Truer Words…

Via AlphaPatriot.

From Hog On Ice about Algore’s continuing meltdown:

Al Gore is insane. We already knew he was a compulsive, shameless, artless liar. That has been proven beyond dispute. But he’s also batshit crazy.

I’ve been telling people this since 2000. I wish I could link to a video of the debate where he showed up dressed like President Reagan, with his hair done up in the Reagan style, and with Reagan-mimicking rouge applied to his cheeks. You may not remember. He even did Reagan’s signature head-bob while he talked. It was like a sketch from Saturday Night Live, only there was no punchline.

And what about that bizarre moment when he stomped over to George Bush’s side of the platform and stared at him with a broad Xanax grin on his face? What was that all about?

It should have been clear right there that not all of Al’s delegates were answering roll call, but people are reluctant to come out and say that a Presidential candidate isn’t firing on all cylinders. Even for his opponents, it’s a hard thing to believe.

—

If we had elected this nut, right now, Joe Lieberman would probably be President, and Al would be on a permanent vacation in a padded chamber at the renamed Camp David Berkowitz.

Ooh! Ouch!

And from e-Clair on why the Right must stand up to the Left and call it on on its viciousness:

Appeals must be made for the return of the responsible citizen who is busy conducting his own life in a respectable manner and who has stepped back from political discourse out of disgust. The responsible, adult citizen must be encouraged to rejoin the fray or we will be left at the mercy of the omnivorous, media-driven gimmie-whimsey of the consumer.

Otherwise we will live in a country run by the decisiveness of Kerry, the compassion of Hillary and the honesty of Teddy.

Can I get an “AMEN!”?

Thanks, AlphaPatriot. I wouldn’t have found those otherwise.

I See Mark Moron Morford Still Has a Job

Seen his latest screed phillippic rant primal scream column?

An Uzi Up Your Liberal Nose
Who cares if the assault-weapons ban is
about to expire? The gun lobby can’t wait
to blow stuff away

Assault weapons. Aren’t they just the cutest things?

And isn’t it just so sweet and fall-down uproarious how the NRA and all its knuckle-draggin’ right-wing pals in the U.S. Senate are all cheering right this minute, as the much-loathed 10-year-old ban on assault weapons, the one outlawing Uzis and TEC-9 semiautomatics and AK-47s and all other way-cool manly guns that have no other purpose in this world than to annihilate crap at 200 rounds per minute, is about to expire?

Let’s see, that’s one insult, one lie, and one exaggeration in the mere first paragraph! (I’ll ignore the opening sentence and title.)

Because, get this: The ban will not be renewed. It’s true. Even if that commie liberal Feinstein somehow gets it passed in the Senate, the NRA lobby has promised to keep it from ever coming up for a vote in the House, and the law will just expire and they will all cheer and slather each other in gun-barrel polish and go off and shoot stuff, because that’s the only thing that seems to give life any meaning.

He seems perturbed, doesn’t he?

Isn’t that great? To hell with logic and to hell with your kids’ safety and to hell with even trying to prevent moron gangbangers and terrorist wanna-bes and imbecilic white supremacists from easily getting their hands on a nice AK-47 that can mow down a schoolyard full of tots in 10 seconds flat. Instead: Down with liberal scum who would take away our God-given right to bear nasty ultraviolent weaponry that no one anywhere can justify the existence of. Go, NRA!

Except even gun control groups like the VPC have admitted that the “Assault Weapon Ban” didn’t do any of the things Mr. Moron Morford attributes to it. Doesn’t he realize that you can buy an American-built AK-47 clone (without, of course, a folding stock or a bayonet lug) right now?

Of course he does. He’s just doing his job, trying to scare the poor idiot populace into doing what he wants, like all good Leftists do.

What, too sarcastic? Well, hold onto your sides, because it gets even funnier. Even little gun-lovin’ Bushie himself declared during the 2000 campaign that he actually supported an extension of the ban (pretty hard, even for Shrub, to defend Uzis in the wake of Columbine and 101 California, et al.), a law that outlaws 19 types of insidiously lethal weaponry, the very guns most highly prized by jittery meth-lab owners and killing-spree advocates and homophobic militia members deep in the Montana woods. Oh, and also by upstanding, white-bread NRA members. Oh my yes. They need assault weapons. Must have them. Or so they claim.

Well, thank you Mr. Moron Morford. You’ve done such a marvelous job of associating people like me (I own an AR-15) with homophobic meth-lab owning spree killers. But I live in Arizona. Such awesome literary skills floor me.

But Bush, he is just so happy. He won’t have to see that bill at all. He won’t have to sign a thing before the election and risk annoying the Bible-quotin’ gun lovers of America. The NRA lobby will kill it before he even has to try to pronounce the phrase “high school gun rampage.” Oh man is he ever relieved.

I bet he is. There’s a lot of us gun lovers. (I don’t happen to be a bible-toter, but if Bush signed an AWB renewal, I don’t believe he would be receiving my vote come November.) It is good that my NRA dues go, at least in part, towards goals that I support. That’s what representative government means! My lobby is stronger than your lobby!

Because to the NRA, the rule is absolute: No gun law is a good gun law, and any ban of any kind is a slippery slope (always, always a slippery slope) until the government stomps in and takes away all your rights to do anything fun at all, and so screw the painfully obvious, skull-crushingly sad fact that allowing assault weapons back into the culture is the equivalent of allowing, say, convicted rapists loose in a sorority house.

Once again, Mr. Moron Morford asserts that which is undeniably false – that the “Assault Weapon Ban” removed anything from “the culture” in the first place. This is most obviously not so. But since it doesn’t fit in his worldview, it simply is ignored. If he actually recognized reality, his head might explode.

What, too extreme? Bull. Even “normal,” responsible gun owners — and, yes, they do exist, in huge numbers — know there is zero justification for allowing Uzis and AK-47s and their ilk back onto the market, just as there is no validation for suddenly legalizing, say, bazookas and flamethrowers and a swell grenade launcher for the Hummer. Dude! Wouldn’t that be so cool! Imagine a flame-throwing grenade-launching badass H2 with roof-mounted machine guns, barreling down I-5 and shooting up those goddamn wimpy Priuses and Mini Coopers! Ha! High five! Goddamn liberals!

Hmm…Bazookas are actually legal – like machine-guns they’re Class III devices, and so are the individual rocket rounds. Flamethrowers, to my knowledge, are unrestricted. No thanks to the goddamn liberals. I think, if Mr. Moron Morford looked around, he would find that “Uzis and AK-47s and their ilk” are still available all over the country. (Hey, if he can repeat his lie, I can repeat the truth.)

But huge numbers of responsible gun owners happen to own “assault weapons” too. There have literally been millions sold in this country, and the overwhelming majority, like the overwhelming majority of all guns, have ended up in the hands of us (check the scare quotes) “normal” responsible gun owners. So we disagree with the assertion that there is “zero justification,” don’t we?

Whoops, sorry. Getting carried away again. Hard not to, really. Because you simply have to love that NRA logic. It is pure genius, their insidious small-minded one-note hunk of reasoning that says banning assault weapons is just one step away from the government breaking down the door and taking away their shotguns and their Cheez Puffs and their Guns & Ammo subscription and their secret stash of gay porn.

I’m not sure, but I think the “gay porn” comment is supposed to be insulting. Now, I don’t know the man personally, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Jeff of Alphecca had a bit of that laying around, and I don’t see it as an insult unless the person writing it has a problem with gays. (Isn’t Moron Morford outspokenly gay? Does this mean he hates himself?) Now, the “insidious small-minded” comment is another thing, as that’s precisely how I see the gun-control supporters. And since they’ve been using the “slippery slope” method to achieve gun bans (as the English did) pardon the hell out of us for seeing the “Assault Weapon Ban” as precisely what it is: one great big step down the Slippery Slope that Mr. Moron Morford doesn’t want to admit exists, but would obviously be more than happy to shove us knuckle-dragging, insidious, small-minded, CheezPuff-eating, G&A reading gun nuts down.

Fuck you very much, Mr. Moron Morford.

This is the thinking. And it applies to all aspects of the frightening NRA mind-set. What, damn libs make me wear a seat belt in the car? Won’t let me breed African killer bees in my backyard? Make homemade bombs out of weed killer and turpentine? Buy cop-killer bullets at Wal-Mart? What’s next, invading my home and making my kids read feminist lit and stealing my kidneys while I sleep? I knew it! Damn liberals!

Ah, yes. The infamous “cop killer” bullets. Can’t have a good anti-gun rant without that old bromide. And you make homemade bombs out of fertilizer and diesel fuel. Don’t you know anything?

It gets better. It gets funnier. It gets sadder. Let us note how the current, about-to-expire legislation is already full of loopholes and flaws of sufficient breadth that gun manufacturers can mostly skirt the ban by making simple cosmetic changes to their guns and then selling them as something else, completely legal, even though the gun is essentially the same, ha ha suckers.

So, even though Moron Morford has been claiming that the law “banned” some weapons and removed them from “the culture,” and that sunset will cause these banned and removed weapons to be available for consumption by meth-dealers, spree-killers, NRA members and the like, NOW he admits that the law was useless and did nothing that he claimed? Yet it is cruicial to him that this useless, ineffective law be renewed! So that the next incremental step down the slippery slope….

Don’t pay too close attention to his writing, folks. You might get whiplash.

And if you are at all sentient and aware and feel even the slightest twinge of humanitarian concern for the spiritual progress of the human animal, a bitter, uncontrolled, fall-down fit of pained hilarity would seem to be the only real reaction you can possibly have.

Here, let me translate that for you fellow NRA members: Anyone who supports the sunset of this stupid law is:

A) Not sentient (that means “thinking” and “self-aware” for you knuckle-draggers) – so Mr. Moron Morford was being redundant (that means “repetitive.”)

B) Uncaring about “spiritual progress of the human animal” – i.e. “we hate everybody!

I get the impression that he doesn’t like us very much.

Seems only fair as the feeling is mutual.

Because if you don’t laugh it off, right now, at the bloody cosmic circus of it all, you will tear out your hair and start popping Vicodin like candy and pound a large nail into your own skull to deflect the pain, and then move to Canada, where they look down at America’s bizarre right-wing macho inbred obsession with guns and just go, oh my freaking God what the hell is wrong with you people.

Please, Mr. Moron Morford, take option “B”!! Canada needs more self-inflicted lobotomy patients. You could run for a seat in Parliament!

And the kicker? The cutest aspect of all? There is no effort to hide it. The NRA is making not the slightest stab at concealing how their snide little lobby controls the right-wing side of the senate, nor are those same senators denying how they happily and with full enthusiastic intent suck at the bitter macho metallic tit of the gun lobby.

As opposed to the gun control movement that hides each and every new attempt to slide us down the slippery slope? We’re proud and unrepentant because we really believe that the Second Amendment means something, Mr. Moron Morford, and not what you think it means. We’re quite happy to live here with our guns. I recall once in a flamewar on the talk.politics.guns group a commenter who said something on the order of “Why don’t all of you gun-freaks go form your own country!” To which one quite bright respondent replied, “We did. Who the hell let YOU in?”

So? Who did let you in?

Simply put, they just do not care whether you know. Why? Because the Right, they still have majority control. They still make the rules, and, no matter how many Dems or progressives or commonsense Americans still think the assault-weapons ban is a good idea overall, they just don’t give a crap. The NRA is in charge. The sheer force of the gun lobby will make Uzis available again, just because they can. Don’t like it? Suck my shotgun barrel, commie liberal tree hugger. God bless America.

I believe Mr. Moron Morford just outed himself as being against democracy when it doesn’t happen to agree with his personal politics. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you!

Yes, Mr. Moron Morford, we have majority control. More than that, though, we live in a CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC and not a democracy, so there are certain fundamental rules that no mere majority can overturn. And that galls you, doesn’t it? The Left is constantly thwarted by the great unwashed (but numerically superior) masses that just won’t do what you want. We who are so stupid and easily lead, but who you cannot seem to lead to anything. And you are further thwarted by that useless old peice of paper with words written by evil slave-owning rich white men that just can’t still mean what it says in this modern age.

And we will continue to thwart you.

Suck on that.

And, finally, here is NRA prez and noted ball of rancid cottage cheese Wayne LaPierre, talking up the sheer orgiastic joy of watching the ban expire: “I’m here to promise you that’s the end of [the ban]. It’s over. On Sept. 14, the sun will rise and it will never see the light of day again as long as we stay strong.” Yes, he’s actually comparing buying Uzis and AK-47s to a sunrise. And lo, the Earth shuddered, children everywhere felt suddenly soiled and defiled and lightning, sadly, did not strike LaPierre dead on the spot.

It’s gotta be tough when even God Gaia isn’t on your side, Mark.

It is becoming increasingly difficult to type this column.

It’s that nail in your skull, isn’t it?

Please?

I am now laughing so hard at the warped hypocritical savagery of it all, at so many Republicans wailing about, you know, the necessity of war on terror and war on drugs and war on gays and war on women’s rights and war on just about everything they don’t understand, and then how they turn right around and fall prostrate in front of Mr. NRA Lobbyist and say yes yes, what this country really needs goddammit is to get those Uzis back into the hands of angry Americans.

Those would be the Uzis that you admitted above that the law didn’t really remove or stop the manufacture of? Those Uzis? And what about that war on gays? I thought we knuckle-draggin’ NRA members had secret stashes of gay porn? Like it’s a bad thing?

I was going to suggest that you be consistent, but you’re a Leftist, and the two seem mutually exclusive.

Laughing. Laughing so very hard. Oh you poor, sad senators, lobbyists, NRA chiefs, stroking your Uzis and cheering your right to own multiple TEC-9s and not caring a whit for how anyone thinks. Or feels. Or intuits. Or loves.

Sure they do, Markie-boy! Sure they do! Say, that nail in your brain really is affecting you. Don’t you remember noting that the Right Wing is in the majority? Why else do politicians support anything? It’s the only way they get re-elected! And they know it.

Democracy. Ain’t it wonderful?

Do you really not see? Do you really not understand the sad dose of malevolence your agenda pumps into the cultural bloodstream? Do you not, finally, when you go to bed at night, get hit with a white-hot realization of what comical, bleak little clowns you are? No, I suppose you don’t.

And to that I have but this to say:

Pot? Meet Kettle.

“But What Do You NEED That For?”

How about an ultra-violent watermelon blaster?

Check out this Windows Media clip of the S&W 500 against an army of charging angry watermelons.

You never know when the herd might attack.

(Warning – 8Mb file.) Film provided by rec.guns contributor David Webb.

“But You Don’t Even Know This Person!”

In a moment of idiocy Out of the goodness of my heart, I have invited Seldom of Seldom Sober to stop by and spend the night at Chez Minority on his Blogs Across America Tour from LA to NY. I’ll be stop #2 after Da Goddess in San Diego. Hopefully there’s an Albuquerque blogger who’ll put him up one night and cut that Tucson-to-Denver leg into a two-day trip. There’s a T-shirt in it for whoever volunteers. I’ve done Tucson-to-Denver in a single day, but it’s a LONG day.

I know the trip will occur in early September, but he’s being pretty vague on the specifics.

(I hope he knows this is a “dry” house! He’ll have to BHOB!)

Control Loops, Chaos Theory, Endocrinology, Psychiatry, Economics…

Steven Den Beste, in his inimitable way, has a fascinating (Hey, I’m a geek an engineer…) new post up on, well, pretty much everything. But he eventually gets around to the main thrust of the topic and it has to do with Greenspan raising the interest rate by a quarter point in an effort to stave off inflation.

Generally, the Fed uses two main tools to try to control the economy. The Fed can pump new money into the system by “buying” federal bonds with money they conjure out of thin air. The Fed does this at a pretty regular rate, but generally they don’t like using this for primary control, and prefer to rely on the discount rate.

When the Fed changes the discount rate, in theory other kinds of interest rates tend to track it up and down. Of course, in practice it’s nothing like that straightforward. Sometimes they respond immediately and proportionally. Sometimes there’s a delay. Sometimes it has no effect. Sometimes other interest rates move in the opposite direction. Sometimes they move the same direction but less far; sometimes they move the same direction but much further. And in terms of larger effects, sometimes changes in interest rates affect overall activity and sometimes such changes don’t. And almost always it takes a long time.

The theory says that lowering the discount rate leads to lower interest rates overall, which tends to stimulate economic activity. But it doesn’t always work that way.

Now, I didn’t even get Father Guido Sarducci’s Five Minute University education in economics (“Supply and-a Demand. That’s it.”) but I remember one thing I read long ago: The Fed has essentially only one control, and that control is like a rope around the neck of the economy. The Fed can pull on that rope and choke the economy with a fair amount of effectiveness – cut the money supply or raise the interest rates and the economy takes note right fast. But if it increases the money supply or lowers the interest rate, it’s a lot like pushing on that rope. The noose might not loosen, and the economy might not notice.

Hey, I’m my expertise is in gun control. Do you come here for economics dissertations? But that mental image stuck with me, and I thought you might find it interesting. And besides, I love Chaos Theory. I strongly recommend James Gleik’s Chaos: Making a New Science if you want to know more about this relatively new field in mathematics, physics, chemistry, economics, medicine….

I Also Do Requests, Part III – More Deliberate Mendacity

Continuing with the dissection of the Brady Campaign’s CCW FAQ page, we come to the next question:

Q: Has any peer-reviewed academic research been done on the effects of weakening CCW laws in Florida?

Pretty simple question, no? And here’s their pretty simple answer:

A: Yes. In March of 1995, a study was released by criminologists at the University of Maryland who examined the effects of the weakening of CCW laws in three states, including Florida. They found that gun homicides increased by an average of 26%, while homicides by other means did not increase. The study concluded that weakening CCW laws did not reduce homicides and could actually increase the frequency of homicide. The researchers noted that by weakening limits on concealed weapons, states may be giving up a simple and effective method of preventing firearms deaths.

This is the internet, ladies and gentlemen. ONE peer reviewed study? No link to said study or a third-party synopsis of it? No, we’re just supposed to take the Brady Center’s unimpeachable word that agendaless researchers at the unbiased University of Maryland did a detached scientific study of CCW and found that gun homicides increased after CCW laws – in three states – went up (by the scary number of 26%!) while other homicides “did not increase.”

That study, I am forced to assume, is one by the title “Easing Concealed Firearm Laws: Effects on Homicide in Three States” produced by David McDowall, Colin Loftin, and Brian Wiersema of the University of Maryland’s Violence Research Group. Problem is, the researchers didn’t study three STATES, they studied five metropolitan areas in three states, and they did so over a period in which national homicide rates were trending UP (see the Bureau of Justice Statistics graphs from Part 1 of this series.) Here’s what the paper says they studied:

We studied patterns in Florida, Mississippi, and Oregon. In addition, we analyzed monthly homicide counts and examined only large urban areas within the three states. To find if the laws influenced gun deaths differently, firearm homicides were separated from homicides by other means.

We conducted analyses for Dade (Miami), Duval (Jacksonville), and Hillsborough (Tampa) counties in Florida, and for Hinds (Jackson) county in Mississippi. Because there were relatively few homicides in Multnomah county (Portland), we combined Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington counties in Oregon. For each area, we used death certificate data compiled by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) to count monthly homicides through December 1990. Health departments in Florida, Mississippi, and Oregon provided additional cases from January 1991, to December 1992.

For all areas except Miami, we studied the period between January 1973 and December 1992 (240 months). We confined our Miami analysis to January 1983 through December 1992 (120 months) because of an unusually sharp increase in homicide rates in May 1980 after an influx of Cuban refugees. In late 1982 the rates appeared to stabilize.

Well, gee, national firearms violence trends were UP during this period, and CCW laws were in effect in these three areas at the same time. OBVIOUSLY CCW made the homicide rates go up, right?

Right?

I’m not a statistician, but to me the answer appears to be “Not quite.”

Look at table 1 of the research paper. It’s a doozy all right:

Notice anything interesting? Notice the wide variations within the three cities studied. Miami – with a very high homicide rate, very little change (+3%), yet Jacksonville’s rate went up 75% (another scary number!) But Florida’s homicide rate overall after passage of their CCW law did what? That’s right – it went DOWN, except for that first year after passage while the permitting process was under way. Remember, the law went into effect OCTOBER 1 of 1987. By the end of 1988 the initial rush of everyone who wanted a CCW permit had been taken care of, and from 1988 onward, Florida’s homicide rates overall went DOWN. But by cherry-picking urban areas, our intrepid researchers made it appear that Florida’s homicide rates went up, did they not? Is that not what the Brady Center just said?

In March of 1995, a study was released by criminologists at the University of Maryland who examined the effects of the weakening of CCW laws in three states, including Florida. They found that gun homicides increased by an average of 26%, while homicides by other means did not increase. The study concluded that weakening CCW laws did not reduce homicides and could actually increase the frequency of homicide.

(Note the use of the weasle-word “could.”) This is known as deliberate mendacity. Because the report clearly states:

Despite this evidence, we do not firmly conclude that shall issue licensing leads to more firearms murders. This is so because the effects varied over the study areas. Firearms homicides significantly increased in only three areas, and one area witnessed an insignificant decrease. In combination, the increase in gun homicides was large and statistically significant. Yet we have only five replications, and two of these do not clearly fit the pattern.

The statistical significance of the combined results aside, the analysis implies that shall issue policies do not always raise levels of gun murder. Sometimes, at least, local conditions operate to blunt any effects. The areas without significant increases, Portland and Miami, may be unusual, but we lack the data to examine whether this is true.

Stated in another way, we cannot completely dismiss historical events as an explanation of the increases in firearms murders. One would need a complex theory to explain how history could mask a decrease in homicides after the laws. Historical accounts of the apparent increase might be much simpler. One would then be left with the hypothesis that the effects of the laws are nil.

In other words, “shall-issue” CCW laws don’t seem to affect homicide rates in any provable way.

Which means the Brady Center CCW FAQ page is lying. Boldly, blatantly, and with deliberate intent to mislead. They tell their readers that a research paper they didn’t name and gave no link to proved that “liberalized concealed carry” increases homicides, while the actual paper makes no such claim.

But “shall issue” CCW protects many people who jump through the hoops and actually carry. People like Barbara Holland. Ask her if CCW is a good idea.

How do you like being lied to? It’s a standard tactic in the gun control debate – both sides do it. They lie with statistics and expect you to just accept that their researchers are the unbiased ones. But if you bother to actually look it’s blindingly obvious which side is more deliberate, blatant, and outrageous at it. The gun-rights side tells you that CCW reduces crimes by some small but significant number, the gun-ban side tells you that CCW makes crime go UP by some scary number. But the facts show that CCW doesn’t seem to have much effect on crime rates overall. However, as each new state has considered and then passed “liberalized” concealed carry, the gun control groups have always predicted increases in firearm crime, “blood in the streets,” “Dodge City shootouts,” and so on. And they never happen.

But that’s how it works in this conflict. Supposedly neutral researchers do some “research” and come to some conclusion, generally vague and tentative, and above all deniable. Then advocates take those vague and tentative conclusions and blow them out of proportion – often without attribution – and the two sides start throwing bogus “facts” at each other, pissing off the vast middle ground who decide (and often rightly so) that both sides are lying again, and tune them out.

Now some questions: As a control, why didn’t our intrepid researchers look into homicides over the same period in urban areas in which CCW was prohibited or still highly restricted? Why did they not study the entire state rather than just the urban areas. Why was there no data on the number of CCW permits issued over the study period? Some estimate of how many, and where such permit holders lived? Were they mostly urban? Rural? Did it not matter, and if not, why? What was suggested to the reader when the report showed a 75% increase in firearm homicides in Jacksonville after CCW passage? Was there any effort to find evidence of CCW permit holders being involved in homicide?

This is the kind of thing that made me an advocate. I studied both sides. I concluded that one side was lying in order to deny me a Constitutionally protected fundamental right, and one side was lying to me in order to protect that right. Lying isn’t justified by the intent, in my opinion, but when it comes to my rights I’ll cut them a bit of slack. (John Lott excepted.) I will not forgive the other side.

And I don’t think Barbara Holland would either.

UPDATE: If you want a beautiful example of unattributed assertions of statistical “fact” that are complete and utter horseshit – by, of course, the Brady Bunch – please go read Phelps’s fisking of this op-ed.

Remember, it’s for the children!

They Still Haven’t Quite Figured it Out

Ravenwood finds another one.

It seems that the mothers of England have figured out that marching for gun control didn’t work. After they got all the gun control they seemed to want, things just didn’t get any better:

MUMS ON MARCH AGAINST GUNMEN

BY ALISON BELLAMY – Leeds Today

HUNDREDS of mothers are to march through Leeds to protest at gun crime.

The Mothers Against Violence group is being headed by Pat Regan, whose son Danny, 26, was blasted to death by three bullets.

Er, no. He was shot to death by someone who shot him three times thus ending his life. I thought the “marching against gunmen” part made that clear?

The march is part of a national campaign which aims to rid the streets of violence and gun-related crime.

I thought all that gun control was supposed to do that?

Mum-of-five Pat, 49, of Hyde Park, Leeds, a trainee community development worker, said: “So many lives are lost due to guns and violence. By carrying a gun many young people think they have some sort of standing or will gain respect but I can say that it will eventually result in death or injury.

I thought that young people were supposed to think that carrying a gun was going to get them five years in prison? I thought that the gun ban was supposed to remove access to the guns they carry?

Guess not.

She added: “My son was no angel and became involved in drugs. I would not want anyone to go through what I have been through.

“We want to put a stop to the wave of gun crime and street violence and will demonstrate this by marching through Leeds. We want people to join us.”

And this will affect the drug-culture criminals… how, exactly?

Danny was killed on December 12, 2002. He had moved to Merseyside to escape the West Yorkshire underworld but was shot dead in a house in St Helens.
Police have never caught his killer: “Danny knew the dangers he was facing. I was always waiting for a knock at the door.

“He came home in a coffin and his designer gear came home in big brown envelopes.”
Pat said she was also keen for any families of people who had committed gun crime to also become involved. The group is also applying for funding and hopes to establish offices in Leeds and a support network.

Crimes involving firearms have doubled in West Yorkshire in five years, from 1,062 to 2,044 for the year 2002/3. In 18 months between 2000 and 2002, 11 people were killed and 24 injured in shootings.

Wow. Gun control has been so effective in West Yorkshire, hasn’t it? Licensing, registering, confiscating, heavy sentences. They’ve managed to take a pretty tiny problem and make a significant one.

I have an idea! Let’s do it here! We can take a significant problem and make it an overwhelming one!

West Yorkshire police has received national recognition for its work with drugs and gun crime. The force’s Operation Stirrup has led to 425 arrests, 36 guns and £1.6m of drugs seized.

And a doubling of “crimes involving firearms.” Dont’ forget to “recognize” that. Congratulations!

The march is on August 7 from noon from Potternewton Park, Chapeltown, through Little London and Woodhouse to Hyde Park. Hundreds of mothers from across the UK are expected to attend.

Hundreds. Can they call it the “Hundred Mom March”?

Sorry about the snarkiness, but I’m just in that mood.