Sebastian – Page 451 – Shall Not Be Questioned

For the Children, Part MDCCXXIII

Our opponents are currently going hog wild over a blog post appearing Art on the Issues, by Dr. Art Kamm. I suspect they like it because Dr. Kamm runs some numbers which make gun ownership look weak, but I find his methodology suspect:

In examining the crude firearm homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants in countries that have a population exceeding 3.8 million and a GDP per capita, adjusted for purchasing power, in excess of $20,000 (World Health Organization, 2002), the US rate dwarfs that of any other industrialized country(ref). Â The firearm homocide rate in the US was 5.5 times higher than Italy (the next highest) and several European Union countries reported insignificant levels of firearm homicides: only 45 were reported in the UK, 15 in Denmark, 10 in Norway, and 7 in Ireland. Â Whereas the US reported a total of 10,801 firearm homicides in 2000, the European Union, having a population of over 376 million (exceeding that of the US) reported only 1,260 firearm homicides. Â And in Japan, where less than 50 handguns were present (they are reserved to athletes participating in international shooting competitions), only 22 firearm homicides were reported.

Why is it legitimate to only examine homicide by firearm? Isn’t a better measure overall violent crime, or perhaps homicide in general? I’ve done some calculations on homicide rates as to whether there’s correlation to levels of gun ownership in industrialized countries (defines as GDP > 14,000) and there was none. I even threw out countries that would have made my numbers better, because they were highly undemocratic, or unstable.

What Dr. Kamm is doing here is essentially proving, to take this to another context, that countries that have a higher ownership of automobiles per capita have a higher rate of fatal accidents. That is hardly startling, given it takes owning an automobile to have a fatality with one, but it would tell us little overall about the dangers of automobiles compared to other forms of transportation. The question is whether firearms ownership has any effect on violent crime overall. I’ve found you can get correlation, but only by reducing the size of the sample set by choosing an arbitrarily high number for GDP, which excludes virtually all of Eastern Europe (some of which have high gun ownership rates, but low murder rates, and some which have very low gun ownership rates, and very high murder rates.) Barron Barnett has done some excellent work in this area as wellÂ on the domestic front.

I also note Dr. Kamm mixing firearms homicides (which does not include suicide) and firearm deaths (which does). As I’ve mentioned before, treating firearm suicide as a reason for restricting the rights and freedom of others is inappropriate in a free society. Research also bears out that internationally there is no correlation between gun ownership and suicide rates.

Dr. Kamm’s research on NRA’s funding sources is also very poor. A quick analysis of their publicly available form 990s (some of which I’ve done here, in a different context) show that NRA gets the vast majority of its funding from its individual members, rather than from corporations or large donors. While NRA’s recent efforts in seeking larger donors are paying off, its bread and butter is still fundraising from its membership base, much to the chagrin of many of its members. Dr. Kamm also fails to note that MidwayUSA, the largest corporate donor to NRA, raises that money through a “round up” program, that asks customers to round up to the nearest dollar to support NRA. This money may have a corporate source, but its a grassroots effort. It is not something easily matched by our opponents, because there’s no anti-gun shop, where you could source “round up” donations from.

Our opponents are far more reliant on donations from large foundations than NRA is. That they don’t come close to matching our grassroots muscle is probably the reason may of them are angry, bitter, and lashing out.

Where’s Lydia’s Candle?

Jennifer asks a poignant question. It’s a very good post, and one I expect our opponents will respond to with anger rather than thought. It’s all they have left, really.

Another Gun Running Scandal for ATF?

The LA Times is reporting there appears to be yet another gun running scandal involving ATF. This one is called White Gun. Some of the details of the investigation are startling:

According to the ATF documents, Guzman Patino told the undercover agent that “if he would bring them a tank, they would buy it.” He boasted he had “$15 million to spend on firearms and not to worry about the money.” He wanted “the biggest and most extravagant firearms available.”

The two met again outside a Phoenix restaurant, and the undercover agent showed Guzman Patino five weapons in the trunk of his vehicle, including a Bushmaster rifle and a Ramo .50 heavy machine gun. The undercover agent said he could get that kind of firepower for the Sinaloans.

Can someone from the other side explain to me how you’re going to keep an organization with a 15 million dollar arms budget disarmed?

The same undercover agent met the pair in February 2010 at a Phoenix warehouse. David Diaz-Sosa and Jorge DeJesus-Casteneda brought 11 pounds of crystal methamphetamine to trade for weapons. The undercover agent showed them shoulder-launched missiles, rocket launchers and grenades before ATF agents moved in and arrested them.

All of which you can surely buy at US gun shows. In ATF’s defense, it would seem that the guns lost in White Gun were accidentally lost, rather than deliberately lost, so this can at least be chalked up to incompetence, rather than malice.

Homicide No Longer a Top Cause of Death

This is certainly progress:

For the first time in almost half a century, homicide has fallen off the list of the nation’s top 15 causes of death, bumped by a lung illness that often develops in elderly people who have choked on their food.

And all this has happened while we’ve been liberalizing our gun laws, and selling more and more guns. Kind of puts a damper on the narrative of the gun control busybodies doesn’t it?

The Madness Deepens

CSGV took something I said out of context, and then we get a great example of how they don’t want to take our guns. In truth, I don’t worry that they will. They quite frankly don’t have the political power. I haven’t really been able to figure out if the folks at CSGV are genuinely mad and offended, or they are just poking their foaming at the mouth followers with a stick in hopes of making something happen.

Unfortunately this is what leads our country down the path to nasty discourse, and where we can no longer have reasonable people agreeing to disagree. How can you agree to disagree with someone who wants your friends and fellow citizens in jail and ruined, as we can see in the example here and here?Â These aren’t people who are just concerned citizens. They are hate filled people out to destroy lives. How are these people different from a bigot who would enjoy the idea if a black man got an ass beating because he was visiting Mississippi in 1954, and didn’t know certain fountains weren’t for his kind? I posit they are no different in terms of their corrupt character, only in the form of bigotry they have chosen.

First Plea Deal from New York City

Tea Party leader who was pinched in LaGuardia for transporting a firearm pleads to disorderly conduct. Gun charges are dropped.

Plea Deal for Meredith Graves

The Manhattan District Attorney is apparently working on a plea arrangement for Meredith Graves. If I were in the Manhattan DA’s shoes, offer her a plea to disorderly conduct, and she forfeits the gun. After a few years, she can probably get an expungementÂ for the disorderly conviction, so it won’t show up when employers do background checks. Given the amount of publicity this is getting, the only thing throwing the book at these folks is going to accomplish is to outrage Congress enough to pass HR822 even sooner. If I was the Manhattan DA, I wouldn’t want to poke that bee’s nest.

More on the Candles

I’ve noticed the Brady folks keep touting the picture of their vigil from Conowingo, MD. My guess is because it’s their biggest crowd at any of the events, and it photographed well. The rest of the pictures features your prototypical close ups, or one-off snapshots, probably to conceal the fact that there was very low turnout at most events. I mean, the Pittsburgh event featuring CeaseFirePA looks like a pretty decent house party. It’s no surprise that Heeding God’s Call turned out the usual suspects in Philadelphia. Reading wasn’t too bad a crowd.

I count about 33 people in the headlining event crowd in Conowingo. The unescapable fact for the Brady Campaign and other groups is these are pathetic turnouts. Dennis wants to know whether politicians are listening. They are not. They should not. At my club, we get a better turnout for air gun matches when Larry is making his famous New England clam chowder than the Brady’s got at Conowingo. My club this summer had a picnic that turned out four hundred, and that’s only because we capped it. The area gun shows on any given weekend draw thousands.

Whether the antis want to accept it or not, this is why we’re listened to, and they are ignored. There are simply a lot more of us than there are of you. Time to start facing facts.

Officer Harless of Canton, OH Fired

John Richardson notes that the City of Canton has decided to let this particular loose cannon go. I wish I could say this is a case of a town doing the right thing, but I suspect the primary reason is that Daniel Harless was a walking potential 1983 suit just waiting to happen, and I would point out that 1983 allows one to sue all the way up the chain of command.

I’d say justice served, but I have to agree with Uncle on this one. If I threatened to shoot someone dead, who was not threatening me in any way, while I was open carrying a pistol, I’d be in jail already.

Third Circuit Ruling on Housemates of Felons

The Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which encompasses Pennsylvania and New Jersey, has reversed a dismissal of an indictment that a housemate facilitated a felon’s possession of firearms. The courts argument would seem to be that since the charge was facilitating, not her own possession, the case should go to trial to discover the facts in the case. From a strictly legal reasoning point of view, I can understand where the court is coming from. But I’m uncomfortable with the ruling as the effect it will have on the rights of those who live with prohibited persons. Think about a battered spouse who seeks a firearm to protect herself in an abusive relationship with a convicted felon.

In this instance any spouse, domestic partner, or roommate of a prohibited person runs legal risk keeping a gun in the home for self-protection. If the prohibited individual is ruled to have been in possession, the housemate can also be charged. That seems like a poor way to treat someone’s constitutional rights.

I think in this case the court got it wrong. There needs to be evidence that the person purposefully helped aid in the possession of the prohibited person. Otherwise the housemate is deprived of their constitutional right without due process.