gun control – Page 54 – The Smallest Minority

National Cultures and GUN Cultures

April 27, 2005 KevinLeave a comment

John at The England Project wrote a post back in January on Who Broke (Our) Gun Culture and How Might We Get it Back? Kim du Toit commented on it at the time, and John had a follow-up post in which he relates that fellow English blogger Lurch at the aptly named Gun Culture strongly disagreed with John’s premise that only an increased interest in the shooting sports could revive England’s gun culture. Lurch stated:

I believe that sporting shooting is doomed in the UK and no amount of good behaviour will change this. The recognition that self defence is the most basic human right that there is and that a firearm is the best tool for this is the only thing which can possibly save private firearm ownership. Not just in the UK but across the globe.

John has a much more recent post up that somewhat illustrates Lurch’s position.

I wrote on the topic a while back in my post Fear: The Philosophy and Politics Thereof, but I’ve got more to say, now. John’s premise, in his own words is:

I do not yet believe in the liberalisation of gun laws to the extent that all and sundry should be able to have them for self defence.

—

…this is not because I do not believe in the principle of self defence or that guns (often hand guns) are not the best tool for the job. On the contrary, I believe in the use of lethal force where necessary to protect ones own life, family, friends, strangers and, if necessary, property. My inability to “go the whole way” on this issue is based on what I believe is the un-preparedness of our society for a more liberalised approach to firearm ownership.

—

What I do not believe in is that all have the right to firearm ownership unless it can be proven that they are not suitable and I am not just talking about criminals or those with recent or serious criminal records. Actually, that’s not quite true (and this is the point where I would get a little evasive and shady if we were to be chatting about this down the pub) I think that people do have the innate right to have guns for self defence but I do not believe that, in general, the population is prepared for it.

He goes on to say:

…the thing that is central to my current position of practical prejudice is that gun culture is not about guns; it is about peoples attitude to guns, and more importantly, their respect of firearms in general and their ability to treat and use guns in a responsible manner. The gun culture that permitted wide ranging license free gun ownership in this country without significant and disastrous consequence was one of understanding. People understood firearms. They grew up in households that had always had them. They were taught from an early age how to treat them and use them. They were fully aware of what they could do and were fully prepared to take on the responsibilities of what firearms ownership entailed.

This culture was a learnt one. It required a continuity of ownership and the sharing of knowledge over each generation. There were no public training videos, no TV ads, no school indoctrination on the responsibilities of firearms ownership and yet the culture was there. It was there because children learnt it from their parents and/or from other adults. The culture was maintained and passed on and persisted and it allowed for common gun ownership without disastrous affects. In general, everyone (except criminals) benefited from it.

Then the state broke it. By degrees.

Gun culture was strangled to the point where continuity was lost and it is because of that loss that my full support for the liberalisation of gun ownership in the general populace is not forthcoming. I blame the state.

I’ve studied and written a lot about England’s experience with guns and gun control because, for one thing, England is “Mother Country” to America, and for another, it acts as a very useful petri dish to examine the actual results of truly draconian gun control in an otherwise nominally democratic society quite similar (but not identical) to our own.

First, let me say that I’m in complete agreement with John that “the state” is responsible for the destruction of the good gun culture in England; the one of responsible gun ownership, land stewardship, sportsmanship, self-defense and self-reliance, but this might not have been possible had the English and the Americans shared more in our general culture than we do. I’ve quoted before both Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England and St. George Tucker’s American Blackstone on the topic of arms and the law. Sir William wrote:

THE fifth and last auxiliary right of the subject, that I shall at present mention, is that of having arms for their defence, suitable to their condition and degree, and such as are allowed by law. Which is also declared by the same statute and is indeed a public allowance, under due restrictions, of the natural right of resistance and self-preservation, when the sanctions of society and laws are found insufficient to restrain the violence of oppression.

This was written about 1765. (Emphasis is mine) St. George Tucker, a mere 40 years later wrote:

This may be considered as the true palladium of liberty. . . . The right of self defence is the first law of nature: in most governments it has been the study of rulers to confine this right within the narrowest limits possible. Wherever standing armies are kept up, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any colour or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction. In England, the people have been disarmed, generally, under the specious pretext of preserving the game: a never failing lure to bring over the landed aristocracy to support any measure, under that mask, though calculated for very different purposes. True it is, their bill of rights seems at first view to counteract this policy: but the right of bearing arms is confined to protestants, and the words suitable to their condition and degree, have been interpreted to authorise the prohibition of keeping a gun or other engine for the destruction of game, to any farmer, or inferior tradesman, or other person not qualified to kill game. So that not one man in five hundred can keep a gun in his house without being subject to a penalty.

(Again, the emphasis is mine.) There was some short-term reversal of the English tendency to want the general population disarmed. In 1900 the Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil said he would “laud the day when there is a rifle in every cottage in England.”

That didn’t catch on, obviously. As I reviewed in England Slides Further Towards Bondage, the good English gun culture was essentially destroyed over the course of the 20^th Century:

(In) 1903 England passed its first gun control law. A minor one, simply requiring an easily acquired permit to purchase a handgun, and restricting the age of purchasers, but it was the first toe over the slippery slope. In 1919, in fear of anarchists and communists, England passed its first sweeping gun law – as a crime control measure – even though crime involving firearms was rare as hen’s teeth. You could only have a handgun or a rifle if you showed “good reason” to have one. (Sound familiar?) So much for “a rifle in every cottage” being a laudable goal. The descent had begun in earnest.

In 1936 short-barreled shotguns and fully-automatic weapons were outlawed – not regulated as they are here, outlawed. The reasoning? Civilians had no “legitimate reason” for owning them. Another slide down the slope. The reasoning had changed from the government needing to show reason for the restrictions to the people needing to show reason to exercise the right, to government telling them that there was no acceptable reason.

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In 1936 the British added a “safe storage” requirement for all handguns and rifles. (Sound familiar?)

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In 1946 self-defense was no longer a “good reason” to have a firearm. The slope got steeper.

In 1953, carrying a weapon for self-defense was made illegal. Any kind of weapon.

In 1967 the law was amended to require a license to own a shotgun, and jury trials no longer required a unanimous decision.

In 1982 reloaders and blackpowder enthusiasts were made subject to police inspection without a warrant to ensure “safe storage” of the reloading materials. In other words, agents of the government, without a warrant, could come into ones home at any time, without warning.

In 1988 all semi-auto and pump-action rifles were banned. By this time there weren’t many rifle owners anyway, but that didn’t matter. The personal property of law-abiding subjects was, once again, made illegal. And they were all registered – that is, the ones belonging to the law-abiding.

In 1996 all handguns were banned. And they were all registered… Well, you get the point.

Also in 1996, carrying any kind of knife was made illegal – unless you could prove you had a good reason for having it. The presumption of innocence was gone.

Since then there have been increased penalties for imitation guns, toy guns, and air guns. I fully expect there to be a law passed prohibiting extension of the index finger with one’s thumb held at a 90º angle to it in the classic gun-like shape, or the pointing of a Chicken McNugget in a threatening manner.

As I said before:

Am I suggesting that this has been some nefarious plan all along to strip the British of their rights and bind them into slavery? No I am not. I’m suggesting that this is a cycle of human behavior – long recognized – that we should be paying attention to and trying to break. We know what government does: it acquires power at the expense of the governed, for good reason or bad. And it does it slowly, almost imperceptibly, because we never believe that each “next step” is leading where we’ve been told it always leads. “Not this time,” we think. “We know better.”

Yeah?

Ask the English.

How long before we follow them?

But there’s considerably more to this than just gun control. As the cliché goes, it isn’t about guns, it’s about control. Let’s look at some of what’s going on in England today, since they are acting as a liberal/pacifist petri dish. First we have this story from The Guardian:

In one video clip, labelled Bitch Slap, a youth approaches a woman at a bus stop and punches her in the face. In another, Knockout Punch, a group of boys wearing uniforms are shown leading another boy across an unidentified school playground before flooring him with a single blow to the head.

In a third, Bank Job, a teenager is seen assaulting a hole-in-the-wall customer while another youth grabs the money he has just withdrawn from the cash machine.

Welcome to the disturbing world of the “happy slappers” – a youth craze in which groups of teenagers armed with camera phones slap or mug unsuspecting children or passersby while capturing the attacks on 3g technology.

According to police and anti-bullying organisations, the fad, which began as a craze on the UK garage music scene before catching on in school playgrounds across the capital last autumn, is now a nationwide phenomenon.

And as the craze has spread from London to the home counties to the north of England, so the attacks have become more menacing, with increasing numbers of violent assaults and adult victims.

In London, British Transport police have investigated 200 happy slapping incidents in the past six months, with eight people charged with attacks at south London stations and bus stops in January alone.

Here’s another:

COPS are hunting a man in connection with a vicious “happy slap” attack on a night bus.

Andrew Greenwood, 28, was set upon by thugs in an unprovoked assault on the top of a N176 double decker driving through Camberwell. Cops believe the man featured in this e-fit stood by and filmed the February 19 violence on his camera phone so the sniggering yobs could play it back later.

The sickening footage is then likely to have been circulated among other mobiles or on the internet, in a violent craze dubbed “happy slapping”.

Mr Greenwood, who works for Victim Support, was beaten and kicked so badly he needed hospital treatment for a fractured eye socket.

The e-fit suspect is black, in his late teens, with a stocky build and a broad nose.

He had what was described as a “street slang” accent, was wearing a bold red cap with a distinctive box shaped peak, and was holding a silver flip phone.

The other five gang members were black and dressed in sportswear.

Police want to hear from anyone who saw the attack or who wants to report other “happy slap” incidents.

This isn’t a big departure from the kind of behavior I posted about back on the 9th of this month. And why are they doing this? Because they’re not afraid. They’re not afraid of the police, and they’re damned sure not afraid of their victims. And why aren’t they afraid of their victims? Because they know that their victims are disarmed, and powerless to oppose them even if they’re willing. (Though fewer and fewer appear to be willing.) They know the rules won’t be enforced on them, but they will be enforced on the otherwise responsible adults who they drive over the edge. Examples: Bill Clifford, Martin James, Maureen Jennings, Linda Walker, and most recently, Richard Bottley. “Yobs” can get away with pretty much anything with very little fear of punishment. For example, from this story:

A POLICE officer has been appointed to work in St Albans secondary schools in a bid to combat youth crime.

The Youth Crime Reduction Officer has been visiting schools to gather intelligence, and develop ways of beating crime, truancy and drugs.

PC Paul Allen is working in schools across the district with pupils who risk ending up on the wrong side of the law.

He is also involved in developing acceptable behaviour contracts and anti–social behaviour orders for youths.

All well and good, right? Um, no:

He also intervened when a pupil caused £500 worth of damage to a piano at his school.

The pupil was excluded from school for three days, leaving a mark on his school record, after speaking to the police officer about the consequences of his actions.

PC Allen said: “A common perception among pupils is that damage or bullying is not a criminal offence.

“Often by just explaining the consequences and the fact that their actions are criminal is enough to curb their behaviour.” The police officer claims many youngsters do not realise when they are breaking the law and believes that early intervention is essential.

By my handy-dandy currency converter, £500 is approximately $950. And the kid’s punishment was three days suspension?? What does he have to do to get five days vacation? Deck a teacher? Oh, yeah. He learned a lesson there!

If you want more evidence, read this story about how a teacher secretly filmed unruly, violent, and uncontrollable students in several different schools in England. And then think about that 5 year-old kid in St. Petersburg that the cops handcuffed. (At least they didn’t need their new AR-15s). As the teacher put it,

Teachers end up walking on eggshells, and when you do that, you cannot discipline a child.

The same is true for parents and for other citizens, so kids run wild without fear of discipline. I’m afraid we’re slowly following England there, too.

As I mentioned before, I recently picked up Abigale Kohn’s book, Shooters: Myths and Realities of America’s Gun Cultures. The preface of Kohn’s book starts off:

From the 1970’s on, the American print media has carried out an all-out war against gun owners. They are labled “gun nuts,” “gun fanatics,” “the lunatic fringe,” “sickos,” and “terrorists.” Gun owners are laughable, contemptible, “a handful of middle-aged fat guys with popguns.” Editorial after editorial calls for stronger gun control, ranging from licensing and registration of all guns to outright bans on handguns. The New York Times publishes “The Scourge of Guns” and “Addicted to Guns,” straightforwardly indicting guns and gun owners for America’s high rate of civil violence. Not to be outdone, the Washington Post publishes editorials entitled “Good Parents, Bad Kids: And Far Too Many Handguns” and “Illegal Guns and the District,” arguing that “turning off the supply of handguns from around the nation” is the only effective way to reduce gun violence in the nation’s capital and across the United States.

On the other side of the country, a columnist in a major West Coast newspaper pens a piece about the Second Amendment Sisters, a pro-gun women’s organization formed largely in response to the Million Mom March, which favored gun control. Entitled “Pistol-Packin’ Polyester,” the columnist describes the Second Amendment Sisters as “bored, under-educated, bitter, terrified, badly-dressed, pasty, hate-spewin’ suburban white women from lost Midwestern towns with names like Frankenmuth all carrying firearms and somehow thinking they’re aiding the species.” Only slightly less inflammatory, another West Coast contributor argues that America’s gun culture is responsible for the “tyranny of danger” and “omnipresent threat of death” in contemporary American society.

She goes on at length. But one of the things Abigale Kohn discovered when she studied America’s “gun culture” – the good one – was this:

One of the reasons that some shooters are so opposed to allowing more stringent government regulation of gun ownership is that they believe that being able to own guns is synonymous with being recognized as a full-status person in the eyes of the state.

Which is correct. However, she continues:

In fact, historians have long recognized that the vast majority of individuals living in colonial America did not have legal sanction to own guns: the ability to “keep and bear arms” was a right afforded only to white, propertied, adult men.

Which is somewhat true, though I advise that she interview Clayton Cramer on the facts of just how many people other than property-owning white males actually did have guns in the colonial period. Anyway, continuing:

In relation to the broader question of what constitutes a good arbiter of personhood and political status in any given society (historically and contemporarily), shooters argue that legal access to guns is a particularly powerful statement of how the state recognizes the power and status of the individual.

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These symbolic associations resonate even today. Shooters implicitly believe that the symbolic associations between guns and personhood so deeply entrenched in the American cultural and political cosmology are still meaningful and important.

Yes, we do. But that belief has been stripped from the English, by and large. She says elsewhere in the book:

Over the years, Americans have used their discussion of rights to articulate their vision of citizenship – of what being an American actually means in terms of legal rights and political status. But the question of the right of individuals to own guns is particularly contentious. Critics of the concept of gun rights have often asserted that such a concept illustrates the ultimate in selfishness: the triumph of the individual gun owner’s desire for guns over the basic community safety and security.

And I’d argue that is the position that England has taken that has lead it to become the gun-control poster-child of the industrialized nations.

And in fact, many shooters do see their guns rights as a basic right conferred on them as American citizens. Some even believe such gun rights may add to problems of public safety.

But most shooters see gun rights as a means to confer safety to individuals and social groups; gun rights enable individuals to protect themselves and their family, their community, and even their nation. The issue is not so much that gun control supporters believe in public safety and shooters do not. The difference is in how public safety should be achieved. Shooters believe gun rights allow them to promote collective as well as individual safety. In their minds, a lack of individual gun rights means that only government agents and criminals would remain armed, and citizens would be vulnerable to both.

And I certainly concur with the sentiment. A large majority of the posts I put up here echo that. But it goes beyond mere ownership of guns. It goes well beyond John’s characterization that “(gun culture) is about peoples attitude to guns, and more importantly, their respect of firearms in general and their ability to treat and use guns in a responsible manner. “ What is involved is personal philosophy, and what that philosophy means to the overall culture.

Kohn notes several traits common to America’s gun culture: responsibility, toughness, individualism, independence, clear moral codes, patriotism, and dedication to tradition. None of these are desireable in a collectivist, relativist society. It seems obvious that if such a society is to be achieved, it is the gun culture that must first be destroyed. If one studies English history, the beginning of the destruction of their gun culture dates back to the rise of Communism in Europe, and the fear of the ruling class that the ruled would rise up in arms in a revolution. And if one asks John, or Lurch or anybody over at Samizdata, they’ll tell you that the relativist/collectivist Left has pretty much taken over the English government, and apparently with the willing cooperation of most of the population. It seems that anyone in England exhibiting any of these traits is liable to be hammered down by society, or by the government. And it seems apparent that we here are trying to follow that path, except that our gun culture is experiencing a resurgence.

Our gun culture is, in my opinion, essential to the overall “American culture” that has made this nation the powerhouse that it is. Responsibility, toughness, individualism, independence, clear moral codes, patriotism, and dedication to tradition are all bulwarks of that culture, and are all embodied by the people who make up “the gun culture” of responsble gun owners. The question in my mind is, “can we maintain it?” Or will we too eventually be overwhelmed by the voices of the Left who tell us that what we believe is selfish, short-sighted, bigoted, cruel, racist, unfeeling, etc., etc., etc.?

I concur with Lurch that, short of a miracle, England’s shooting sports are doomed and that further, there is almost no chance that England will restore its historic right to self defense. The last gasp of that was the recent attempt by the UK Telegraph to get a law passed acknowledging a right to defend oneself in ones own home. That effort failed. I was not surprised. England has slid too far down the slippery slope. I think that if we are to avoid the same fate, we must say “this far, no further,” and work to recover what we have lost.

More on Professor Saul Cornell

April 14, 2005 KevinLeave a comment

I added an update to the post below, but this is important enough for its own post. Professor Saul Cornell is director of Ohio State University’s John Glenn Second Amendment Research Center, funded primarily by the anti-gun Joyce Foundation. I first got involved in this when I fisked an op-ed written by Prof. Cornell that was published in several newspapers across the country. I emailed him a link, and he replied. His reply was, in my opinion, weak though very personally illuminating, and I wrote a post illustrating it. In the fisking I wrote:

Remember, Prof. Cornell is writing an opinion piece for a newspaper. He doesn’t have to be right, he just has to be convincing. The ill-informed who read this piece think “Hey, he’s an authority, he must be right.” That’s why his side has to keep repeating the big lies.

In my rebuttal to his reply I wrote:

You, an historian, have taken it upon yourself to distort history – something that you yourself claim is unacceptable. You claim that the Justice department’s recognition of the “standard model” of the Second Amendment is somehow “well beyond” a “living document” re-interpretation. I’m sorry, Professor, but if you actually believe that you’re delusional, and if you know better you’re a bald-faced liar. I honestly cannot tell which.

In Randy Barnett’s most recent entry on the topic at The Volokh Conspiracy he had this to say:

Saul asked in his reply: “Given that the gun lobby has plenty of money and places like CATO are strongly gun rights it seems a bit unfair to ask Joyce to fund your point of view.” I do not expect Joyce to fund any point of view with which they disagree. It is not Joyce we are talking about, it is Chicago-Kent and Ohio State. Nor, to reiterate, do I have any problem with an individual scholar like Saul who agrees with Joyce accepting funding to support his or her academic research, provided the funding is disclosed. But Ohio State, like Chicago-Kent, is an academic institution, unlike Cato, or the Federalist Society. (I raised the Federalist Society because, even though it is not an academic institution, its programs have more balance than did Chicago-Kent’s. (I did not compare the Fordham Law Review symposium to the Federalist Society—indeed, I did not mention that symposium at all in my post.)

Let me clarify this by posing the following question: Why did Joyce not organize its own conference, law review issue, or Second Amendment Research Center? The answer is plain: it wants its views to enjoy the academic respectability imparted upon it by the imprimatur of Chicago-Kent and Ohio State. It is that institutional imprimatur that enabled the Ninth Circuit to rely so heavily on articles published in the Chicago-Kent Law Review in his opinion in Silveira v. Lockyer. (BTW, the published opinion had to be modified later to remove its reliance on the discredited work of Michael Bellesiles.) This is what Joyce is buying from Chicago-Kent and Ohio State. This is what it is improper of these institutions to sell.

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If Saul truly cannot distinguish between a “research center” at a university (and a public one, no less) and a think tank like Cato, an advocacy group like the NRA or Joyce Foundation, or a blog like the Volokh Conspiracy, then there is more trouble with the Second Amendment Research Center than the principal source of its funding. But the fact that he says he would include diverse opinions in his programs (paid for somehow by other funds) and tried – albeit unsuccessfully – to include divergent views in the Fordham Law Review symposium suggests that he can tell the difference.

(Emphasis mine.) The “delusional vs. bald-faced liar” question remains open, but I know which side I’m leaning towards.

Randy Barnett on Joyce Foundation Funding

April 12, 2005 KevinLeave a comment

I mentioned this last week, when David Hardy picked up on Professor Saul Cornell’s contribution to a Fordham University Law Review symposium, funded (of course) by the Joyce Foundation. Well, Professor Barnett commented at the Volokh Conspiracy on the similar symposium published in the Chicago-Kent Law Review in 2000. One zinger of a quote from Prof. Barnett:

Is accepting honoraria from a foundation, like the Joyce Foundation, that will support only one side of an issue unethical? So long as one does not change one’s views to conform to the funding source’s preferences, I do not think so (though I do think one should disclose one’s funding sources to allow readers to evaluate for themselves whatever impact it may have on one’s analysis). I do not see why foundations who wish to advance a particular view cannot ethically support the research of those who otherwise agree with its agenda. Ultimately, the soundness of one’s scholarship should depend on the reasons and evidence one puts forth, not the source of any financial support one may have received. I think this is true even if the honoraria induced a scholar to write about an issue he or she would not otherwise have done, which I think probably applies to a number of contributors to the Second Amendment symposium. I feel the same way about campaign contributions. Contributing money to the campaign of politicians with whom one agrees does not corrupt the politician, unless he or she was already corrupt. Michael Bellesiles, who was paid to contribute to the Chicago-Kent symposium did not fabricate his evidence because the Joyce Foundation was paying him. He was a corrupt scholar before and after this payment was made.

So refreshing when someone is willing to call a spade a spade and not a “human operated soil relocation device.”

Read Prof. Barnett’s whole piece.

UPDATE, 4/14: Saul Cornell does it again, and Randy Barnett doesn’t let him get away with it. Here’s a key piece:

Saul asked in his reply: “Given that the gun lobby has plenty of money and places like CATO are strongly gun rights it seems a bit unfair to ask Joyce to fund your point of view.” I do not expect Joyce to fund any point of view with which they disagree. It is not Joyce we are talking about, it is Chicago-Kent and Ohio State. Nor, to reiterate, do I have any problem with an individual scholar like Saul who agrees with Joyce accepting funding to support his or her academic research, provided the funding is disclosed. But Ohio State, like Chicago-Kent, is an academic institution, unlike Cato, or the Federalist Society. (I raised the Federalist Society because, even though it is not an academic institution, its programs have more balance than did Chicago-Kent’s. (I did not compare the Fordham Law Review symposium to the Federalist Society—indeed, I did not mention that symposium at all in my post.)

Let me clarify this by posing the following question: Why did Joyce not organize its own conference, law review issue, or Second Amendment Research Center? The answer is plain: it wants its views to enjoy the academic respectability imparted upon it by the imprimatur of Chicago-Kent and Ohio State. It is that institutional imprimatur that enabled the Ninth Circuit to rely so heavily on articles published in the Chicago-Kent Law Review in his opinion in Silveira v. Lockyer. (BTW, the published opinion had to be modified later to remove its reliance on the discredited work of Michael Bellesiles.) This is what Joyce is buying from Chicago-Kent and Ohio State. This is what it is improper of these institutions to sell.

I’ve got a bit more to say here.

Like a Bad Penny, Prof. Saul Cornell Just Keeps Turning Up

April 8, 2005 KevinLeave a comment

This time on the Volokh Conspiracy and David Hardy’s new blog Of Arms and the Law. A while back, I did a fisking of a Cornell op-ed, then the good professor responded to that fisking, and I replied. Shortly thereafter, a student at Ohio State sent me a link to a piece he’d written on the Professor for the OSU Sentinel and the Professor’s position at the John Glenn Second Amendment Research Center. Then the Geek with a .45 followed up with a little in-depth research into the deep pockets and long tentacles of the Joyce Foundation and their funding for that center, and for other gun control groups.

David Hardy, an Arizona lawyer and supporter of the right to arms, noted on April 3 that Fordham University’s Law Review was going to publish

…a symposium issue on the Second Amendment — strangely, without a single recognizable pro-individual rights author (and almost without recognizable authors at all).
Aha, thought I — is the Joyce Foundation at it again? Sure enough, a Google quickly turned this up: “The papers and commentaries presented at the conference will be published in the Fordham Law Review in Fall 2004. The conference was funded by a generous grant from The Joyce Foundation.”

Prof. Cornell’s name came up again in that post in connection to the Joyce Foundation, with reference back to that OSU Sentinel piece I linked to back on the first of March.

The Volokh Conspiracy picked up on David Hardy’s piece, and that got the attention of Il Professore who responded there. Money quote:

The Fordham conference was much more inclusive that the law review issue organized by Glenn Reynolds that gave rise to the silly notion of a standard model. The goal of this conference was to present new research, not recycle the same old arguments.

Right. That would be ideas like “the Standard Model” is “revisionist” and “goes well beyond the idea of interpreting the Constitution as a living document that must respond to changing times”?? Now who’s being silly?

This kind of exchange is awkward, with someone posting on one blog, but the respondent replying on another. Perhaps, however, Prof. Cornell didn’t like my reply to his response here, and has decided to do it the difficult way with intent.

David Hardy’s latest piece on the Joyce Foundation funding is up here. Pretty damning, in my opinion.

“Oh what a tangled web they weave…”

But man they’ve got some deep pockets. And a LOT of bad pennies.

April 8, 2005 KevinLeave a comment

Josh Sugarmann: One of the Few Semi-Honest Gun-Grabbers Out There

Googling around for the last piece, I found an op-ed written by Josh Sugarmann, Executive Director of the Violence Policy Center, and outspoken gun ban proponent. Josh pulls no punches. He wants all handguns banned – as in, “Mr. & Mrs. America, turn ’em all in” banned. And he’s in favor of any means necessary to reach that end, too, as I’ve noted before in the VPC’s (in)famous “anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun” willingness to mislead the public. He wants “assault weapons” banned, too, but even Josh admits that the threat represented by “scary looking guns” is overblown. But, hey! If it helps in the eventual confiscation of handguns, Josh is all for it.

Anyway, let’s fisk Josh’s latest “frighten the peons” piece from the Charlotte Observer, April 2. (Registration required, use Bugmenot.com)

`The price of freedom’: More bodies

The harsh reality is that too many Americans love their guns more than they love their children

JOSH SUGARMANN
Knight Ridder/Tribune

Now, I’m not sure if Josh or if the Charlotte Observer put in the subtitle (I suspect Josh) but isn’t that just a wee bit inflammatory? “Americans love their guns more than they love their children”? How about “Americans cherish their freedom, and want to pass it on to their children,” Josh? Hmm?

In just 10 days last month, two mass murder-suicides — one ending in a Minnesota high school, the other taking place during a religious service in a Wisconsin hotel — left a combined toll of 18 dead and more than 10 injured.

As Americans go through the familiar ritual of asking how this could happen, the National Rifle Association has a stark answer articulated by former head Harlon Carter more than 20 years ago. America’s gun death toll, he explained, was simply “the price of freedom.”

To Carter, no matter what atrocities stem from America’s unfettered gun culture, they were a small price to pay for the unparalleled “freedom” of Americans to own virtually any gun of their own choosing: from pocket-size derringers to military-bred 50-caliber sniper rifles that can destroy aircraft and penetrate a half inch of armor plating from a mile away.

Did Harlon Carter actually say that? I Googled a bit, but didn’t find such an attribution. I did find a couple of quotes. Harlon is attributed with this:

Can our form of government, our system of justice, survive if one can be denied a freedom because he might abuse it?

I found that on several different pages. Now, Joseph Sobran said something about the “price of freedom:”

The prospect of a government that treats all its citizens as criminal suspects is more terrifying than any terrorist. And even more frightening is a citizenry that can accept the surrender of its freedoms as the price of “freedom”.

As did Benjamin Franklin:

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

I suppose Josh Sugarmann’s position on whether owning handguns is “an essential liberty” is not in doubt.

I did, however, find a Dave Kopel piece on National Review Online from August of 2000 that addressed the Harlon Carter question. Here’s the pertinent excerpt:

A much more serious error, however, is the description of the late Harlon Carter, the leading architect of the NRA’s transformation from a sportsman’s club into the most powerful civil liberties organization in the history of the world. According to the (Washington) Post, “Asked in 1975 if he would rather let convicted violent felons and the mentally deranged buy guns than endorse a screening process for gun sales, Carter did not hesitate to say yes. That’s the ‘price we pay for freedom.'”

Not really. At the 1975 congressional hearing, a congressman asked the question described by the Post, but when Carter began to answer, the congressman cut him off, saying he wanted a different witness to answer. In the official transcript, Carter’s answer is “The price we pay for freedom — “.

The Post‘s inadvertent distortion of Carter’s meaning was doubtless the product of an interview with someone from a Washington anti-gun lobby, where the politics of personal destruction have been the norm for decades.

Misrepresenting Carter’s statement was pretty mild compared to other attacks that Handgun Control, Inc., launched on Carter. One fundraising letter from HCI featured a picture of Harlon Carter on the envelope. The letter screamed that Carter “has seen to it that thousands of life-loving people like you and me DIE every year — shot with a handgun.”

I’m not so sure that Carter was all that misquoted. Smeared, yes. Misquoted, no. Nevertheless, I will be the first to admit that IF there were no guns, we’d have no gun crime. However, I’ve a firm grasp on reality, and I know that there’s no way to get rid of all the guns, so the point is moot. But let’s continue:

Carter’s words have shaped the world view of today’s NRA. They also lead to a more important question. At what point will Americans agree that the price exacted by guns — the gun lobby’s “price of freedom” — is simply too high?

Well, Josh, I’d say that after 9/11 it will be a point – if ever – far in the future. And you know why? Sept. 11, 2001 was a wake-up call for a lot of Americans, who suddenly looked around them and saw reality, and realized that all the fuzzy-bunny wishful-thinking I’m-OK-you’re-OK philosophies offered by the people who wanted to disarm America for its own good was just that – wishful thinking. They started thinking about the real price of freedom.

An all-too-familiar pattern has already emerged after the Red Lake High School shooting in Minnesota — the worst school shooting in the United States since Columbine. Attention has focused on virtually everything except the actual tools — reportedly two handguns and a shotgun — that made the massacre possible.

Yes, weapons belonging to a police officer. Weapons issued by his police department.

And your point is…?

Did the school have metal detectors?

Yes.

Was the security guard armed?

No.

Did the unique struggles faced by the residents of Indian reservations play a role?

Apparently not.

What about the shooter’s postings on a white supremacist Web site, and did other students help plan the attack? What have we learned since Columbine?

That we have some seriously messed up kids, and that drugging them might be a contributing factor in school shootings?

Each of these questions is legitimate. Yet while other Western, industrialized nations face their own civic, social and economic problems, they understand the direct link between gun availability and gun violence and severely restrict access to specific classes of firearms. The result is that other countries simply don’t experience mass shootings as commonly seen in the United States. The United States is unique in the ease with which it allows its citizens to act on their rage through the barrel of a gun.

Very true. Yet other countries have had school shootings and other forms of lethal attack. Dunblane, Scotland, March 1996. Sanaa, Yemen, March 1997. Friesing Germany, Feb. 19, 2002. Erfurt Germany, April 26, 2002. Vlasenica, Bosnia-Herzegovina, April 29, 2002. Carmen de Patagones, Argentina, Sept. 28, 2004. All shootings. Osaka, Japan, June 8, 2001 (knife, 8 dead, 21 wounded.) According to the Time Magazine’s Asia edition from Nov. 2004:

Last week, the city’s place in (China’s) consciousness acquired a stain that may take years to fade. At midnight, a 21-year-old named Yan Yanming reportedly entered the dormitory of Ruzhou’s No. 2 High School and slipped into the rooms where male students slept. Yan slashed some students’ throats, according to Xinhua, the state news agency. Others he stabbed in the heart. Eight died without rising. Four survived—hours later, witnesses saw the smears where their blood flowed down the school’s front steps. Police caught Yan the next day after he overdosed on drugs at his parents’ home. The attack left the city in shock. “People couldn’t believe that their school could be so unsafe,” says Cheng Honggen, a local Xinhua reporter.

The Ruzhou killings are part of a chilling rite of passage endured by modern societies all over the world. Ruzhou was the sixth in a string of deadly attacks on Chinese schoolchildren that began in August, when a schizophrenic janitor at a Beijing kindergarten stabbed 14 children, killing one, according to police. A bus driver in Shandong province was executed earlier this month for slashing 24 kids in September; last month, a teacher in Hunan province was arrested for killing four students and wounding 12; two weeks later a man in Beijing was arrested for killing a six-year-old and stuffing him into the school’s washing machine. The violence stalking the land of one-child families is not confined to the lower grades. In April, a college student named Ma Jiajue hacked four classmates to death after an all-night poker game. Ma said he was “too poor to afford shoes” and killed from jealousy.

The number of murders, rapes and batteries committed by juveniles in China is growing faster than 10% a year, says criminologist Pi Yijun of the China Politics and Law University. Stunned parents and authorities are searching for reasons for the surge. Some blame greater individual freedom and the decline of authoritarian control. Others explain it as the result of epochal social change and the loss of moral ballast once supplied by communist ideology.

One thing they’re not blaming it on is “knife availability.”

Sorry, Josh, but “gun availability” isn’t the reason we’re having mass shootings. We’ve always had guns.

Even when Americans’ attention is focused on gun policy, a timid mindset takes hold. Advocates and policy-makers look for minor, “common sense” policy proposals into which they can shoehorn the discrete circumstances of a particular attack.

To avoid ugly realities like “cops have guns, and they aren’t going to give them up.” Which might be a message you ought to take from the Red Lake massacre. You’ll notice they ignore your major “ban-and-confiscate” legislation because by common sense they know better than to try.

They are unwilling to acknowledge the basic fact that America’s gun violence problem is a direct result of the ease with which Americans can obtain virtually any gun of their choice for almost any intent. Why talk about banning handguns when you can focus on trigger locks?

Well, Josh, I reject your premise right there. America’s “gun violence problem” has been declining for over a decade – while our stock of guns has been increasing by at least three million new guns per year. That’s over 30 million new guns, and declining gun violence. More guns do not equal “more gun violence.”

No matter how many times you keep repeating the lie.

Mass shootings today are treated almost like tornadoes or earthquakes — unstoppable forces of nature that we must endure. The harsh reality is that too many Americans love their guns more than they love their children. Each new shooting — regardless of the number of people killed or the formerly “safe” environment violated by the sound of gunfire — seems less to shock us than to inure us to the next horrible incident.

Perhaps because we are not willing to be treated as criminals for crimes we have not committed? Perhaps because we resent being told things like “Americans love their guns more than they love their children” by preening self-righteous moralists like you? America listened to the Prohibitionists tell us that outlawing alcohol would solve all kinds of problems. It didn’t. It created all kinds of new ones. England’s subjects listened when their gun prohibitionists told them that banning semi-auto weapons would solve problems. It didn’t. They listened again after Dunblane, and banned all handguns – and that hasn’t helped either, has it? Why would we want to follow that disproven path?

In April, when parents across America think twice about sending their children to school on April 20, the sixth anniversary of the Columbine massacre, remember Harlon Carter’s words: We are just paying “the price of freedom.”

Perhaps they should think about something else: Their children are going to “gun free zones” where there isn’t anyone to protect them against anyone with harmful intent, regardless of the weapon used. No administrator, no teacher, no groundskeeper, in most cases no security guard, will be able to stop a determined attacker.

They’ll have to wait until the cops show up. With their guns.

The world has changed, Josh, but it’s not the guns that are the problem, and it never has been.

Even China is figuring that out.

April 6, 2005 KevinLeave a comment

Well, at Least She Wasn’t Driven to Suicide.

Reader Chris Allen emailed me from Australia last week with a link to another sad damned story out of England. This was covered by some others, such as Lurch over at the English blog Gun Culture. Here’s the story, or at least the TimesOnline version of it:

Jailed: teacher who snapped
By Russell Jenkins

Special-needs tutor fired air pistol near ‘yobs’ whom she believed were terrorising her family

A MIDDLE-AGED teacher is starting a six-month jail sentence today because she decided to fight back against “yobs” with a pellet gun.

Linda Walker, 47, who teaches at a special school for children with behavioural problems, has been heralded as an example to other less energetic and caring teachers.

Her life and career now lie in ruins after a moment of self-confessed madness when she pursued a group of teenagers she blamed for a campaign of vandalism directed at her home and family.

During the midnight confrontation near her suburban home in Urmston, Greater Manchester, she fired up to six rounds from the gas-powered air pistol into the ground close to the feet of her antagonist. She later confessed to police officers that she had acted “like a madwoman possessed” but complained that the activities of the youths had left her at breaking point.

Mrs Walker looked apprehensive in the dock at Minshull Street Crown Court, in Manchester, as the judge told her yesterday that she would serve at least three months before being considered for release.

Her partner, John Cavanagh, 56, a lecturer at Salford College, watched from the public gallery as Mrs Walker, who has complained that the law always appears to be on the side of the “yobbos”, was led to the cells to begin her sentence.

Mrs Walker shares her home in Urmston with Mr Cavanagh and her two 17-year-old sons.

She has taught children with special needs for 25 years, rising to head of Food Technology and head of Year 11 at New Park High School, Salford, where her work has been praised by Ofsted inspectors.

Her work has also won the admiration of colleagues. Nigel Haslam, a former head teacher, said: “She was very professional and thorough. She did a tremendous amount for young people. She worked all the hours that came and provided the students with many opportunities to succeed.”

Beyond the school gates, Mrs Walker was being driven towards breaking point by groups of youths “terrorising” her neighbourhood. She logged a catalogue of complaints with officers, from abusive phone calls to thefts and vandalism.

Anonymous callers would abuse her son as a “poof”. A wing mirror of her other son’s car was broken off, the garden shed was broken into, ornaments thrown over the wall and fish stolen from her pond.

The final straw came when she noticed that a five-litre plastic container of washing up liquid was moved from the back garden and emptied over her son’s car in the driveway.

She was “fuming mad” when she rushed out of her house at night to confront a knot of teenagers 250 yards away. After an exchange of abuse she returned home to arm herself with a Walther CP88 gas-powered air pistol, which she had kept in her underwear drawer for four months since she had been burgled, and an air rifle.

She phoned the police to tell them that she was going to “shoot the f****** vandals. I’ve got an air rifle and a pistol and I’m going to shoot them.”

Mrs Walker squared up to one 18-year-old, firing off several rounds from the pistol into nearby ground. The youth, Robert McKiernan, now 19, who has a number of convictions including burglary, told her that she was a “psycho”.

She later expressed surprise when an armed response unit arrested her and not the youths. Afterwards she complained to officers: “Police are very sympathetic but the law is on the side of these criminals and yobbos and not the victims. They have all the rights.”

In evidence Mrs Walker said: “I cannot say I am sorry I challenged him (the teenager). I think I needed to do it to get rid of my anger. I know I shouldn’t have done it. I know I was loopy.”

Farrhat Arshad, for the defence, suggested that Mrs Walker had given “her lot to society”. Ms Arshad said: “The court is familiar with the acts of petty vandalism and theft that were caused to her property. Although they may appear as petty, the effects on Mrs Walker were great. She thought her family, which was supposed to be safe, was being attacked.”

Mrs Walker was found guilty of affray and possessing a firearm with intent to cause fear of violence after a week-long trial in February.

FAMILY’S DIARY OF DESPAIR

Linda Walker says that her home was targeted by vandals in the months before the shooting. There were thefts and vandalism which, the family believe, amounted to persecution:

She told police officers that she had intercepted several malicious phone calls. In one, the caller talked about one of her sons being a “poof” and threatened her. Mrs Walker believes that the youths that gather at night on the neighbourhood streets were driven by jealousy of her two sons. She said that her sons had saved up their money since they were small and were now able to afford a car and a mountain bike

During the summer holiday, while the family were staying in their caravan, the garden shed was broken into and the family’s bicycles were stolen. Bottles of alcohol were also taken and garden ornaments were thrown over the wall

Fish from the pond disappeared in a separate incident and the front door was kicked in, splitting the PVC coating

Cars parked in the driveway were damaged. Wing mirrors were smashed and a brick was thrown through a window. Mrs Walker told police: “Kids keep coming down the road to vandalise my sons’ cars because they do not have cars and are jealous. When your kids work hard for things and they get damaged you get protective.

I have had harassment and mischievous phone calls. I got a phone call calling my son a poof and asking, ‘Does he want a good bumming?’ I asked who it was and why they were doing this and he said I would get bummed as well.”

The final straw came on August 14 last year when she noticed that a five-litre plastic container had been moved from the back step and placed on the roof of her son’s car in the driveway.

She said: “They did not know whether it was brake fluid or anti-freeze and they poured it all over his car”. John Cavanagh, Mrs Walker’s partner, said: “Things have been pretty terrible at home with the vandalism going on. It has caused one or two stressful moments.”

“One or two stressful moments.” Ah, the fabled British gift for understatement.

The Times allowed its readers to comment on the case. Here’s a few choice samples:

My son was recently attacked by local yobs in a drive-by style shooting involving an air weapon. The offenders were caught and admitted the crime along with other offences. The response of Devon and Cornwall police was to confiscate the weapon and caution two of the offenders. As for the minor damage to my son’s car, to get any form of compensation would involve a private prosecution against the youths. It would seem that justice depends on where you live and not on what crime you have committed. Christopher Sweetman, Great Torrington

I was appalled by this sentence. This is the first offence committed by an otherwise valuable and upstanding member of the community who has been pushed beyond her limits. She, alongside countless others up and down the country, have to put up with years of abuse in their own home and nothing is done. Police response times to these crimes are too slow to gain evidence and so the yobs carry on without any real prospect of prosecution. I am taking my legal finals next month and I’m wondering what the point of my qualifaction will be if this is how the legal system responds to people such as Linda Walker. How can we reconcile the use of ASBOs for yobs (which still do not deprive them of their freedom) with prison for a person such as Linda Walker? Alexa Noble, Poole

Remarkably good question. Here’s one from someone upon whom his chains rest comfortably:

Walker deserves the sentence she received. She approached a group of youths who she had no evidence against, carrying firearms and discharged them. Even if she had seen these youths committing an offence at her home, her vigilante action was completely inappropriate. It is easy to have two sepearte points of view in matters like these, one point of view if you are not directly affected and one if you are, by this I mean if all the bleeding hearts who think that the sentence is unjust had been affected, e.g. it was your son or daughter she approached in a raged state you would think differently. As far as I am aware, the police investigated all the matters she had reported previously and infact arrested offenders, none of these offenders identified were the people she approached that night. Well done the police and well done the judicial system. The maximum sentence for an offence of this kind is 10 years, I think the judge on the day displayed great restraint with regard to her sentence. James Smith, Manchester

Thankfully, Mr. Smith was the only respondent who was quite this vehement about Ms. Walker’s sentence.

Wanker.

But at least Ms. Walker wasn’t driven to the point of despair that 64 year-old Martin James was. Or 77 year-old Bill Clifford. The “yobs” drove Linda Walker past the point they drove Maureen Jennings, but not that far. As Lurch put it, “Yet another good person hung out to dry by the very legal system which failed them in the first place.”

Like it failed Amelia Whale.

OK, Who Are You, and What Did You Do with the Real New York Times?

April 3, 2005 KevinLeave a comment

I think they’re trying to lure us into dropping our guard. Check out this piece from today’s NYT:

Shootings Fuel a Drive to Ease Gun Laws

By KATE ZERNIKE

Paul Bucher, the district attorney for the Wisconsin county where a man opened fire in a church service last month, killing seven people and himself, has one answer to the deadly mass shootings around the country in recent weeks: more guns.

“The problems aren’t the guns, it’s the guns in the wrong hands,” said Mr. Bucher, a Republican who recently announced his candidacy for Wisconsin attorney general. “We need to put more guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens. Whether having that would have changed what happened is all speculation, but it would level the playing field. If the person you’re fighting has a gun and all you have is your fists, you lose.”

You’ve got to admit, this is a sea-change for public officials to advocate arming the citizenry. Normally they try to avoid the topic completely if they aren’t rabid “ban-em all” anti-gunners.

Across the country, efforts to expand or establish laws allowing concealed handguns have been fueled by the horrifying shootings in the last month – of the family of a federal judge in Chicago, at the church service in Wisconsin, at courthouses in Atlanta and Tyler, Tex., and the nation’s second-deadliest school shooting, on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota.

In Texas and Illinois, the shootings prompted new legislation to allow judges and prosecutors to be armed. Legislators in Nebraska and Wisconsin, which were already considering allowing concealed weapons, say they think the shootings will help their cause.

Is it just common sense finally being beaten into the public psyche? I’d like to think so.

Even supporters of gun control acknowledge that the atmosphere is sharply different than it was in 1999 when the nation’s deadliest school shooting took place at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colo. Those shootings inspired gun-control proposals in Congress and in state legislatures, and forced gun advocates to retreat from legislation they hoped to pass, including a Colorado bill to allow concealed handguns.

Then, the National Rifle Association scaled back its national meeting, held in Denver soon after the Columbine shootings, to one day from three, and with 7,000 protesters shouting outside, used the occasion to declare its support for trigger locks and “absolutely gun-free” schools. By contrast, after the recent shootings in Red Lake, N.R.A. officials proposed arming teachers.

To the outrage of a few. But only a few. Maybe they are starting to grasp how asinine the concept of “gun-free schools,” or for that matter “gun-free” anywhere is.

Supporters of gun control express hope for some of their legislation, particularly in Illinois, where Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich and Mayor Richard M. Daley of Chicago, both Democrats, are pushing for background checks on all weapons sales at gun shows and a ban on assault weapons.

But they say their best chance now is to try to hold the line against more laws allowing concealed handguns. “We were very much more on the offensive after Columbine,” said Josh Horwitz, executive director of the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. “It’s just the way politics have worked. I hate to be in this position, but we are.”

My suggestion? Get used to it.

Instead of calling for new restrictions on guns after the Minnesota shootings, the coalition, which includes 45 groups, simply asked for “a dialogue on the role of firearms in America.”

We’ve “dialogued” ourselves out. You have your side, we have ours, and there is no middle ground. “Compromise” used to mean “giving up only half of what YOU demanded.” No more.

Opponents of gun control have had victories in Congress, which let the ban on assault weapons expire last fall, and in states, where the push to allow concealed handguns has been gathering momentum for two years. Since 2003, five states, most recently Ohio, have approved laws allowing people to carry concealed weapons.

Thirty-five states now require the authorities to issue permits for concealed handguns to most applicants as long as they do not have criminal records, and two, Alaska and Vermont, allow concealed weapons without a permit. Eleven others allow the local authorities discretion in issuing so-called concealed carry permits. Most states include some restrictions on where guns can be carried.

In Illinois, the bill allowing judges to be armed was filed after Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow’s mother and husband were killed. In Texas, a bill proposed after the shooting outside the Tyler courthouse in late February would allow district attorneys to carry weapons in court.

Yes, we know how rabid and unpredictable district attorneys are. There’ll be blood in the courts! Oh, wait, there’s already been “blood in the courts.”

Never mind.

“The advocacy groups want to take guns away from everyone, and in a perfect world, I’d agree with that,” said State Senator Larry Bomke of Illinois, a Republican who is sponsoring the bill there. “Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world. The gangbangers and the criminal element are still going to get guns.”

Now, do you think you could explain that to the government of England?

Legislation in other states that already permit concealed guns would loosen restrictions on where guns can be carried. Bills in Arizona and Tennessee would allow guns in bars; one in Georgia would allow them in restaurants, after people complained it was dangerous to leave guns in their cars while they dined. Proposals in Texas and New Mexico would lower the age requirement for carrying concealed handguns.

The proposals tend to be initiated by Republicans, but not always; in Illinois, a bill allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons was sponsored by Democrats, and many Democrats joined the majority last month when the Tennessee Senate approved the bill on guns in bars, 29 to 3.

I’d like to believe that this is because these Democrats really understand the topic, but I think it’s more likely that they understand that gun control is a third-rail issue for them, and if they want to get re-elected (the first rule for any politician) they’d better be seen as “pro-choice” when it comes to the right to arms.

The police and prosecutors have tended to oppose allowing concealed handguns.

Not exactly true. The rank and file tend to support it. The elected and appointed (read: “politically connected”) police chiefs and upper administration tend to oppose it.

But Mr. Bucher, the district attorney in Wisconsin, said that was starting to change. As recently as two years ago, he was speaking out against the concealed-handguns law in Wisconsin; in 2000, he testified against it, arguing that the risks to the police during traffic stops would outweigh any potential benefits.

Now, he said, he believes that the legislation can address his concerns, and that the potential benefits are real.

Gun advocates see affirmation in some of the recent cases, in particular, the shooting in Tyler.

On Feb. 24, a man entering the courthouse to dispute a custody decision opened fire with an AK-47, killing his wife and wounding his son. A bystander carrying a concealed weapon began to shoot at him. The bystander was killed, but gun advocates say he distracted the killer and prevented more deaths.

This is the one paragraph in the piece that simply stuns me. This is in the NYT? Amazing.

State Senator Kevin Eltife of Tyler said he received a phone call from a prosecutor that night, asking him to propose the legislation allowing district attorneys to carry weapons in court. “With the things that have gone on lately, it doesn’t make sense that he can carry a weapon in his car but he can’t carry it in his place of work,” Mr. Eltife said.

Welcome to the world of the average prole, Mr. Eltife.

Prosecutors and judges in particular say they can end up as the targets of enormous venom – by criminals or those on the losing end of wrenching civil matters like child custody.

“The state doesn’t have money to provide security,” said Judge Daniel L. Schmidt of the Illinois Appellate Court in the Third District. “Do I want to carry it every day? Probably not. But it would be nice to know I could carry one if something came up.”

And the state isn’t responsible for your protection, anyway, even if you’re a judge or a prosecutor. You’re just far more likely to get it than John and Jane Public. Or Julie and Aeneas Hernlen.

Gun-control advocates take their own lessons from the recent shootings, noting that in Atlanta and Red Lake, the killers seized weapons from law enforcement officers.

Not that they would suggest disarming law enforcement officials, but advocates say the incidents show what can go wrong when more guns are added to the mix.

Though they conveniently ignore the fact that about three million new firearms are “added to the mix” each and every year, and more and more states have passed “shall-issue” concealed-carry laws, yet our violent crime rates have been falling since 1990.

Nope. Don’t confuse ’em with the facts. They know what they know: More guns = more death.

Except when it doesn’t.

“Police officers have the best training; people who get concealed-carry permits don’t have that training,” said Brian Malte, outreach director for the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, who was the Colorado field director for the campaign when the Columbine shootings happened. “The worst thing that can happen in a church or school is where untrained people can shoot at each other.”

No, the “worst thing that can happen in a church or school” is what has been happening: an armed assailant attacks DEFENSELESS PEOPLE.

You idiot.

Mr. Malte said that once people realize what ratification of concealed weapons laws could mean, they would be less supportive of them. “It’s not only public spaces, it’s crowded sports stadiums, and day care centers and supermarkets.”

Except we have 37 states with CCW and not one dire prediction of the Brady Campaign has proven true. Insanity has been defined as “repeating the same action while expecting a different result.” I think that describes the opponents of concealed-carry quite well. We keep repeating passage of CCW, and they keep expecting CCW permit holders to run amok.

Gun-control groups may well gain victories. In Arizona, generally considered a pro-gun state, chances are good for a bill requiring background checks on all weapons sales at gun shows. And Mr. Malte said the Brady campaign hoped to pass the ban on assault weapons in Illinois and make that the start of a slow trend back toward gun control.

In Arizona, I don’t think so. In the People’s Republic of Illinois, I don’t know.

After all, he said, it took five years to pass California’s strict laws against assault weapons, and in favor of safety locks. That bill was signed three months after Columbine.

And it’s been so effective, hasn’t it?

So, a quick review: Gun control laws prove, at best, to be useless. However, laws passed that allow people to carry to defend themselves prove, at worst, to be benign.

And it appears that politicians and the majority of the public are finally starting to grasp this.

And so (maybe) is the New York Times.

Isn’t this one of the signs of the Apocalypse?

Pat Me on the Back, I’m Right Again!

March 16, 2005 KevinLeave a comment

(Y’know, that Ravenwood fella’s pretty awesome! Another hat tip for the link.)

Remember that thesis-length piece I wrote, Why Ballistic Fingerprinting Doesn’t (And Won’t) Work? I concluded that piece as follows:

“It has simply failed in the Mission and Vision concepts originally established for the Program.”

So in addition to being useless, it has the extra added bonus of being expensive. The MD-IBIS report also notes that New York’s system has been equally successful (i.e., a complete failure) but it’s cost New York taxpayers over eight million dollars so far. According to this link, the price is nearly $16 million. It would appear that throwing more money at the problem doesn’t help.

So the reaction I expect? The philosophy cannot be wrong. Try it again, ONLY HARDER!!

Well, read this:

Gun program could be shot down
Maryland lawmakers consider ending signature ballistic fingerprinting system

By Sarah Abruzzese
Capital News Service
ANNAPOLIS — Maryland’s marquee ballistic fingerprinting program, which has cost the state $2.5 million to date, is imperiled by an unsupportive administration that has called for its end and zeroed out its budget.

A few years ago, the program that requires every new weapon sold in Maryland be ballistics tested and filed was heralded as state-of-the-art gun control. President Clinton watched then Gov. Parris N. Glendening sign the landmark Responsible Gun Act of 2000 into law.

Today, opponents say the system doesn’t work due to faulty information, biased technicians and incompatibility with the federal ballistics system. It, they say, should be abolished.

No, opponents say the system doesn’t work because the idea behind it is technically infeasable. It has nothing to do with “faulty information, biased technicians, nor incompatibility with the federal ballistics system.” THE CONCEPT IS FLAWED AND CANNOT BE IMPLEMENTED FOR WHOLLY TECHNICAL REASONS, NOT IDEOLOGICAL ONES.

*Ahem* Sorry about the shouting.

Proponents say ballistic fingerprinting offers law enforcement a valuable tool for investigating crime.

Of course they do. Facts matter not a whit to them. The philosophy cannot be wrong!

Del. Neil F. Quinter, D-Howard, said the program needs to be given more time to fully develop.

But of course! We must hurl more good money after bad! The philosophy CANNOT BE WRONG!

It is still too early to see if the system that began operating in 2000 is effective, Quinter said, because there is a lag between a gun’s purchase and when it is used in a crime — 3 to 6.1 years.

Except they’ve tested the system against guns KNOWN TO BE IN THE DATABASE and IT FAILED TO IDENTIFY THEM. (But facts, once again, DON’T MATTER to these people. The PHILOSOPHY CANNOT BE WRONG!)

The sponsors said the purpose of the bill to kill the program is housekeeping.

Read: “We don’t have the spine to stand up and tell these morons THE PHILOSOPHY IS WRONG!”

With no money in the budget to support the program, said Del. Joan D. Cadden, D-Anne Arundel, “The program is already dead. … We need to pass the legislation so state police won’t be breaking the law.”

The ballistic fingerprinting system cost $1.4 million to set up and state police estimated it will cost $435,269 in fiscal year 2005.

Concerns

As a legislator, Maryland State Police Superintendent Col. Thomas E. Hutchins voted against Glendening’s gun bill, even though he said he supported the ballistics testing component. Now he said the program should be cut.

The state’s attorney for Prince George’s County has a pending murder case where ballistics fingerprinting helped but he couldn’t reveal details of the ongoing case.

Is that the one where the system “worked exactly backwards”? Where it was used not to identify a gun in the database (but not in police hands) as a crime gun, but matched a known or suspected crime gun that the police already had to a crime?

I wonder if that’s why he can’t “reveal the details.”

“It has the potential to be equivalent to fingerprints and the DNA database,” Glenn F. Ivey said. “You have to make sure you can reach a critical mass of data.”

Mr. Ivey, you are a lying sonofabitch. It CANNOT be “equivalent to fingerprints and the DNA database, as I showed in excruciating detail. And that “critical mass of data”? That’s newspeak for “every single firearm in existence.”

Not gonna happen.

And there is a significant amount of data that could be put into the system, said a Baltimore City Police Department spokesman.

“Just to go by the number of shootings we have in the city,” Officer Troy Harris said, “it would be thousands.”

The state’s ballistic database system has 43,729 casings and has had only 208 queries to date. Just six successful identifications have been made — a reason opponents cite for dropping the program.

The state’s DNA database, which has assisted in 224 investigations, took as long to bear fruit. Just two years ago it assisted in only 39 cases.

That DNA program, which began in 1994 and got its first hit in 1998, does work, the assistant director for the Maryland State Police Forensic Sciences Division said. The lag in effectiveness was blamed on federal changes that entailed a complete overhaul of the state’s system.

Reliability is also a problem, said Teresa M. Long.

The state has found 222 test firings conducted by gun makers that were inaccurate, she said.

“If you were to investigate other instances you may find them suspect,” Long said.

Technicians interpreting the data also have biases, she said.

That shouldn’t be the case, said the vice president for Strategic Planning & Marketing for Forensic Technology, which sold the ballistic fingerprinting system to Maryland.

“The system needs to be nurtured,” said Pete Gagliardi. “The system needs to be fed. It depends on people. Technology is just a tool. It is only useful if someone uses it.”

Bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit. It’s not a “fingerprint,” it’s not “gun DNA,” and calling it so won’t make it so. But keep telling those lies! Someone will believe you, and they’ll drag out a big checkbook!

Forensic Technology has supplied 234 systems in the United States, many of them part of National Integrated Ballistics Information Network and New York’s system, which also has a ballistic fingerprinting program similar to Maryland’s.

Yes, and as they fail to mention, New York’s has cost far more, and been equally useless. Wonder why they left that out?

When he learned Friday of the state’s problem with biased information, Gagliardi offered to retrain the users — for free.

So now they want to base the problems on “technician bias”? I thought the system was supposed to be automated? How “biased” can an operator be when his job is to take pictures of fired cases, and then look at the “hits” the system generates? I smell more evasive bullshit.

Opposition

Gun advocates see the situation as a vindication of their opposition to the program.

“Gun advocates.” Not gun RIGHTS advocates, but just “gun advocates.” Nope, no bias there!

“When ballistic fingerprinting was implemented,” the National Rifle Association of America’s State Liaison Jennifer H. Palmer said, “the NRA said it was a waste of time, money and resources. … It doesn’t work, it’s ineffective.”

A gun store owner from Baltimore said ballistic fingerprints can easily be changed and that the system only comes up with matches that eliminate guns, not positively identify them.

“This is not DNA,” said Sanford Abrams. “This is not fingerprinting.”

Gun owners on the Lower Shore also continue to be leery of the measure.

“If we were seeing some good results, I wouldn’t have that much of problem with it,” said Franklin Emerson of Pocomoke City. “But right now, it just seems to be a drag on our money and manpower.”

Proponents of ballistic testing say Maryland’s problem with the system is poor implementation of procedures.

Of course they do! No mention of California’s two Ballistic Imaging reports, no discussion of New York’s abject failure. The philosophy cannot be wrong!, It must be improper implementation!

Classic cognitive dissonance.

The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence wants Maryland to work to connect its system with the federal one so testing could be done statewide. Maryland’s system differs from the federal one, which collects ballistic information from crimes.

There are simple remedies to the problems the state police are reporting, the coalition’s executive director said.

“For every problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious, and wrong.” – Attributed to a lot of different people, but no less true for that.

“These are minor issues you can easily overcome with a well-thought-out work plan,” said Joshua Horowitz.

But I thought the Ballistic Fingerprinting System was a “well-thought-out-plan,” and it failed. So try again, only harder?

Doug Kramer of Salisbury agreed, saying the system needs to be refined more before it is complete shelved.

Yup, “Try again, only HARDER!“

“I just feel like it got thrown out there too quickly,” he said.

“The philosophy CANNOT BE WRONG!

The Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee, which heard testimony on one bill to eliminate the program on March 1, has not set a date for a vote.

No vote has been set for the bill in the House Judiciary Committee, which heard testimony Wednesday. Committee members appear divided on whether to scrap the system.

“It’s confusing,” said Del. Luiz Simmons, D-Montgomery. “Opponents and proponents have their own set of facts.”

“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.” – Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan

“I think that repealing the bill, if it does not deserve to be repealed,” Simmons said, “merely ratifies bad policy and bad administration.”

Try again, ONLY HARDER!!!

It never stops.

I hope like hell Delegate Cadden is correct and the program is well and truly dead, but I smell a zombie rising here.

More Exercise of “Common Sense Gun Control” in Australia

March 10, 2005 KevinLeave a comment

(Or: “First Register, Then Confiscate.”)

Ravenwood has been on top of this from the beginning. February 4 of last year he found a story about how one jurisdiction in Australia had decided to perform “surprise weapon safety audits” of registered gun owners. Two days later the government had apparently backed off of the “surprise” part, or so they said.

Then just a year later, No Quarters found a story of how the police of New South Wales Australia had confiscated some 43,000 weapons after “safety inspections”, most of which were firearms and they all

were destroyed because police were not satisfied that the firearms were being kept securely, or that “possession of that firearm was necessarily further warranted”.

And today Ravenwood found that they’re still at it, buoyed, no doubt by their “success” in New South Wales.

Gun check proposal cops a blast

A POLICE plan for door-to-door checks of every gun owner in the state has drawn flak from firearms groups.

But that would never occur here we’re told!

Not if we never register so they know which doors to knock on.

The plan is being considered by the Chief Commissioner’s office but gun groups believe police numbers are insufficient to cover the estimated 200,000 registered owners in Victoria.

Police said yesterday the focus would be on firearms storage.

You remember that wonderful “common sense” law, “safe storage,” don’t you? Otherwise known as the ever-shifting, every more restricitive set of bureacratic rules that allows the police to confiscate your property because “police were not satisfied that the firearms were being kept securely”?

“This is a national approach. New South Wales is already in the process of doing an audit and we’re proposing to do it as well,” spokesman Kevin Loomes said, adding that the details were yet to be finalised.

Of course you are! New South Wales netted over 40,000 weapons! Can’t let them get ahead now, can we?

The proposal has been dismissed by some gun groups who say police don’t have the numbers to check on every owner.

Dismiss all you want, but watch ’em try! Your heads have been buried in the sand for far too long.

The Combined Firearms Council of Victoria said the survey would tie up police resources.

So? What better expenditure of resources is there than to use police manpower to take firearms away from registered law-abiding gun owners? It’s common SENSE!

“The cost of the program will come out of the police budget and therefore general policing resources,” the council said.

“The rationale for the audit is unclear given that the firearms registration database has been going though a clean-up over the past few years with the full co-operation of licensed shooters.

The rationale is the same one expounded by the gun confiscation proponents here: TO REDUCE THE NUMBER OF GUNS IN CIRCULATION. There need be no other rationale. That’s the whole purpose behind “gun control” laws, though you will not get a member of the Brady Campaign to admit this publicly.

“There are about 200,000 licensed shooters in Victoria. If this results in the police spending, say, two hours on each audit, that is 400,000 police hours on clerical duties that are no longer spent on general community policing.

Yes, but after the first pass that 200,000 number will be significantly reduced, don’t you see?

“That’s more than 50,000 police days.”

So what if the police are distracted from the job of preventing crime and apprehending criminals. DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND HOW IMPORTANT IT IS TO DISARM THE LAW-ABIDING??

Under the Firearms Act it is an offence not to properly store weapons.

“Common sense!”

Owners who breach the Act risk not only losing their firearms licence, but also having their weapons seized.

As gun owners in New South Wales found out to their dismay. With essentially zero recourse, too, I’m sure.

Cases of inappropriate storage to have come before the Firearms Appeals Committee include owners who left their guns on the back seats of cars.

Two involved security guards. One left his handgun on a toilet, and the other left his weapon on a car roof.

We’ve had FBI agents leave fully-auto weapons in vehicles, and Secret Service agents leave handguns in public bathrooms. The Federal Government has lost 824 firearms (that they admit to). Are we going to disarm those agencies? Do they get all their guns taken away? Or what about Australian Robert George Wilton, who had $3,000 worth of rifles confiscated and destroyed, was fined $300 and charged $190 in court costs BECAUSE HE LEFT THE KEY TO HIS SAFE ON A KEY RACK?? That’s the kind of “safe storage” violation they’re looking for. Anything at all, and your collection is GONE.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I WILL NOT license. I WILL NOT register. Ever.

Edited to add:

Canada has discovered that the $1 billion-plus they’ve spent on their long-gun licensing and registration system has been useless at its purported aim – taking guns away from criminals. A known violent felon, who was also known to be armed – known by the police to be armed – has shot and killed four Mounties there. Sarah at Carnaby Fudge has the whole story.

Now, normally the way this works is registration & licensing is sold as a crime prevention measure. Then after everyone is licensed and registered, something horrible happens, and this is used as an excuse to take some guns away from the people who didn’t do it, because it makes everyone else feel better. Lather, rinse, and repeat until pretty much no one owns anything – legally.

Hopefully the Canadians have more sense than that, but somehow I doubt it.

A Graphic Indictment.

March 4, 2005 KevinLeave a comment

The Geek with a .45 followed up a bit on my post More on Prof. Saul Cornell. In particular, he did some research into The Joyce Foundation and how it funds the propaganda war on guns. Interesting read. But he recently added this simple but powerful graphic to illustrate the problem:

As commenter “eddie g” stated,

People don’t trust the NRA or so we are told (Hell we don’t trust the NRA.) Imagine if they started to move money to proxy groups that hid their allegiance, as in the John Glenn Institute. They do it and get an op-ed mention in an on-line paper, the NRA does it…..front page news on every liberal rag in America!

The Geek responded:

Unfortunately, the NRA is a monolith, and a single source to boot.

In memetic warfare, a distributed proxy attack from all angles is much more effective than a single large thrust from a monolithic source that can be dismissed.

The NRA can do PR to counter each and every message, but if you’ve managed to convince Joe & Jane Normal that the NRA is full of it, NO message gets through.

Which is a good reason to also support groups like Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, The Second Amendment Foundation, Gun Owners of America, The Pink Pistols, etc.

But the Geek is certainly correct in his original assertion that “It’s a lot harder to dismiss The Univ of X, Univ of Y, Univ of Z, and so on.”

Which brings up MY follow-up on this topic, or actually Antonio Ciaccia’s. Seems he got a response from Prof. Cornell, which was posted at the OSU group blog The Open End. Mr. Ciaccia quite handily dismembered Prof. Cornell’s reply.

Note that one of Prof. Cornell’s arguments is this:

You do not seem to be aware that the NRA created a professorship in 2nd Amendment law at GM Law school that has a clear litmus test for the holder of the chair. The holder must support the individual rights view! Are you going to attack them for doing what you claim we have done?

Antonio’s response to that:

As for your problem with the NRA setting up a professorship, I go to Ohio State, and this is an Ohio State newspaper. We deal with matters on this campus. And what we know on this campus is that you were named dircetor(sic) of a policy institute funded by the Joyce Foundation with suspect agendas to boot. Passing blame to another is no way to cover yourself (see: fallacy of tu quoque).

He shoots, he SCORES! (Read the whole thing.) But it does illustrate “eddie g’s” point.