Month: September 2005

OK. I’m a Geek.

But this is cool.

Fact Checking, for The Children™.

Today’s Tucson Citizen carried a USA Today article on the scourge of unsecured firearms in private homes. Another “guns as disease vector” meme. After the flurry of personal defense stories from New Orleans (and the stories of neanderthals shooting at rescuers), I have to wonder about the timing, but let’s fact-check this story:

36% of Az’s adults keep firearms at home

About 1.7 million U.S. children, including about 109,000 in Arizona, live in homes with loaded, unlocked firearms, according to the largest survey ever done on home weapons storage, out today in the Pediatrics online journal www.pediatrics.org.

James Mercy, researcher with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and colleague Catherine Okoro analyzed surveys of 224,000 adults done by health departments in 50 states and the District of Columbia during 2002.

One-third of adults in America, and 36.2 percent of Arizona’s adults, have handguns, rifles or shotguns at home, says the CDC report. But states vary greatly in the percentage of adults who keep weapons, and in how many with children at home store their guns loaded and unlocked. In Arizona, 7.6 percent of households have a loaded and unlocked firearm.

Err, no. One third of adults in America, 36.2% of Arizona’s adults, and 7.6% of households surveyed admit to owning firearms or admit to having a loaded and unlocked firearm. I suspect that a number of people queried either lied or answered “fuck off!” or its equivalent, so the accuracy of that particular set of data is questionable. If you’re interested, the study is here.

But let’s continue:

Eighteen states have laws dealing with proper storage of guns to limit access to children, says Jon Vernick, co-director of the Center for Gun Policy and Research at Johns Hopkins University’s school of public health. But the laws vary in strictness and in the ages of kids covered, he says.

“Proper” storage. As in “state-sanctioned, state-approved, state-mandated, storage.” The kind of “proper storage” that helped prevent 14 year-old Jessica Carpenter from protecting her brother and sister. The kind of “proper storage” that would have prevented an 11 year-old boy from shooting an intruder in South Bend Indiana. The man he shot was holding a box cutter to his grandmother’s neck. Rare? Yes, but not unheard of.

Little is known about how well these laws are enforced, Vernick adds. “They’re great, and we absolutely need more states with laws. But often they seem to get enforced after it’s too late, when a child has shot himself or someone else.”

That ought to chill you. How do you “enforce” a “proper storage” law? Why, by inspection, don’t you know? And in order to know where to inspect, you must know who owns guns – doesn’t that follow?

Two studies show accidental gun deaths and teen suicides decline in states with these laws, he says. Another study, out this year, suggests children and teens are less likely to shoot themselves or others in homes with unloaded or locked guns stored separately from ammunition.

I’m sorry, but I want links to these studies. Accidental gun deaths? We’ll get to that in just a minute. Teen suicide? I don’t think so. Teen suicide by gun, possibly, but overall? I find that highly doubtful. Gun access had nothing to do with Australia’s massive increase in youth suicide. They took largely to hanging themselves.

The “Pediatrics” report says that of 1,400 children and teens shot to death in 2002, about 90 percent were home when it happened.

Ah! We have a number now! Let’s check the CDC and see what it has to say.

The report itself states: “Firearm-related injuries remained the second leading cause of injury mortality in 2002, accounting for 30242 firearm-related deaths. Of all firearm injury deaths, 56.6% were suicides, 39.1% were homicides, 2.5% were unintentional, and an additional 1.8% were legal interventions or of undetermined intent. Furthermore, (approximately) 1400 firearm deaths were among persons (less than) 18 years old.” According to the CDC’s WISQARS Injury Mortality tool there were 115 accidental deaths by gunshot for children less than eighteen years of age in 2002. There were 423 suicides by gunshot. For all death by gunshot wound, including homicide, the total was 1,443. Now, that’s out of a population of (according to the same source) 72,846,775 children up through the age of 17. By comparison, 1,007 children in this group died by accidental drowning, and 551 committed suicide by other means. Bicycle accidents accounted for another 164.

Let me make this as clear as I can: Each death of a child is tragic, but I think the fear of accidental death by firearm is wholly overblown.

“It’s a frightening problem,” says Michael Barnes, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a lobbying group that favors limiting gun ownership.

No, they favor gun confiscation, though they won’t come right out and admit it. Yes, it’s a problem that frightens people like author Jean Hanff Korelitz into believing that “more than 4,000 children…die in gun-related accidents each year”!

And then she calls for a handgun ban, just like they want.

National Rifle Association of America spokesman Andrew Arulanandam, declined to comment on specific laws but says, “The sad reality is, you cannot legislate responsibility.”

The poster-child (almost literally) for this reality is the “family” of the first-grader who deliberately shot six year-old Kayla Rolland. An extreme case? Yes. But true, nonetheless.

Education is the best way to reduce gun accidents, and the NRA runs many education programs, he says. “Children are by nature curious and will try to seek out objects they shouldn’t have. … It’s up to the parents to see that firearms are stored safely.”

This is correct, and education is, apparently, working. Accidental death by gunshot has been declining since we started keeping statistics on it in the 1930’s. This is in spite of the fact that the total number of guns in circulation has been increasing by about three million a year for decades. Even the Violence Policy Center admitted “Overall, from 1988 to 1994, rates of unintentional firearms death among children under the age of 15 actually fell by 40 percent—down to an average rate of 0.4 per 100,000.” And that rate has continued to decline, while “assault weapons” and “pocket rockets” have been, according to the VPC, pushed by “the gun industry’s insatiable quest for a higher profit margin.” (Oddly enough, homicide has been declining as well. Whodathunkit?) So obviously we need “safe storage” legislation?

GUNS IN ARIZONA

108,630 children live in homes with guns that are loaded and unlocked.

And six children here under the age of 18 died of accidental gunshot wound in 2002. Three of them were under the age of 13. Should this statistic justify police inspection of 7.6 percent of Arizona homes to ensure “these laws are well enforced”? What should the penalty be for a breach of the law? What Robert George Wilton suffered after his 10 year-old son took a cartridge to school?

I suppose that, since the 9^th Circuit Court of Appeals has decided that “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” doesn’t protect an individual right to arms, the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches” wouldn’t apply to “gun safety inspections” either? Part and parcel, aren’t they? And since we’re so concerned about teen suicide, too, perhaps we should have the authorities check for unsecured poisons, narcotic medications, sharp objects, ropes and other devices with which our kids can deliberately kill themselves as well. It’s for the children, you know.

I’m a grandparent. My grandkids are five and six. I have several firearms. I keep them locked up and unloaded when the kids are around unless I’m working on one and have it in hand (also unloaded.) However, I keep a loaded .357 magnum revolver in a quick-access safe. I believe I’m a responsible adult. But my father kept his guns in the master bedroom closet, and the ammo on a shelf above. I knew they were there. My brother and sister knew they were there. And we never shot anybody, including ourselves.

I will not register. I will not allow inspection of my home to ensure “safe storage” compliance.

Period. FOAD.

Wicked Cut of the Week.

By the inestimable, irreplaceable, inimitable Bill Whittle in Tribes:

It’s always such a pleasure to have Germans enlighten us on the best way to move large groups of sick, downtrodden people by rail.

THAT’S gonna leave a mark!

Bill Whittle has Posted Again.

Today’s piece is Tribes. Excerpt:

Only a few minutes ago, I had the delightful opportunity to read the comment of a fellow who said he wished that white, middle-class, racist, conservative cocksuckers like myself could have been herded into the Superdome Concentration Camp to see how much we like it. Absent, of course, was the fundamental truth of what he plainly does not have the eyes or the imagination to see, namely, that if the Superdome had been filled with white, middle-class, racist, conservative cocksuckers like myself, it would not have been a refinery of horror, but rather a citadel of hope and order and restraint and compassion.

That has nothing to do with me being white. If the blacks and Hispanics and Jews and gays that I work with and associate with were there with me, it would have been that much better. That’s because the people I associate with – my Tribe – consists not of blacks and whites and gays and Hispanics and Asians, but of individuals who do not rape, murder, or steal. My Tribe consists of people who know that sometimes bad things happen, and that these are an opportunity to show ourselves what we are made of. My people go into burning buildings. My Tribe consists of organizers and self-starters, proud and self-reliant people who do not need to be told what to do in a crisis. My Tribe is not fearless; they are something better. They are courageous. My Tribe is honorable, and decent, and kind, and inventive. My Tribe knows how to give orders, and how to follow them. My Tribe knows enough about how the world works to figure out ways to boil water, ration food, repair structures, build and maintain makeshift latrines, and care for the wounded and the dead with respect and compassion.

As always, read it all.

At least twice.

Quote of the Day:.

From Gunner of No Quarters:

A lot of liberal anti-gunners have become pro-gun and are probably not happy with that fact.

You might note with all of the gun violence the Brady Center has not issues one single press release. Maybe even they see the people protecting themselves with firearms in the news and know they lost this battle.

Wait! Wait! One More!.

I’ve gotta print this one in toto:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104×4623265

This is the death of democracy in America. This is the end.

The left has been the target of incessant attacks by the right wing in America since the mid-1800’s or earlier. This is naked neo-Nazi fascism. This is full-blown racist genocide. This is tanks-in-the-street martial law. This is Michael Ledeen’s “creative destruction” and Grover Norquist’s infamous bathtub.

The left, long subject to military assaults, COINTELPRO frame jobs, false imprisonment, voter disenfranchisement, prisonmandering, and the like, is now in its final throes as captives locked in death camps to die of dehydration and starve to death at gunpoint. The Democratic Party, with the exception of fewer brave souls than you can count on one hand who have refused to cow in terror before the prospects of Wellstoning and anthraxing, is thoroughly infiltrated and/or intimidated into utter subjugation and submission to the genocidal Republican agenda. And the horrors in New Orleans are now the future of every “blue” city, state, or “stronghold” subject to Bush’s military occupation, for which he will doubtless invent pretexts if none present themselves easily enough, and concomitant genocidal campaigns against Democrats.

The fascist break happened long ago. The genocide in New Orleans is only the beginning of a larger, bolder campaign to exterminate us completely and impose overt martial law (as opposed to the increasing militarization of the police, which is de facto martial law anyway) over every “blue” area Bush feels the whim to point his “eliminationist rhetoric” at. The death squads are out in force in the streets of New Orleans. When the job is done there, pretexts will be invented for them to roam the streets of our home cities, the blue cities. The rank and file stormtroopers are already terrorizing us with chemical weapons like pepperspray and teargas. The death squads and death camps in New Orleans are the next step.

I have one and only one “positive message:” run for your lives. Get out of this country while you still can. Get out before Bush’s “final solution” to the “liberal question” is implemented where you live.

Yes! Please! Get OUT! Leave! Go to France, go to Spain, go to South America. Go to that peon’s paradise of Cuba! Just get the hell out of here! Because George Bush’s military death squads aren’t going to be the ones who want to kill you, we average citizens are. I swear to Odin, you people are too stupid to live.

What color is the sky on your planet, anyway?

Update: Dr. Sanity has more on the DU denizens in Narcissitic Underground. Hat tip to GM Roper for the link.

Update, 9/5, to add this cartoon found at American Digest:

Holy Excrement, Batman, the Moonbats will be are Frothing!

I just found out that Chief Justice Rehnquist has died. So President Bush gets to appoint not one, but two Supreme Court justices, and in short order. The far Left is already wetting itself over the Roberts nomination.

While I no longer spend time at DemocraticUnderground.com (I feel like I need a shower afterward) I dropped by to see what the caring, compassionate Left had to say this morning about the death of the Chief Justice. From this thread (cut and paste if you want to go there – I’m not hot-linking): http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102×1752394

WP: Bush Says Rehnquist’s Death Is a ‘Great Loss’ (of a Racist comrade) – By Don1

Maybe we should fly sheets at half-staff in honor of Rehnquist – by mitchum

Of course, when Robert “Sheets” Byrd passes, no mention of his membership in the KKK will be made, I’m sure. More from this post, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102×1752437:

Now that Rehnquist has passed on – a very sad moment, however that will open the ranks for another so called Bible Thumper to be introduced to the mix. – by Franmarz

—

Bummer. We’re short a couple of nazis.

Guess we’d better turn over a bunch of rocks lickety-split and see what crawls out. – by PurityOfEssence

See why I say I feel like I need a shower? And why violence is becoming less and less abhorrent?

From this post, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=4619403&mesg_id=4619403:

There’s one less racist breathing air I could be breathing tonight.

I would no more express my sympathies than I would to Hitler’s family, Frank Cherry’s family or David Duke’s family.
Rot in hell, Rehnquist. – by nothingshocksmeanymore

Yes, the opposition is all Nazis, all racists, all evil.

These people make me tired. And angry.

I think I’ll clean my Garand.

Remember On Guillotines and Gibbets?.

An essay I wrote back in December? Part of what it was about was the cockroach-like endurance of bad Leftist ideas:

If it is so blindingly obvious to many of us that the ideologies behind, for example, gun control and welfare are so fundamentally flawed, why are these ideologies not dead? Not only are they not dead, in many ways, still flourishing? Why is the demonstrably erroneous ideology of the Left still advanced by people who just want to keep turning up the power, with the resultant escalation of failure?

And I answered my question:

I submit, it is because the Left has never been significantly checked as it strives to spread its flawed ideology. Leftists occupy the majority of journalism positions, both as reporters and editors.

—

Leftists make up an overwhelming majority of educators and administrators in both primary and secondary education. Through these vectors of media and public education the Left has spread its ideology largely without any effective opposition for literally decades. Bear in mind also, I’m not attributing this occupation of media and education to some “vast Left-wing conspiracy.” It’s a natural outgrowth of a philosophy that builds unquestioning “true believers” who take their flawed ideology as gospel and are thereby inspired to evangelize. A fundamental tenet of Socialism is to proselytize the proletariat so that it recognizes the oppressive bourgeoisie and can then take steps to pull it down. The two places to best accomplish this are media and schools, so the evangelical migrate there, and steadily chip, chip, chip away at the proletariat, spreading the “hate the bourgeoisie” meme that produces women who tell mayors, in all seriousness, “It’s my job to have kids, Mr. Mayor, and your job to take care of them.”

Well I just came across a July 27 Theodore Dalrymple piece that illustrates my point, The Triumph of Reason? An excerpt:

In Australia recently, I shared a public platform with an educationist, who had won awards for social innovation in the field of education for disadvantaged minorities. I was looking forward to what she had to say.

I was soon in a towering rage, however. She uttered some of the most foolish cliches of radical education theory, now about 40 years old – theories that I had fondly thought were now behind us, such as the harmful effects upon the children of disadvantaged ethnic groups or families of an emphasis on education as learning, with particular reference to the damage done to their self-esteem by the dominant culture’s fetish about reading and writing.

—

This was all said with such smugness, with such an expression of beatific complacency and self-content, that I wanted to get up and strangle the innovator there and then. As a believer in the necessity of self-expression, she would no doubt have understood.

In Guillotines I wrote:

We’ve not had much success (at defeating bad ideas) because we’re not “true believers.” (M)ost of those of us who recognize the flawed ideology of the Left have to earn a living. The efforts we make in fighting them are on or own time and on our own dime. The Left is getting paid to evangelize, often on our tax dollars. We shine the light, but when it passes they come back out and keep on going. It’s tiring, soul-sapping, and we’re overwhelmed by the media and education vectors.

—

When (or if) the Left finally achieves unbridled control, it will continue in its cognitive dissonance, and keep turning up the power until guillotines are erected in public squares or mass starvation is seen again as a regrettable but necessary step towards Utopia.

Dalrymple:

Halfway through my own reply, however, I suddenly became bored. Why do I spend so much time arguing against such obvious rubbish, which should be both self-refuting and auto-satirizing the moment someone utters it? Why not just go and read a good book?

The problem is that nonsense can and does go by default. It wins the argument by sheer persistence, by inexhaustible re-iteration, by staying at the meeting when everyone else has gone home, by monomania, by boring people into submission and indifference. And the reward of monomania? Power.

It’s nice to know that we’re still on the same frequency, though I too am getting to the point where the idea of physical violence as a solution is getting to be less and less abhorrent.