking an active leadership role in the new government, detainee/prisoner abuse cases, any WMD news, and individual soldier contributions (such as one soldier who bought school supplies and teddy bears for Iraqis out of his own pocket.) These were the stories deemed airable and they wouldn’t respond to anything outside of that. The news crew wasn’t bashful about its agenda and they made it clear that they weren’t going to respond to anything outside of those story lines unless it was something really spectacular.
Fox stood out most as a network that knew what it was going to put out before it even shot the footage. Other news organizations were more subtle about what they wanted to cover but pretty much everyone had their stories written before they showed up. To Al-Jazeera especially, the video footage was merely a formality.
(My emphasis.) Has this always existed? I think so, but I don’t think it’s previously been as institutionalized as it apparently is today.
I strongly recommend that you read the whole thing. Then write ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, and Fox a nice letter telling them you’re tired of being spoon-fed whatever story they decided a week ago you needed to hear.
Then forward a copy of the email to every journalism school in the U.S.