Tag: what agenda?

Lying. It’s All That They’ve Got.

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So, the legislature of Missouri has overridden Gov. Nixon’s veto and Missouri is now a Constitutional Carry state – the eleventh.  So far.

The Editorial Board of the New York Times is hyperventilating.  Their op-ed today is entitled, “Missouri:  The Shoot Me State.”  I kid you not.  Shades of Florida being tagged “The Gunshine State” when they passed shall-issue concealed carry in 1987.  What happened there?  Well between passage of that law and 2014 the homicide rate declined from 11.4/100k to 5.8, violent crime declined from about 7,500/100k to less than 3,500, rape declined from 50.2/100k to 30.4, and aggravated assault declined from 606.3 to 366.4.

“Gunshine State”?  Missouri ought to embrace their new moniker.

As is typical for the Media when it comes to gun control, all they’ve got is lies and hyperbole, and this piece starts off with a bang (no pun intended):

The law will let citizens carry concealed weapons in public without a state gun permit, criminal background check or firearms training. It strips local law enforcement of its current authority to deny firearms to those guilty of domestic violence and to other high-risk individuals.

An earlier version of the piece used the phrase “necessary authority,” but that was changed with no notification of the edit.

The measure has drawn no great national attention,

Perhaps because ten other states have such laws on the books with no negative outcomes?

but it certainly provides further evidence that gun safety cannot be left to state lawmakers beholden to the gun lobby.

Otherwise known as “their constituents.”

Democrats opposed to the Missouri bill called it a “perfect storm” of lowered standards for the use of deadly force and an invitation for people to be armed without responsible controls. The measure was enacted by the Republicans, despite strong public opposition and warnings about the threat to public safety from the state Police Chiefs Association. Everytown for Gun Safety, one of the groups fighting the gun lobby, noted that stand your ground laws result in disproportionate harm to communities of color.

By that measure, “gun control” results in “disproportionate harm to communities of color,” since places like Chicago with strict gun control laws have astronomically high levels of death and injury by gunshot. Ask the writer of this recent Pro Publica piece, How the Gun Control Debate Ignores Black Lives.  But continuing:

Mr. Nixon, a Democrat, vetoed the measure in June, saying it would allow individuals with a criminal record to legally carry a concealed firearm even though they had been, or would have been, denied a permit under the old law’s background check.

Which means he lied, since anyone with a felony record, or a conviction that could have resulted in a sentence exceeding one year (regardless of what sentence was actually handed down), or anyone under a domestic violence restraining order or found guilty of a domestic violence charge is – by Federal law – prohibited from possessing a firearm. Period. Doesn’t matter how they carry it. So if their criminal record would have prevented them having a permit, it should prevent them from having a FIREARM.

But the New York Times’ Editorial Board doesn’t tell you that.

Mayors Sly James of Kansas City and Francis Slay of St. Louis warned against restricting the power of the local police to deny guns to those who commit domestic violence.

And they lied too. It’s FEDERAL law, and local police are quite empowered to enforce it.

But the New York Times’ Editorial Board doesn’t tell you that, either.

Senator Maria Chappelle-Nadal, a lawmaker from Ferguson, which erupted in protests after the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American teenager, warned that enacting the stand-your-ground standard would mean another “bad Samaritan like Zimmerman.” She was referring to the shooting death in Florida four years ago of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager, by George Zimmerman; in that case the judge’s instructions to the jury contained some of the language of the stand your ground law.

Oooh! A twofer! Michael Brown might have been “unarmed,” but he was physically charging the officer he’d just tried to disarm. The “Hands Up! Don’t Shoot” meme has been thoroughly discredited.

Except in the eyes of the New York Times’ Editorial Board.

An earlier version of the piece claimed Zimmerman’s defense rested on Stand Your Ground, but at least they noted that revision of the article to retract that. Doesn’t matter anyway, since if you’re on your back getting your head bashed into the sidewalk by your assailant, you – by definition – cannot retreat. Again, Martin might not have been armed. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t lethally dangerous.

Except in the eyes of the New York Times’ Editorial Board.

Missouri is joining 10 other states that loosened gun laws to allow concealed firearms in public without the need for a permit. Federal gun controls still require background checks on buyers, but only at federally licensed dealers. Unfortunately, there is a separate and busy uncontrolled market where buyers at gun shows and on the internet do not have to undergo background checks.

Ah yes, the infamous “gun show loophole.” AKA private sales. Just one more push for backdoor registration. Except, of course, by people with criminal records who won’t bother to fill out a Form 4473 no matter what the law says.

In the presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton has called for extensive gun safety measures, including a ban on the assault weapons favored by mass shooters, closing background-check loopholes, ending the gun industry’s outrageous protection from civil damage suits and denying guns to risky suspects on the government’s no-fly lists.

And once again the Orwellian Word Police have substituted “gun safety” for “gun control.” Is gun. Is not safe.  That’s kinda the point.  And the “gun industries outrageous protection from civil damage suits”?  You mean the kind of suits that resulted in dismissals like Cincinnati’s lawsuit against Beretta where the decision reads in part:

A manufacturer has no duty to warn of an obvious danger. Knives are sharp, bowling balls are heavy, bullets cause puncture wounds in flesh. The law has long recognized that obvious dangers are an excluded class.

Those lawsuits weren’t seeking civil damages for defective firearms (suits which can still be brought and have been won.) The suits that manufacturers are protected against are the ones brought as “lawfare,” intending to bankrupt gun manufacturers competing against government entities with essentially bottomless pockets. Lawsuits that threaten to have far broader implications, as was noted in the dismissal of New York v. Sturm Ruger et. al:

Although this public nuisance lawsuit is brought by the Attorney General on behalf of the State of New York-while the Hamilton action was one initiated by private parties for negligent marketing-both were brought against handgun manufacturers and sellers.   Plaintiff’s attempt here to widen the range of common-law public nuisance claims in order to reach the legal handgun industry will not itself, if successful, engender a limitless number of public nuisance lawsuits by individuals against these particular defendants, as was a stated concern in Hamilton, 96 N.Y.2d at 233, 727 N.Y.S.2d 7, 750 N.E.2d 1055.   However, giving a green light to a common-law public nuisance cause of action today will, in our judgment, likely open the courthouse doors to a flood of limitless, similar theories of public nuisance, not only against these defendants, but also against a wide and varied array of other commercial and manufacturing enterprises and activities.

All a creative mind would need to do is construct a scenario describing a known or perceived harm of a sort that can somehow be said to relate back to the way a company or an industry makes, markets and/or sells its non-defective, lawful product or service, and a public nuisance claim would be conceived and a lawsuit born.   A variety of such lawsuits would leave the starting gate to be welcomed into the legal arena to run their cumbersome course, their vast cost and tenuous reasoning notwithstanding.   Indeed, such lawsuits employed to address a host of societal problems would be invited into the courthouse whether the problems they target are real or perceived;  whether the problems are in some way caused by, or perhaps merely preceded by, the defendants’ completely lawful business practices;  regardless of the remoteness of their actual cause or of their foreseeability;  and regardless of the existence, remoteness, nature and extent of any intervening causes between defendants’ lawful commercial conduct and the alleged harm.

But the New York Times‘ Editoral Board doesn’t want you to know that, either.

Assault weapons? Someone once described the idea of banning “assault weapons” as a method of preventing mass shootings as the equivalent of banning palm trees to prevent people being crushed by falling elephants. The New York Times itself published a piece two years ago entitled The Assault Weapon Myth which noted:

This politically defined category of guns — a selection of rifles, shotguns and handguns with “military-style” features — only figured in about 2 percent of gun crimes nationwide before the ban.
—
Most Americans do not know that gun homicides have decreased by 49 percent since 1993 as violent crime also fell, though rates of gun homicide in the United States are still much higher than those in other developed nations. A Pew survey conducted after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., found that 56 percent of Americans believed wrongly that the rate of gun crime was higher than it was 20 years ago.
—
“We spent a whole bunch of time and a whole bunch of political capital yelling and screaming about assault weapons,” Mayor Mitchell J. Landrieu of New Orleans said. He called it a “zero sum political fight about a symbolic weapon.”
—
More than 20 years of research funded by the Justice Department has found that programs to target high-risk people or places, rather than targeting certain kinds of guns, can reduce gun violence.

I guess the Editorial Board of the New York Times doesn’t actually read their own paper.

This is my shocked face.

The current op-ed concludes:

Donald Trump, endorsed by the National Rifle Association, favors more armed civilians ready to engage in what he calls a defensive “shootout.” This is one of the most pathetic measures yet of his pandering, when he should be leading, on an issue of vital importance to the public.

Except the public seems to feel otherwise, at least according to polls by Gallup, CNN, Pew and Rasmussen.

But the New York Times’ Editorial Board knows better.

At least they want you to think they do.

Why the Sudden Push for Gun Control?

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Glenn Reynolds says:

Because when people are talking about gun control, they’re not talking about Obama’s many failures, ranging from the failures of vetting and counterterrorism that may have led to the San Bernardino attacks themselves, to Obama’s foreign policy debacles in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, to how the #BringBackOurGirls hashtag campaign against Boko Haram accomplished nothing, to how Putin is running wild in Eastern Europe, to Obama’s plans to import more poorly-vetted refugees from Muslim countries that foment terror or the still-anemic economy that has left far too many Americans unemployed or underemployed despite years of “recovery.”

Those are all things that the Obama Administration — and the Hillary Clinton campaign — don’t want to talk about.

I think he may have missed something.

Remember Solyndra? $535 million in loan guarantees up in smoke?

Heard about Solana? A solar power station built here in Gila Bend, AZ? The Dept. of Energy under Obama guaranteed $1.45 billion in loans for that project. And now the parent company, Spain’s Abengoa, is on the brink of bankruptcy.

But wait! It gets better!

In addition to the $1.45 billion for Solana, the Dept. of Energy also guaranteed another $1.2 billion loan for the construction of the Mojave solar power station in California – also an Abengoa project.

So $2.65 billion in loan guarantees – almost five times more than the Solyndra debacle – and another solar power pipe-dream flushes down the toilet. In an election year.

Let’s talk about gun control, instead.  Oh, and climate change.

The media – Democrat operatives with bylines.

UNEXPECTEDLY!

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So the EPA “accidentally” released 3 million gallons of toxic spill into the Animas river.  It was completely unintentional.  No one could have predicted it.

Except someone did.  Seven days before the spill.

Why did he predict this would happen?

The “grand experiment” in my opinion will fail.  And guess what (EPA representative) Mr. Hestmark will say then?

Gee, “Plan A” didn’t work so I guess we will have to build a treatment plant at a cost to taxpayers of $100 million to $500 million (who knows).

Reading between the lines, I believe that has been the EPA’s plan all along.  The proposed Red & Bonita plugging plan has been their way of getting a foot in the door to justify their hidden agenda for construction of a treatment plant.  After all, with a budget of $8.2 billion and 17,000 employees, the EPA needs new, big projects to feed the beast and justify their existence.

And it was in a dead-tree publication, no less!

ETA:

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Quote of the Day – Democratic Operatives with Bylines Edition

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Seen at Glenn’s, courtesy of Ed Driscoll:

Modern journalism is all about deciding which facts the public shouldn’t know because they might reflect badly on Democrats. – Jim Treacher

Yup.

The internet has gone a long way towards beating down the walls the gatekeepers seek to control, but it hasn’t succeeded yet in penetrating John and Jane Doe’s living rooms.  Far too many people still get all their “news” from ABCNNBCBS and the major newspapers.

The Siren Song of “Gun Control”

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They never, ever stop, the Other Side™.  They sometimes retreat, sometimes quiet down, but they don’t stop.  Recent polls indicate that support for “gun control” has reached a modern nadir, but that is no excuse to relax.  Our ideological opponents still hold the media high ground and get paid to produce their pixels by the terabyte.  They are not going to quit.  They just switch tack and try a different angle, lather, rinse, repeat.  They’ve run out of “new,” so they keep recycling old ones.  Since the Newtown massacre didn’t result in public support for outright banning, the tack they are on now is the old, familiar “public health” angle.  Of course!  They have Surgeon General Vivek Murthy now, who will push this agenda once again.

Warning:  This is a mini-überpost.  It’s been a while.  Get a snack and a beverage and settle in, or skip on to the next blog on your list.

Mother Jones magazine recently ran an article entitled What Does Gun Violence Really Cost?  I was tempted to fisk the entire piece, but decided against.  I’m just going to point out some interesting facts.

The piece starts off with the story of Jennifer Longdon and David Rueckert of Phoenix, Arizona.  On November 15, 2004 this couple was involved in what appears to have been a minor traffic accident followed by a road-rage shooting.  Or a premeditated homicide attempt.  Or a case of gang violence and mistaken identity.  Nobody was ever arrested, so we will never know, but Rueckert was shot in the head, surviving with significant brain trauma.  Longdon was shot in the back and left paraplegic.

Due to the physical injuries, she was also left financially destitute.

So how much does “gun violence” cost America?  Well, we don’t really know for sure, Mother Jones tells us, but it’s something they calculate in excess of $229 billion – $700 per year for every man, woman and child in the country.

Surely, the story implies but does not outright state, something must be done!  We’re told:

Nobody, save perhaps for the hardcore gun lobby, doubts that gun violence is a serious problem.

Just so you know who the opposition is – the “hardcore gun lobby” – and why they shouldn’t matter.  Not convincing enough?

(S)olving a crisis, as any expert will tell you, begins with data. That’s why the US government over the years has assessed the broad economic toll of a variety of major problems. Take motor vehicle crashes: Using statistical models to estimate a range of costs both tangible and more abstract—from property damage and traffic congestion to physical pain and lost quality of life—the Department of Transportation (DOT) published a 300-page study estimating the “total value of societal harm” from this problem in 2010 at $871 billion. Similar research has been produced by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the impact of air pollution, by the Department of Health and Human Services on the costs of domestic violence, and so on. But the government has mostly been mute on the economic toll of gun violence. HHS has assessed firearm-related hospitalizations, but its data is incomplete because some states don’t require hospitals to track gunshot injuries among the larger pool of patients treated for open wounds. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has also periodically made estimates using hospital data, but based on narrow sample sizes and covering only the medical and lost-work costs of gun victims.

Why the lack of solid data? A prime reason is that the National Rifle Association and other influential gun rights advocates have long pressured political leaders to shut down research related to firearms.

At this point I’m going to drag out a couple of excerpts from some research done at the behest of the Carter Administration.  It’s one of my favorites, and I’ve quoted from it in this blog before.  They’re from the gun control meta-study published in 1983 as Under the Gun:  Weapons, Crime and Violence in America.  The “senior authors” of the study were James D. Wright, Professor of Human Relations, Dept. of Sociology for Tulane University and Peter H. Rossi, Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and past president of the American Sociological Association.  These researchers weren’t exactly gun-rights supporters going in.  Here’s the first:

In 1978 the Social and Demographic Research Institute of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, received a grant from the National Institute of Justice to undertake a comprehensive review of the literature on weapons, crime, and violence in the United States. The purpose of the project is best described as a “sifting and winnowing” of the claims and counterclaims from both sides of the Great American Gun War – the perennial struggle in American political life over what to do, if anything, about guns, about violence, and about crime. The review and analysis of the available studies consumed the better part of three years; the results of this work are contained in this volume.

The intention of any review is to take stock of the available fund of knowledge in some topical area. Under the Gun is no different: our goal has been to glean from the volumes of previous studies those facts that, in our view, seem firmly and certainly established; those hypotheses that seem adequately supported by, or at least approximately consistent with, the best available research evidence; and those areas or topics about which, it seems, we need to know a lot more than we do. One of our major conclusions can be stated in advance: despite the large number of studies that have been done, many critically important questions have not been adequately researched, and some of them have not been examined at all.

Much of the available research in the area of weapons and crime has been done by advocates for one or another policy position. As a consequence, the manifest intent of many “studies” is to persuade rather than to inform.

(My emphasis.)

If the “research” has an agenda, then how valid (and therefore valuable) can it be?  But here’s the second excerpt:

The progressive’s indictment of American firearms policy is well known and is one that both the senior authors of this study once shared. This indictment includes the following particulars:

(1) Guns are involved in an astonishing number of crimes in this country.
(2) In other countries with stricter firearms laws and fewer guns in private hands, gun crime is rare.
(3) Most of the firearms involved in crime are cheap Saturday Night Specials, for which no legitimate use or need exists.
(4) Many families acquire such a gun because they feel the need to protect themselves; eventually they end up shooting one another.
(5) If there were fewer guns around, there would obviously be less crime.
(6) Most of the public also believes this and has favored stricter gun control laws for as long as anyone has asked the question.
(7) Only the gun lobby prevents us from embarking on the road to a safer and more civilized society.

Again, my emphasis.  Research is being defunded?  The gun lobby is preventing us from embarking on the road to a safer and more civilized society!  They deny gun violence is a serious problem!  They’re deniers!  Which seems to be the ultimate insult these days, consensus über alles, after all.

The story also includes a link to another piece detailing not only Jennifer Longdon’s story, but those of seven other people.  In the interests of accurate demographics: four more women and three men.  Three of the victims are black – one male, two female.

Here are the pertinent details:

Victim 1 – Antonius Wiriadjaja, Brooklyn, New York.  Bystander to a domestic violence shooting, caught a stray round.  “$169,000 for medical care, physical therapy and counseling.”

Victim 2 – Kamari Ridgle, Richmond, California (a suburb of San Francisco).  A 15 year-old shot in a drive-by after he “had just left a liquor store….”  What’s a 15 year-old doing in a liquor store?  Kid was hit 22 times – and survived.  “$1.5 million for medical care.”

Victim 3 – Philip Russo,  Alturas, California (rural NE corner of CA).  His wife was killed by a rampage shooter.  He lost his job because he worked security at the county jail where her killer was placed awaiting trial – for her safety.  “$83,000 in lost household income.”

Victim 4 – Pamela Bosley of Chicago, IL.  Lost a son to what appears to be gang-related violence.  No evidence her son was a gang member.  “$23,500 in medical care and counseling for family.”

Victim 5 – BJ Ayers, Cheyenne, Wyoming.  Lost two sons to suicide.  “$35,000 in state-funded emergency care” for one of them before he expired.

Victim 6 – Paris Brown, East Oakland, California.  Son killed in gang-related shooting.  “$10,000 in grief counseling.”

Victim 7 – The aforementioned Jennifer Longdon, Phoenix, AZ.  “$40,000 in wheelchair modifications to her home.”  That’s in addition to her medical costs and lost wages.

Victim 8 – Caheri Gutierrez, also of Oakland, CA.  Apparently caught a stray round in the face from a nearby gang shooting.  “$120,000 for hospitalization and reconstructive surgeries.”

New York, 1.  California, 4.  Illinois, 1.  Arizona, 1.  Wyoming, 1. Two suicides, one domestic violence, one rampage shooter, four gang-related, one unknown.

Does Mother Jones offer any suggestions?  Of course not.  Their story is that, because of the “gun lobby” we don’t have sufficient data to “solve (the) crisis.”  They do state, however:

Our investigation also begins to illuminate the economic toll for individual states. Louisiana has the highest gun homicide rate in the nation, with costs per capita of more than $1,300. Wyoming has a small population but the highest overall rate of gun deaths—including the nation’s highest suicide rate—with costs working out to about $1,400 per resident. Among the four most populous states, the costs per capita in the gun rights strongholds of Florida and Texas outpace those in more strictly regulated California and New York. Hawaii and Massachusetts, with their relatively low gun ownership rates and tight gun laws, have the lowest gun death rates, and costs per capita roughly a fifth as much as those of the states that pay the most.

For those of you slow on the uptake:  Strict gun control/low gun ownership = Good. Lax gun control/high gun ownership = Bad.

In other words, “There are too many guns.”

It’s their mantra, their single article of faith.

Yet here’s what the article doesn’t bother to mention:

Non-fatal “gun violence” peaked here in the U.S. in 1994, with a “per 100,000 population” rate of 7.4.  It has declined, almost non-stop, ever since.  In 2011 the rate was 1.8/100,000 – less than one-quarter the rate in 1994.  Homicide (all causes) peaked in 1992 at 9.3/100,000.  In 2011 it was 4.7 – the “lowest level since 1963.”

And this occurred without any significant gun control legislation during that period, and in the face of an additional 93,000,000 privately-owned firearms entering circulation during that period.  The “assault weapon ban” (that wasn’t)?  Even FactCheck.org admits:

That the law did not have much of an impact on overall gun crime came as little surprise, (Christopher S.) Koper said.  For one, assault weapons were used in only 2 percent of gun crimes before the ban. And second, existing weapons were grandfathered, meaning there were an estimated 1.5 million pre-ban assault weapons and 25 million to 50 million large-capacity magazines still in the U.S.

Since the “ban” ended in 2004 (and “modern sporting rifles” have become the largest single segment in long-gun sales), violent crime has continued to trend down.

More guns, less crime.

And I’ve already covered the lie that there are “more guns, fewer gun owners.”

But Mother Jones believes you don’t need to know that.  You just need to know that “gun violence” costs “$229 billion a year,” and the “gun lobby” not only doesn’t care, but denies funding for research so that we can solve the problem!

A problem that has been cut in half or more over the last twenty years as no significant “gun control” laws have been passed, and laws relaxing the standards for legal carriage have been spreading.

THAT’S not news.

Because that doesn’t affect the real problem:  Too.  Many.  Guns.

Not  Too.  Many.  Criminals.

If Mother Jones was actually interested in reducing “gun violence,” then they wouldn’t be concentrating on what it costs Joe and Jane Average, or even Joe and Jane Victim, they’d address the ten-ton elephant in the room:  young black male violence.

Look at their list of victims again.  Out of eight (we assume “typical”) survivors of “gun violence,” one is a young black male, one is the mother of a deceased young black male.

They’re overwhelmingly the victims of violent crime.  In 2013, according to the CDC, black males 34 and younger made up 30% of all homicide victims, 10% of all non-lethal assault victims.

Yet young black men are only 3.5 percent of the national population.

Let’s put that in perspective:  If the homicide rate for black men 34 and younger, currently (2013) estimated at 43.9 per 100,000 population, were reduced to the current national rate of 5.1/100,000, 4,245 lives would be saved.

And the national homicide rate would be reduced to 3.76/100,000.

But apparently pointing that fact out is RACIST!™ so no one in the media does.

When you have a disease that kills a specific, easily identifiable population at rates over eight times the rest of the population, epidemiologists (otherwise known as “public health experts”) call that a clue.

Instead, it seems, the Powers That Be™ are making the situation worse:

The nation’s two-decades-long crime decline may be over. Gun violence in particular is spiraling upward in cities across America. In Baltimore, the most pressing question every morning is how many people were shot the previous night. Gun violence is up more than 60% compared with this time last year, according to Baltimore police, with 32 shootings over Memorial Day weekend. May has been the most violent month the city has seen in 15 years.

In Milwaukee, homicides were up 180% by May 17 over the same period the previous year. Through April, shootings in St. Louis were up 39%, robberies 43%, and homicides 25%. “Crime is the worst I’ve ever seen it,” said St. Louis Alderman Joe Vacarro at a May 7 City Hall hearing.

Murders in Atlanta were up 32% as of mid-May. Shootings in Chicago had increased 24% and homicides 17%. Shootings and other violent felonies in Los Angeles had spiked by 25%; in New York, murder was up nearly 13%, and gun violence 7%.

Those citywide statistics from law-enforcement officials mask even more startling neighborhood-level increases. Shooting incidents are up 500% in an East Harlem precinct compared with last year; in a South Central Los Angeles police division, shooting victims are up 100%.

Why is violence climbing in these cities?

The most plausible explanation of the current surge in lawlessness is the intense agitation against American police departments over the past nine months.

Since last summer, the airwaves have been dominated by suggestions that the police are the biggest threat facing young black males today. A handful of highly publicized deaths of unarmed black men, often following a resisted arrest—including Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y., in July 2014, Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in August 2014 and Freddie Gray in Baltimore last month—have led to riots, violent protests and attacks on the police.

And who is it that’s dying?

Young. Black. Men.

And what’s the reaction?

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“Gun control” is not a “public health issue.” Even if it were, public health advocates are not handling it as though it is. The “public health” angle on “gun control” is being handled the same way AIDS was in the 1980’s – by attacking the wrong things and willfully, actively denying that the problem is behavioral and highly concentrated in a small, easily identifiable demographic – because to do so would be Politically Incorrect.

Instead we get smoke screens about “costs” designed to make us wring our hands and look to the guys in white lab coats for solutions.

UPDATE:  I’m no fan of John Lott, but the numbers are the numbers.  It appears that Heather Mac Donald’s piece, linked above, is in error. That does not, however, affect the rest of the post.

BULLSH!T!

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Simply put, gun control cannot survive without an accompanying sea of disinformation. – Anonymous (But accurate.)

And The Other Side™ follows the mantra of “repeat the lie and it will eventually be believed.”

SayUncle points to another example of this, from today’s Washington Post, America has more guns in fewer hands than ever before​. Opening paragraphs:

You’ve probably heard by now that the Obama administration has been a boon to the U.S. firearm industry. Gun manufacturers boosted production by 31 percent between 2011 and 2012. National tragedies from Newtown to Ferguson are accompanied by stories of surging gun sales.

But data released this week from the General Social Survey, widely regarded as the gold standard for social science survey research, shows that in 2014, the number of American households owning guns remained at 40-year lows.

Except I’ve been there, fisked that before. May, 2013: DECLINING GUN OWNERSHIP!!

Yes, the General Social Survey says a smaller percentage of households contain guns than at some time in the past. However, Gallup says gun ownership is up.  Either way, the total number of households has increased over time, resulting in the TOTAL NUMBER OF HOUSEHOLDS CONTAINING GUNS INCREASING, so there are MORE guns in MORE hands than ever before – the exact opposite of the WaPo headline.

But that doesn’t fit the Narrative of gun owners as The Other, a declining demographic of middle-aged overweight white men with “low sloping foreheads” that will eventually die off and can therefore be dismissed.

The Left and the media (but I repeat myself) depends on the general population’s stupidity.