It’s a miserable Monday morning here in Southeastern, PA. Wintery mix is the worst, but fortunately, it’s converted pretty much all to rain. I don’t mind a few good snows for a season, but we’ve been fortunate, so far, that this winter isn’t shaping up like the last one. The French terrorist attacks were pretty much dominating the headlines last week, so these news links will include more off topic ones than normal:
Cars getting safer is going to become a problem for us. Even though the vast majority “gun deaths” are suicide, you can bet our opponents will play to the hilt when they can claim this is the “Number one cause of death in America!”
George Zimmerman needs to himself, and all of us a favor and check himself into a monastery.
The Mousqueton A.M.D. – France’s Mini-14.
More gun control in France? If what you do fails, just do the same thing only twice as hard.
Journalist, suddenly realizing they are targets of global jihad, debate the utility of concealed weapons.
I agree that this is shameful.
“If Jews Flee, the Republic Will Be a Failure.” Well, you know, there have already been four failed French Republics.
A lot of anti-gun folks are saying a lot of stupid things about the late happenings in France.
Looks like there was some jury nullification in a case of felon-in-posession.
The military is rejecting Beretta’s M9A3, it’s attempt to kill the Army’s Modular Handgun Program. I’m not sure anyone has considered the possibility that this is paybacks from the Administration over Beretta’s defiant stance against gun control in the wake of Sandy Hook.
Walking a mile in the other guy’s shoes. More from Tim at Gun Nuts Media.
Every year a number of Pennsylvania legislators, mostly from Philadelphia, introduce nonsense legislation that they can take back to the constituents as proof that they are doing something. It’s not intended to go anywhere. This is among that type of legislation: “Bill in the PA House of Representatives: Ban human silhouette targets.”
I don’t have cable, so I managed to finally watch the PBS Documentary on NRA on Roku. It was so filled with tired arguments and rehashed nonsense that to be honest, I don’t even really remember watching it. It was all old news, and it covered no new ground.
More fallout from Operation Chokepoint?
Re Beretta, personally I think it’s more about going back to a .40+ caliber pistol. And Beretta has come under fire for the bulk of the M9.
“Looks like there was some jury nullification in a case of felon-in-posession.” link goes nowhere…..
That’s odd. It works for me.
The CDC statistics for deaths by “Motor vehicle (overall)/All Intents” run near 36600 for 2012. The statistics for death by “Motor vehicle (traffic)/All Intents” run near 34900 in 2012.
Same statistics for deaths by “firearm/All Intents” run near 33500 for 2012.
So the total numbers are close. I wouldn’t be surprised to find subcategories of population where the death-by-gunfire is higher than death-in-automobile.
For most of the years between 2000 and 2007, the number of deaths in automobiles ran near 42000-per-year. In 2008, that number dropped to ~37000, and then dropped to ~33000 in 2009.
Caveat: as Sebastian noted, separating “Intent” into categories for “Unintentional”, “Homicide and Legal Intervention”, “Suicide”, you quickly realize that deaths by gunfire are about 60% Suicide.
Doing the same for “Transportation-related”, or the subcategories “Motor vehicle (overall)” / “Motor vehicle (traffic)”, and something like 98% of deaths are “Unintentional.”
Another Caveat: That article focused on the age range of under-25.
When I ask the CDC for leading causes of Injury Deaths in 2012, I see that Unintentional/MotorVehicle leads the 15-to-25 age range. Homicide-by-firearm is number 2, Suicide-by-firearm is number 3.
If I add both numbers for firearm together, I see something marginally above the value for Unintentional/MotorVehicle.
For other age ranges under 15, the numbers are much smaller. Motor-Vehicle-accident still leads most of the age ranges, except for the very young (under 5) where drowning or suffocation is the leading cause of death.