October 2010 – Page 14 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Update on the Citibank Situation

From someone at NRA:

NRA-ILA has been made aware of an issue over business credit disapproval for scope mount and accessories manufacturer Warne Scope Mounts Company and Citibank SD.Â At this time, we understand the specifics of the problem revolve around an industry code that was applied to Warne, a designation that seems to be incorrect.

Contact has been made to Citibank SD media relations and they have shared some general information.Â That information has been relayed to Warne so that they may follow up directly with Citibank SD to resolve their specific problem.Â ILA staff will follow-up with contact with Citibank SD to inquire regarding a review of their policies to help prevent these problems in the future.

At this time, it is not the opinion of NRA-ILA that Citibank is actively denying banking services or credit in an attempt to discriminate against firearm related businesses.Â Rather, we believe that this is a problem created by a mistaken understanding as to the nature of business conducted by Warne. It is our hope that that particular problem will be resolved in the coming days.

As more information is learned, NRA-ILA will inform our members if it is found that this is not the case or if Citibank SD is uncooperative in dealing with these issues.

We might want to put out the torches and put down the pitchforks for now. It looks like this was likely a simple mistake.

New Sniper Rifle

XM2010, supposed to replace the M24. It uses a pistol grip rather than a traditional stock. Clearly this bolt-action menace is meant to be spray fired from the hip.

Can’t Get a Home Depot Line of Credit if You’re a Gun Company

Not because of Home Depot though, but because their credit is underwritten by Citibank, who have a very odd explanation for why they denied a gun businesses line of credit. Apparently they prohibit lines of credit to people who manufacture and sell firearms for military use. That’s very strange. I wonder why this is.

Apparently none of the shot timer apps for iPhone will work with the iPhone 4s noise canceling microphone. I guess it works if it can silence gunfire. Sounds like Apple should put an API in to disable noise cancellation, assuming it’s not built directly into the hardware.

Quote of the Day

From Dave Kopel over a Volokh:

Civil liberties organizations which tie themselves exclusively to one partyÂ put liberty at risk. In a two-party system, it is inevitable that each party will dominate some of the time. Civil liberties are safer in the long run when they have friends in both parties, and when those friends know that civil liberty organizations will reciprocrate their support,especially during tough elections.

Yes. The only reason we’ve been safe in this Congress is because we’ve accomplished making the Second Amendment a bipartisan issue.

Heart Not In It?

Looks like Ray Schoenke must have tired of his strategy of trying to build an organization to help give anti-gun Democrats pro-gun cover. Because it looks like he forgot to pay AHSA’s hosting bill.

WaPo Covers NRA Endorsements

Friendly coverage from the Washington Post. Â Maybe the way to get the MSM on our side is to be seen as helping their Democratic friends in Washington. No doubt the Bradys aren’t going to be pleased to see this article this morning.

Threat from the ABA

Howard Nemerov is noting that the American Bar Association is now promoting micro stamping, and unlike the Bradys, they bring a lot of money to the table to help push for it.

Ask And You Shall Receive: Murder Rates

Someone e-mailed today and mentioned the following:

Strictly speaking, the Bradys don’t argue that gun control will lowerÂ violent crime, they argue that it will lower the rate of violentÂ deaths by decreasing the effectiveness of the violent criminals (andÂ by making suicide attempts less successful).Do you have any data on how rates of gun ownership correlate to murderÂ rates (or even to violent death rates including all suicides)?

That much is true. I have heard gun control advocates claim this. I don’t have suicide data readily handy (if someone knows a source, I can plug it into my spread sheet). I also suspect suicide will correlate some, because suicide by gun is more effective, and an option many will pick if it’s available. That’s why they use “gun death.” Â I just don’t think taking away dangerous things from people because they might hurt themselves with it is proper public policy for a free society, statistics be damned. But here’s the murder charts:

Statistically there’s no correlation here. Plotting along X are the Brady scores, and along the Y is the murder rate per 100,000 population of that state. Also, if you look at gun ownership levels versus the murder rate, you get something similarly uncorrelated:

Here we also have no correlation. We have percentage of gun ownership as X, and murder rate per 100,000 as Y. Compared to gun ownership, murder rate is random noise. So what does the murder rate correlate to? I actually did run all these numbers, but did not include them in the original post, because it was rather long. Murder correlates weakly to poverty indicators, as does violent crime. It’s uncorrelated with urban density, though Brady score is strongly correlated with urban density. I was surprised that urban density does not correlate with violent crime or murder. Not surprised urban density plays a role in how much gun control a state has.

The essential thesis stands. Gun control does not accomplish what it’s advocated to do. The typical retort from gun control advocates to statistics like these is “Well, gun control in this country has never been tried.” That might be true, but to the extent it has been tried, it’s failed. Given the constitutional and political realities present in this country, it’s an academic argument anyway. The types of gun controls promoted by the Brady Campaign do not work, unless they want to offer their own statistical model that shows it does.

Elections have Consequences

In this case, maybe the consequences wouldn’t quite be the end of the world if the Democrats manage to keep hold of the state House – at least for gun owners. From the always witty John Micek:

At 10 a.m. in the Media Center, Rep. Nick Kotik, D-Allegheny, puts his cart well before the horse by announcing his plan to run for House speaker next year. Have to hold onto the majority first, Representative.

Currently, the House is run by Rep. Keith McCall who is solidly pro-gun. I have no doubt that fact played a huge role in the success of moving Castle Doctrine as a clean bill yesterday. However, he announced he planned to retire after this term, so we were stuck in limbo wondering if an anti-gunner would run for Speaker. The good news is that Rep. Kotik was rated A in 2008 and even carried the endorsement in his last race.*

The downside of the Democrats holding on to the House would be in redistricting battles and the fact that committee chairs would still mostly be anti-gun folks. Moving bills would still be very hard, even with overwhelming support in the full chamber. So, even though I love my pro-gun Democrats, I’m still going to work to make sure that the House flips to Republican hands.

*Since NRA’s new PVF website removed the archives, I had to put in a request for the grade. (Hint, hint guys – I used that information for post research.)

Month: October 2010