Scientific American on the "science of guns"

Scientific American recently published an article on guns.  Naturally, it spins an anti-gun line.  The best reading is in the many comments that lambaste the article.  Readers were not impressed.

Years ago I subscribed to SA before becoming disillusioned with its leftist political orientation which crops up in many areas including "climate change" where articles have featured Michael Mann attempting to defend himself in the "hockey stick" wars.  It took years before cancelling my subscription because back then I leaned left/liberal (I was going say "brain-dead left/liberal" but that would have been redundant.)  Now, thankfully, following a successful 12-step program, I'm a happy recovering liberal.

AMERICA'S MOST FEARED ECONOMIST

Ann Coulter:

... conservatives liberals fear most ... start being automatically referred to as "discredited."  

... no one is called "discredited" by liberals more often than the inestimable economist John Lott, author of the groundbreaking book 'More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws.' 

... Lott's economic analysis of the effect of concealed-carry laws on violent crime is the most thoroughly vetted study in the history of economics... 

... "Discredited" in liberal lingo means, "Ignore this study; it didn't come out well for us."

Cyprus - a lesson in the real reason for gun control

The people of Cyprus rolled over when Euro "banksters" raided their savings.  Would Americans?  Would Canadians?  Ezra wonders:

Columbine survivor to Obama: "Whose side are you on?"

Open letter to Barack Obama:

Mr. President,

As a student who was shot and wounded during the Columbine massacre, I have a few thoughts on the current gun debate. In regards to your gun control initiatives:
 

... a universal background check will have many devastating effects. It will arguably have the opposite impact of what you propose.

... The evidence is very clear pertaining to the inadequacies of the assault weapons ban. It had little to no effect when it was in place from 1994 until 2004.
 

... There are no substantial facts that prove that limited magazines would make any difference at all. ... Why would you prefer criminals to have the ability to out-gun law-abiding citizens? Under this policy, criminals will still have their 30-round magazines, but the average American will not. Whose side are you on?
...

...

Mr. President, do the right thing, restore freedom, and save lives. Show the American people that you stand with them and not with thugs and criminals.

Respectfully,

Severely Concerned Citizen, Evan M. Todd
 

Ted Nugent to Piers Morgan: "You are so full of crap!!"

[Via]

Former Navy Seal, Chris Kyle, murdered at gun range

Sad story. Kyle, author of "American Sniper",

... had been volunteering his time to help Marine Corps veterans suffering from PTSD and mentoring them. Part of this process involved taking these veterans to the range where one of them snapped and killed Chris and his neighbor for reasons that remain unknown at this time. 

Here's Kyle in a recent interview:


... and with Bill O'Reilly last year:
:

On Marxism, Obama and gun control

Self-admitted former "brain dead liberal", David Mamet:

Karl Marx summed up Communism as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” This is a good, pithy saying, which, in practice, has succeeded in bringing, upon those under its sway, misery, poverty, rape, torture, slavery, and death.

For the saying implies but does not name the effective agency of its supposed utopia. The agency is called “The State,” and the motto, fleshed out, for the benefit of the easily confused must read “The State will take from each according to his ability: the State will give to each according to his needs.” “Needs and abilities” are, of course, subjective. So the operative statement may be reduced to “the State shall take, the State shall give.”

... President Obama, in his reelection campaign, referred frequently to the “needs” of himself and his opponent, alleging that each has more money than he “needs.”

But where in the Constitution is it written that the Government is in charge of determining “needs”? And note that the president did not say “I have more money than I need,” but “You and I have more than we need.” Who elected him to speak for another citizen?

And on to gun control ...

... it is ... only the Marxists who assert that the government, which is to say the busy, corrupted, and hypocritical fools most elected officials are (have you ever had lunch with one?) should regulate gun ownership based on its assessment of needs. ...

[via]

Clinton warns Dems: "Don't look down your nose at gun owners"

The Blaze:

“Do not patronize the passionate supporters of your opponents by looking down your nose at them,” Clinton reportedly said. “A lot of these people live in a world very different from the world lived in by the people proposing these things…”

“Do not be self-congratulatory about how brave you [are] for being for this” gun control push, he said. “The only brave people are the people who are going to lose their jobs if they vote with you.”
 

Update: From the comments (via hunter at Climbing out of the Dark):

"... we've seen about a 40% increase in firearms crime since the ban was introduced..."

Piers Morgan v. Ben Shapiro

Morgan: "How dare you accuse me of standing on the graves of children that died there, how dare you! (sniff)"

Piers Morgan on guns - he's full of crap

So, what else is new?

[via]

Ian Thomson's persecutors

In my previous post on this I expressed the wish that the Crown attorneys who went after Ian Thomson be named and properly rebuked for their maliciousness.  Karen Selick advises the following (in the comments):

The name of the prosecutor is Robert Mahler. He is shown on the Ontario "sunshine list" ...   as an Assistant Crown Attorney and in 2012 the taxpayers of Ontario paid him $193,125 plus benefits.

Also, it seems fairly certain that the office of the Attorney General made the decision to prosecute.

Donate to Ian Thomson's defence fund.

Name and shame the prosecutors

Matt Gurney on Ian Thompson's acquittal:

It took two and a half years, but Port Colborne, Ont., resident Ian Thomson is finally done defending himself. First he fought the men who tried to murder him. Then, his own government.

Mr. Thomson was charged with ... two charges of careless storage of a firearm, one for each of the pistols he had removed from his gun safe ...  it’s hard to imagine a more cut-and-dry case of lawful self defence than firing on men trying to burn down your home while you’re inside it. But the Crown insisted on pursuing the charges of careless storage.

... On Friday, an Ontario judge acquitted Mr. Thomson of both those charges.

... First and foremost, Mr. Thomson did nothing wrong and should never have been charged in the first place.

... best of all, a message has been sent to overreaching Crown attorneys.

Good news for Ian Thompson. But I'd like to know why it is that in news stories like this the prosecutors are referred to only as the anonymous, Kafkaesque "Crown" or "prosecution". Why are these mutts not named and shamed as a real deterrent to other prosecutors similarly inclined to abuse the justice system? Not to mention paying Thompson for costs and aggravation or having their asses sued off.

Update:  According to Karen Selick:

... his problems may not yet be over. The Crown apparently said even before the decision was rendered that if Thomson were not convicted, the government would appeal. It seems the Crown wants Thomson to go to jail for storing his gun and his ammunition in the manner necessary to save his life. [What complete arseholes!  All the more reason to name them.]
 

 

The NRA - sneer along with Jonathan Kay

Jonathan Kay’s column "The NRA’s monstrously stupid plan to put gun-toting guards in every school" was printed as an editorial in today’s National Post. [Here’s the NRA statement.]

As is typical of many of Jonathan Kay’s "arguments", he relies heavily on sneering, sanctimony and strawmen.

Kay writes: "...the National Rifle Association (NRA) has come forward with a truly batty idea for keeping American schools safe: posting a gun-armed sentry in every schoolhouse in the nation."
[Batty? At first glance, it seems quite practical and affordable.]

Kay: "... [the NRA’s notion that] protecting America can be accomplished simply by getting as much firepower as possible into the hands of "good guys." The very notion that a population can be divided into "good" and "bad" in any useful way is itself problematic, since many of the country’s most notorious killers were unknown to police before striking."
[Don’t be so obtuse, Jon. The NRA isn’t proposing to identify ALL the good guys and ALL the bad guys. The people the NRA identifies as possible armed guards seems like a pretty good first-cut suggestion for who could effectively greet would be killers when they show up at the schoolhouse door (self-identify).]
 
Kay: "Mr. LaPierre envisages an alternate plan that relies on citizen volunteers instead of police. ... The people most likely to volunteer for such a program are ... the sort of hotheads who we often see on cable news, pleading "stand your ground" defences after shooting first, and asking questions later."
[Another dopey strawman. The NRA isn’t proposing to do the selection of guards from a list of volunteers. Almost certainly that would be done by the local school officials and police who know their communities.]
 
Finally, the NRA’s statement was not intended as the be-all, end-all solution to the problem but an answer to the question: What can be done, "... starting right now ..." to protect school kids from the immediate threat (copy-cats, etc)? "There’ll be time for talk and debate later."

Jonathan Kay’s column is a hyperbolic, knee-jerk reaction to a reasonable proposal from an organization he detests to begin with.

Connecticut massacre - "meaningful action"

One mother's thoughts about what to do:

... it’s easy to talk about guns. But it’s time to talk about mental illness ...

See also Christie Blatchford's column which makes reference to the novel and film "We Need to Talk About Kevin".

Update (Dec 17): Five-Point Action Plan for President Obama to Reduce Violence by the Mentally Ill

Connecticut school massacre - gun control, etc

In his remarks yesterday about the massacre of  school children in Connecticut, Barack Obama stopped just short of explicitly mentioning gun control, saying:

"... we're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics." [Best of luck with that.]

Not that he had to be explicit, since just about everyone else who was so inclined brought it up within a matter of seconds after the news broke.  It's Godwin's law for gun control. Predictably "everyone .. so inclined" includes many foreigners from Britain, Europe, Canada and even China.

Speaking of China, those who believe that gun control is "the answer" to preventing these horrific events should keep in mind that killers hell-bent on killing will resort to any means:

A series of uncoordinated mass stabbings, hammer attacks, and cleaver attacks in the People's Republic of China began in March 2010. The spate of attacks left at least 21 dead and some 90 injured. Analysts have blamed mental health problems caused by rapid social change for the rise in these kind of mass murder and murder-suicide incidents.

Consider also the deadliest mass murder in a school in U.S. history. With no guns involved:

... 38 elementary school children, two teachers, four other adults and the bomber himself; at least 58 people were injured. Most of the victims were children in the second to sixth grades (7–11 years of age[1]) attending the Bath Consolidated School.

[h/t]

A side note.  Obama's tearful address began with: 

"We've endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years. And each time I learn the news, I react not as a president, but as anybody else would as a parent. And that was especially true today. I know there's not a parent in America who doesn't feel the same overwhelming grief that I do." [With all due repect, the parents of the dead and injured might feel somewhat more overwhelming grief.]

"Banning-the-bomb" - dumber than "banning" guns

George Jonas:  Don’t ban the nuclear bomb, or else…

... A press release this week called it “fitting” that the anniversary of Hiroshima, Aug. 6th, should also be the day for the 600th Member of the Order of Canada to sign an appeal to the government “to join in an international effort to eliminate nuclear weapons.”... [Which speaks poorly of the quality of Order of Canada recipients.]

If the "ban-the-bomb" crowd of naifs got their way the world would be much more dangerous:

The result of nations agreeing to abide by such a ban would be no nuclear weapons in the hands of any nation except North Korea. [and soon, Iran]

That's dumber than the "ban guns" idea in the sense that at least gun-ban proposals allow for good-guy law-enforcement to carry guns.  In a "nuke-free" world only certifiable lunatics would have nukes.

Politically correct banking?

Bank of America refuses to do business with firearms manufacturer:

... the mega-bank told the firearms company [McMillan] that its business is no longer welcome.

... McMillan [said] that he plans to move his company’s account to “a more Second Amendment-friendly bank” as soon as it can be done. ...

Sensible gun control ...

... in Switzerland (unlike Canuckistan):

... voters overwhelmingly rejected proposals that would have obliged some two million gun owners in the country to keep their weapons in public arsenals rather than at home.

.... 3,000 gun clubs, which function as key social centres in hundreds of villages.

... no national firearms register in Switzerland. ... unofficial estimates suggest there are between 2 million and 3 million guns kept in Swiss households.

[via]

Poll - Do you support the long gun registry?

Poll:

Nope!

Related.