Month: May 2013

Increasing Gun Ownership

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Another example:

Pit bulls kill jogger

A pack of up to four pit bull terriers has been blamed for the death of a jogger in rural Los Angeles, with officials warning on Thursday that the dogs remained on the loose.

Sheriff’s Lieutenant John Corina said a woman in a car saw the dogs attacking the female jogger, 63, on Thursday morning. The witness called police and blew her car horn to try to get the dogs to stop.

“When the first deputy on scene saw one dog still attacking the woman, he tried to chase the dog away,” Corina said. “The dog ran off into the desert, then turned around and attacked the deputy, the deputy fired a round at the dog and tried to kill the dog, and the dog took off into the desert.”

The woman died while she was in an ambulance on the way to a hospital, said Evelina Villa, county animal control spokeswoman.

—

Residents near the site of the attack said stray dogs were constantly roaming the area and had attacked people before. “It’s really scary,” Diane Huffman, of Littlerock, told KABC-TV. “I don’t know what to think. I really think I’m going to be getting a gun to protect myself.”

Everyone repeat after me:  “When seconds count, the police are only minutes away!” 

Good luck to her. Should be interesting when she finds out what the hoops are she has to jump through to get a gun in California, much less a carry permit.

Jim Henson Lives!

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Jim Henson, creative genius behind the Muppets, was involved in several other things during his career.  From 1983 through 1987 he did a show for HBO called Fraggle Rock.  If you’ll recall, HBO was still quite new to most people as cable television spread around the country.  We’d moved to Arizona in 1981, but it was my brother (five years older than I) who moved into an apartment and got HBO first.

He loved Fraggle Rock.

Apparently, someone in New Mexico does too.  For as long as I’ve been driving back and forth between Tucson and Silver City (or, more recently, Houston and Tucson) someone has kept the paint on their own personal Fraggle Rock fresh:

photo IMG_2364.jpg

That was taken out the passenger window of the Mustang at 75MPH on my way west on I-10 just six miles west of Lordsburg.

Now THAT’s a FAN.

DECLINING GUN OWNERSHIP!!

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OK, I’ve covered this topic before, but since it seems to be one of the Democratic Talking Points™ being parroted widely these days, time to take it up again.

A recent survey announced (and was touted by the media):

The share of American households with guns has declined over the past four decades, a national survey shows, with some of the most surprising drops in the South and the Western mountain states, where guns are deeply embedded in the culture.

The gun ownership rate has fallen across a broad cross section of households since the early 1970s, according to data from the General Social Survey, a public opinion survey conducted every two years that asks a sample of American adults if they have guns at home, among other questions.

The rate has dropped in cities large and small, in suburbs and rural areas and in all regions of the country. It has fallen among households with children, and among those without. It has declined for households that say they are very happy, and for those that say they are not. It is down among churchgoers and those who never sit in pews.

The household gun ownership rate has fallen from an average of 50 percent in the 1970s to 49 percent in the 1980s, 43 percent in the 1990s and 35 percent in the 2000s, according to the survey data, analyzed by The New York Times.

And again:

The number of US households with guns has dropped 15 percent since the 1970s, from 50 percent the population’s households to 35 percent, according to a new survey.

And again:

All the stories about people rushing out to buy guns after recent mass shootings may give the impression that more Americans have guns at home. Yet a survey reveals that the percentage of U.S. homes with a gun has been in steady decline over the past four decades, with a surprisingly sharp drop in the South and Western mountain states. Whereas an average of 50 percent of households owned a gun in the 1970s, that number declined to 35 percent in the 2000s, with 34 percent of households reporting gun ownership in 2012, notes the New York Times.

And again:

When we see attendance at gun shows and reports of brisk gun sales at gun stores, it’s easy to get the impression that a larger percentage of Americans are choosing to purchase firearms. There is, however, ample evidence to the contrary — even as gun sales go up, the percentage of households with guns goes down.

ad infinitum. As goes The New York Times, so goes the world they say.

The Wall Street Journal had, I think, the most balanced opinion piece on the subject, Guns Present Polling Conundrum. I recommend you read the whole thing, but here are some pertinent excerpts:

Press clippings over the last 25 years show reported counts of gun owners fluctuating from 44 million up to 192 million, with dozens of different figures cited, some in the same year, and some — such as the 192 million figure — the result of confusing estimates of guns in American households with counts of gun owners, some of whom own more than one gun.

The polling discrepancies have baffled pollsters.

—

Michael Dimock, director of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, said he also expected question wording to explain the difference: “I was sure we’d find the answer there.” However, Dimock said “you don’t see those things having a consistent effect” — some ask very similar gun questions and get very different estimates. “It’s certainly to me one of the biggest polling puzzles I’ve come across in the last few years.”

“Nobody’s really explained why they come up with such dramatic differences,” Aaron Karp, senior consultant to the Geneva-based Small Arms Survey and senior lecturer in political science at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., said of pollsters.

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Who answers the phone in the household could affect responses. “We know that in a survey where respondents are randomly selected from adults in the household, a household headed by a married couple is substantially more likely to report guns in the home if the husband is selected than if the wife is selected,” said Philip Cook, an economist and gun-violence researcher at Duke University.

Also, some gun owners may be reluctant to tell researchers they own guns, because of legal and political considerations, which makes the question more like behavioral or attitudinal questions than like questions that ask basic facts about respondents. “This is an unusual demographic-type question,” said Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of Gallup.

I’m reminded of the Slate piece by Emily Yoffe, the “human guinea pig,” in her piece Guinea Get Your Gun: How I learned to love guns:

So anathema are guns among my friends that when one learned I was doing this piece, he opened his wallet, silently pulled out an NRA membership card, then (after I recovered from the sight) asked me not to spread it around lest his son be kicked out of nursery school.

Lest his son be kicked out of nursery school. Yeah, there’s real incentive to admit gun ownership!  (Do read that whole piece.  Her experience is what scares the piss out of The Other Side™ – guns ARE fun!)

The Gallup poll they reference is this one – Self-Reported Gun Ownership in U.S. is Highest Since 1993, which concluded in 2011:

Forty-seven percent of American adults currently report that they have a gun in their home or elsewhere on their property. This is up from 41% a year ago and is the highest Gallup has recorded since 1993, albeit marginally above the 44% and 45% highs seen during that period.

That’s just a hair below the 50% Gallup reported in 1991. And it adds this tidbit:

The new result comes from Gallup’s Oct. 6-9 Crime poll, which also finds public support for personal gun rights at a high-water mark. Given this, the latest increase in self-reported gun ownership could reflect a change in Americans’ comfort with publicly stating that they have a gun as much as it reflects a real uptick in gun ownership.

So we have one side insisting – and I quote: “More guns, fewer homes,” and “Number of US households with guns drops 15 percent,” etc., etc., but what do the numbers actually say? Well, if we take the General Social Survey results at face value, the percentage of households containing a firearm has dropped from 50% in 1970 to 35% in 2012. According to this site, the NUMBER of U.S. households has increased from 63.5 million in 1970 to 114.8 million in 2010. That’s a net increase in households containing firearms of 8,430,000. If Gallup is right and the percentage has declined from 50% in 1991 to 47% in 2011, then the total number of households containing a gun has increased by – again – just over eight million, but in a much shorter period. The discrepancy between the two estimates is right at 13.8 million households.

Either way, there were apparently eight million more households in 2011-12 with firearms than there were at some time in the past.

And yet violent crime, homicide, suicide AND accidental deaths by firearm have declined year-by-year for over a decade.

Now, when I walked the floor at the NRA convention in Houston last weekend, I took time to speak with several vendors and some people I saw walking the show, asking them how business had been for them.  One such vendor was Aaron Ludwig of Action Target, the company that recently rebuilt the indoor range at NRA headquarters in Fairfax, VA.  I asked Mr. Ludwig how business had been doing for Action Target year-on-year.  He informed me that when he joined the company ten years ago, annual sales were $15 million.  Last year the company did $100 million in sales.  Robert Lewis of EAR Inc. said they’d just had their best year ever.  I stopped Susan Rexrode and Natalie Levasseur of Shooting for Women Alliance as they were walking down an aisle in front of me because they were both wearing vests with “Instructor” embroidered on them.  SFWA has, they informed me, trained over 10,000 women since its inception.  They’ll train men, too, but the men MUST be accompanied by a woman.  Business has been so good they are planning to expand this year. I’ve already quoted Kathy Jackson of The Cornered Cat on her training business’s success. Jeff K. of Magpul Industries of course reported that they’re selling everything they can make.  Their shipping department has grown from four people to ten, and they still can’t keep up.  The CCI representative for their ammunition manufacturing division stated the same concerning ammunition – demand has been steadily increasing until the recent overwhelming demand – and no, the .gov isn’t actually buying more ammo than they normally do – at least not from CCI/Speer.

I personally know two people who recently went into business making holsters for a living.  They’re doing well, too.

The NRA Annual Meeting and Exhibits increased its floorspace this year to 440,000 square feet from 340,000 square feet last year.  I believe them.  I walked the whole thing.  Attendance was up, too, from 70,000+ last year to over 86,000 this year.  I believe that too – it was wall-to-wall people all day Saturday.  I cannot imagine where they all parked.  Membership has reportedly surged as well, to 5 million.

And then, on top of all of this, comes the undeniable fact that guns are being sold at record rates, and have been for several years.  Yet we’re supposed to believe that the number of people who own guns is declining?

On what planet?

Quote of the Day – GeekWithA.45 Edition

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In a comment to the post below:

Our opponents take the position that guns are self evidently bad, a source of inherent evil, to be tolerated only as a shameful matter that, like the dark ages lists of books likely to be (mis?)understood by the unwashed masses, are therefore forbidden to any without special gloves, mental training, and the anointment of the magic pixie dust of State.

That we reject their contention that this is a shameful, shameful matter, to be hidden from the children, and only discussed in whispers after dark. We reject the premise that gun clubs should be treated as brothel hallways, where each man points his face to the floor in shame, lest he recognize, or be recognized. We reject the premise that arms are the sole purview of the state. We reject the premise that the State is somehow endowed of inherently superior stuff, and that all are to forever to accept their station in life and hold ourselves subordinate to it. And this… is all the evidence they will ever need of our depravity and in the eyes of some, outright evil. It is all the evidence they will ever need that we are an inherent hazard to society, and therefore our suppression, marginalization and elimination is a well justified social good.

Well, as they say, bad luck with all of that. I can wish them only misery and failure.

Jesus forgave those who acted in ignorance, but I see no reason to, for these know full well what they do.

“God help us, for we will not plow for those who didn’t beat their swords into plowshares.”

So say we all.

So say we all.

Start blogging again, Geek. I mean it.

No, We’re a Different Species to Them…

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In an outstanding op-ed entitled Waking the dragon — How Feinstein fiddled while America burned, Iowa State Daily assistant opinion editor Barry Snell observed:

I’ve come to realize after the Sandy Hook shooting that the reason we can’t have a rational gun debate is because the anti-gun side pre-supposes that their pro-gun opponents must first accept that guns are bad in order to have a discussion about guns in the first place. Before we even start the conversation, we’re the bad guys and we have to admit it. Without accepting that guns are bad and supplicating themselves to the anti-gunner, the pro-gunner can’t get a word in edgewise, and is quickly reduced to being called a murderer, or a low, immoral and horrible human being.

He said a lot more than just that, but for this piece, that’s the pullquote.  But if you haven’t already, go read the whole piece and all the links.  This one will wait.

Hell with it, I’ll add this excerpt too:

Gun people don’t trust anti-gun people because I and many of us are what they call “sheepdogs” and we’re proud of that. Yet anti-gunners make fun of us, calling us “cowboys” and “wannabes” for it. Wanting to save lives and being willing to sacrifice one’s own to do it used to be considered a virtue in this country. Anti-gunners think they have the moral outrage, but the moral outrage is ours. I have never expressed any of these feelings openly to anyone because they are private and deeply personal. Screw you for demeaning us and motivating me to speak them.

I’m serious – go read it.

Back? Good.

Now, while I was at the NRA Annual Meeting over the weekend, I spent some time observing the other people walking around with “MEDIA” badges. One such, I’m pretty sure, was the New York Daily News‘s Bill Hutchinson, who came to my attention Saturday morning as I was on my way into the venue. On the sidewalk outside the entrance he was interviewing (or at least engaged in conversation with) a very nice lady who was there protesting in her own way. I’m deeply sorry that I did not get her name (I gave her one of my cards and invited her to debate), but I’ve been waiting for her to pop up in a NYDN op-ed, so that’s how I came across a couple of pieces there that inspired this post.

The first one was National Rifle Association’s ‘culture war’ convention opens in Houston. Opening graf:

Houston buzzed Friday with tens of thousands of gun owners revved up for the National Rifle Association’s first convention since the Newtown school massacre and a pro-firearm victory on Capitol Hill.

But as the event got underway, it sounded more like a mustering of forces in the “culture war.”

Ya think? But the piece that triggered this post followed on Sunday – YOU’RE KIDDING! NRA pushes guns on kids as young as Newtown victims in sick ‘Youth Day’. This was the work of a team, one of which was the aforementioned Bill Hutchinson, and it merits a fisking. Before I begin, let me mention that, interspersed between the paragraphs of the op-ed and the “frightening” pictures of kids handling guns were no less that three links to Newtown related pieces, two of which were to the same set of photos from the Sandy Hook massacre. Other links went to the piece I mentioned above, and one on incoming NRA President James Porter (“TOP LOON” “Worse than LaPierre!”) just so you completely understand where we’re going here. Let us begin:

The National Rifle Association capped its annual convention Sunday by hosting a “Youth Day” — enticing youngsters to attend by offering free six-month memberships.

Billed by the NRA as a family-fun outing, the event drew hundreds of kids. Some of the attendees were the age of the Newtown massacre victims, others too young to know the difference between a toy gun and a real one.

“Spend the day exploring 400,000 square feet of exhibit hall containing over 550 exhibitors from across the country. Share the excitement with spectacular displays and fun-filled events for the entire family,” the NRA wrote on its website.

The event was staged a day after the NRA welcomed its youngest lifetime member, 3-year-old Elaih Wagan, whose grandfather purchased the membership.

As an aside, on Saturday Hutchinson came by the table where a group of gun bloggers were sitting to ask us if we knew the name of that 3-year-old. For this piece, I assume.

Activities inside Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center prompted outrage outside.

Among the dozen or two protesters.

“They shouldn’t be teaching kids how to use guns. What happens when they get older? They might become like that Connecticut killer,” said Cal Castille, 24, of Houston, referring to Newtown gunman Adam Lanza.

Or they might become police officers or soldiers, or concealed-weapons permit holders who are more law-abiding as a group than the Mayors Against Illegal Guns!  Hey, they give kids sex education, does that mean they might become prostitutes?

Anti-gun protesters, reading names of gun-violence victims across the street from the convention center, said the NRA event was akin to “brainwashing these kids to love guns.”

Uh, the kids don’t need any help with that. Kids make guns out of their fingers, or even Pop-Tarts.

“This is indoctrination,” said Jose Sequeiros, 67, of Houston. “These kids are too young to see that guns are wrong.”

Aaaand there it is: “…guns are wrong.”

Yet we’re supposed to have a debate on the topic.

Heather Ross, 27, said organizers of the event were tone deaf, given the horrific mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December.

“It agitates me that these people don’t think it could happen to their children,” said Ross of Austin. “This is just beyond words.”

And yet you found some, Ross! And no, Heather, it wasn’t tone deaf, it was the business of the NRA, carried out as planned well over a year in advance, in the full knowledge that tens of thousands of their supporters would be coming.  The difference is, we know it COULD happen to our kids.  That’s why we want to be armed, and why we want someone in the schools to be legally armed. 

In the convention center, pint-sized gun enthusiasts, some taught about the Second Amendment before they learned to read, perused the latest makes and models of firearms.

“I like guns because guns are fun,” said 9-year-old Kaykay Mace, who attended the NRA Youth Day with her dad, Scott, and big sister, Calla, 11.

Scott Mace, 37, called the event “a fun thing to do.”

Just like the NRA said! Imagine that!

“If a child understands how to properly and safely shoot, then they become much safer,” he said. “In a bad situation, they will understand what needs to be done.”

Like this 12 year-old?

Calla Mace said she enjoys going to gun ranges and bragged, “I’m a pretty good shot.”

“I’ve shot a .22 rifle before and a handgun,” Calla said.

The convention floor was packed with little girls and boys with guns in their hands.

One blond girl in camouflage tights and pink skirt, who appeared to be about 7, gripped an air pistol as an instructor gave her tips on her aim.

Another young girl, with help from an adult, practiced aiming a rifle nearly as tall as she was. It was only an air gun that shoots pellets, but was made to look like an menacing AR-15 assault rifle — similar to one used by Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook.

And currently the most popular firearm sold in America.  But let’s ignore that and keep hammering on Sandy Hook, right?

Trent Mattison, 51, of Beaumont, Tex., watched proudly as his 5-year-old son, Cooper, practiced shooting at the air-soft rifle range.

“I like it because I like the smell of gunsmoke,” said Cooper.

As opposed to the smell of marijuana, I suppose.

East Orange, N.J., high school teacher Ron Fierro, 62, was volunteering at the rifle range to show kids like Cooper how to shoot properly.

“I’m passing the tradition on to the next generation,” Fierro said. “Guns are tools. You have to teach kids how to use them safely. When you teach gun safety, you reduce the amount of gun accidents.”

In the Dark and Facist State of NEW JERSEY? (That’s the GeekWithA.45’s appellation.)

Ray Ruley, 39, of Bay City, Tex., brought his six children and was thrilled they all received six-month free memberships in the NRA.

“I believe in our Second Amendment rights and want my children to appreciate the safe handling of firearms so the next generation doesn’t easily give that freedom up,” Ruley said.

But, but… guns are BAD!  And SIX KIDS?!?  He’s one of those people, the ones who buy  big jars of mayonnaise!

Adults as well as children learned something at the event.

In a seminar, gun instructor Rob Pincus advised parents that the best place to put a home gun safe is in their children’s bedrooms.

“Here’s my position on this: If you’re worried that your kid is going to try to break into the safe that is in their bedroom, with a gun in it, you have bigger problems than home defense,” Pincus said.

Pincus’ words have since been twisted into NRA speaker Rob Pincus advises parents to keep guns in kids room.

You know, throughout that whole piece I could picture the authors, Bill Hutchinson and Daniel Beekman nodding their heads sagely when New York Times columnist David Carr called flyover country “…the dance of the low-sloping foreheads.”

Barry Snell is right to an extent, but it’s actually worse, in my opinion, than he states it.  The Other Side™ doesn’t think we’re the “bad guys,” they think we’re a different species.  Dehumanizing is necessary, don’t you know.

There are, at the time of this writing, 655 comments to the piece.  I don’t have the stomach to wade through them.  Forgive me.

1098 Miles in the Saddle by Maj. Assburns

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As noted, I skipped the last day of the NRA convention and headed for home Sunday.  I pulled out of the hotel parking lot at about 8:10 AM CDT, and into my garage at 9:03P MST (Arizona doesn’t do Daylight Savings).  That’s just a tick under 15 hours, largely thanks to the 500 mile stretch between San Antonio and El Paso where the posted speed limit is 80 MPH.

It’s nice to be home, with a full day off to recuperate.

Iron Man 3 is in my immediate future.