Anti-Gun Folks – Page 83 – Shall Not Be Questioned

Concealed Carry Killers

Clayton Cramer has send me a link to a copy of his latest paper taking on VPC’s concealed carry killers. I was suffering from a bit of insomnia last night, so I grabbed the iPad I keep next to the bed and read the whole thing. I encourage readers to do the same if you’d like to feel a bit of Shadenfreude.

The Violence Policy Center maintains a website titled CONCEALED CARRY KILLERS as part of their effort to show that many Americans who receive licenses under the increasingly popular â€•shall-issueâ€– concealed license laws are not only disreputable figures, but a threat to public safety. This list included, as of May 12, 2012, a total of 374 deathsâ€”and at first glance, it is quite disturbing. (Unaccountably, the primary web page listed these as 12 law enforcement deaths and 228 civilian deaths, although perhaps they simply neglected to recalculate based on the data they had.)2

This paper provides a detailed analysis of the incidents, finding that many are incorrectly described. A few of the criminal cases have been settled in favor of the accused. Some are criminal cases that are still pending. Many of the incidents are single suicides, which while sad, are not criminal matters or public safety concerns, nor relevant to may-issue vs. shall-issue concealed carry licensing. A number involve situations where possession of a concealed weapon license is completely irrelevant to the tragedy that unfolded. In some cases, these incidents involve licenses issued in â€•may-issueâ€– states, and licensees who are retired police officers, who are almost always issued such licenses even in the strictest of â€•may-issueâ€– jurisdictions.

Keep in mind this is an academic paper, with complete citations, intended for audiences that may not be thoroughly indoctrinated into the issue. But there is plenty of worthwhile data in the paper. For instance, the death count drops by 45% of you exclude single suicides.

A surprising number of the incidents listed by VPC involve a concealed handgun licensee who committed suicide, apparently with no one else killed. Some of these suicides VPC derived from annual state concealed handgun licensure reports; it is unclear how many of the other incidents that VPC reports which end in a suicide are included in those aggregates, and are thus double-counted.70 It is not even certain that all of these 129 suicides were committed with firearms. Because we cannot verify these 129 suicides derived from state reports, and determine how many actually duplicate other entries in VPCâ€˜s collection, there seems little point in giving much credence to them as indicative of a problem with shall-issue. Removing these aggregate suicides alone reduces the total death count by 45%â€”a most dramatic change.

The same old tricks. You have go wonder how far the anti-gun movement could have gotten if they had been honest, instead tricking the American people into gun control through deception and subterfuge. What’s even more amazing to me, faced with the utter failure of their movement, like a one-trick pony, they keep doing the same thing.

The Lame Deflections of the Anti-Gun Crowd on Fast and Furious

A common deflection by our opponents in the gun rights movement is that we Second Amendment supporters are making a big ado about nothing, considering Fast and Furious only represented a fraction of the overall number of guns trafficked into Mexico unlawfully. Let me take this analogy to another form of crime, and show why the anti-gun groups are phony baloney when they speak about their desire to reduce gun violence (rather than just wanting to reduce gun ownership).

Let’s take this to another form of crime, and to a smaller scale. Let’s talk about a neighborhood that has a problem with home break-ins. The community is small enough that people have a pretty good idea of who the bad apples are, and the local police have worked with the hardware stores in the town to ensure that they don’t crowbars or other burglary tools to the bad apples in town until they solve the rash of home break-ins. The local police catch a few burglars, all of which got in with crow bars, but the burglaries generally continue.

Let’s say that the state police then decide to sweep in, and announcing this is all part of a much bigger burglary ring, not only tell the hardware stores they should sell as many crowbars to the bad apples as they can, but actively encourage them to do so, so that they can infiltrate the ring and bring it down. So the only result is that burglaries in town shoot way up. This raises the question:

Are the citizens of the town correct to be angry at the state police?
Would it be paranoid and unreasonable to suggest the state police might have had selfish reasons, like boosting their own budgets, to inflate the crime problem?
Because burglars still get a hold of crowbars, is it correct to blame the hardware store?
Is it correct to blame the manufacturer of the crowbar?
Would you say citizens that are concerned greatly about the police facilitating a rise in crime are just misdirected from the overall problem of burglars getting crowbars? Or the fact that hardware stores sell them?

Smuggling guns to Mexico is illegal. Buying guns from federal dealers to smuggle guns into Mexico is illegal. We expect the police to catch people who are doing it. Aside from disagreements we may have with anti-gunners about mutli-sale reporting requirements, of gun show loopholes, etc — is it not rational and healthy, when the police are found to be facilitating an illegal activity, to apparently no rational end, to be outraged and demand answers? What The Brady Folks, CSGV, and other anti-gun people are disingenuously suggesting, is that because we care about law enforcement not facilitating crime, that means we don’t care about crime. This is a ridiculous leap in logic, even for our opponents. Their reaction to Fast and Furious is further evidence the whole gun violence shtick is just that. If you have a situation where law enforcement is facilitating crime, if you’re interesting in fighting rime, the first order of business is to get the government to stop facilitating crime. Then we can talk about what to do next.

Florida MAIG Coordinator Stonewalling?

According to All Nine Yards, the MAIG coordinator there would appear to be stalling, when it comes to releasing documents. Taking a page from the Eric Holder playbook? I appreciate Mr. Caranna’s tenacity in going after these documents. She’s a public employee, and the public has a right to know.

Carrying Water for the Administration’s Gun Running

Dennis Henigan says it’s time to hold Congress in contempt, not Eric Holder. Josh Horwitz calls the the gun walking strategy “ill-advised.”Â Perhaps they don’t have as much ingratitude toward Obama as I said a few days ago. I love how the sky is falling if someone straw purchases an AK-47 clone from a gun dealer, but if they get it courtesy of a green light from our own government, that’s just “ill advised,” as long as there’s a lefty in the White House promising to work on gun control “under the radar.”

The Rise of the Anti-Gun Blog

SayUncle links to a sputtering of one of the anti-gun blogs. Up until about a year ago, there wasn’t any such thing as this phenomena, but after Media Matters encouraged (possibly paid?) people to write about the issue, there have been a few. I always thought it would make things more interesting in the gun blog community if there was more anti-gun bloggers around challenging us, and helping to keep the conversation interesting. Boy was I wrong.

I’ve yet to see an anti-gun blog out there yet that’s not just spewing nasty attacks, arguing against positions none of us hold, or just rambling on incoherently at great length. This is still a one sided conversation. They have turned out to be masters of only the straw man.

And Where Did He Get That Idea From?

A Texas man ends up rightfully convicted of murder by a jury of his peers after asserting self-defense. Apparently the man in the case had some wild-eyed misconceptions about self-defense:

One neighbor testified that Rodriguez, who had a concealed handgun license, bragged about his guns and that he told her a person could avoid prosecution in a shooting by telling authorities you were in fear of your life and were standing your ground and defending yourself.

And where would he have gotten that idea? It certainly wasn’t in his CHL training. It certainly wasn’t from any of us, who are up front and honest about what self-defense actually is, and make an attempt at educating the public about it. No, he got that idea from the media, who got that idea from our opponents.

I’m not kidding here. Their misleading and deceptive characterization of self-defense laws, and the media’s willingness to help spread their dangerous meme throughout the land, and their own attempts to spread it, is at least partly responsible for this horrible incident. This guy believed their bull, and now one person is dead, and he’s rightfully in prison for the murder. When you lie about self-defense laws, when you mischaracterize them, suggesting that all anyone has to do is claim they were scared, you run the risk that some morons out there might actually believe it. We told you this was dangerous. We told you this would happen, and you did not believe us. Well, here it is. No doubt they will find it easy to wash the blood off their hands, cup them back over their mouths, and continue trying to convince the public the NRA has made it possible to shoot someone if you’re scared, no questions asked. At least until the next moron actually believes them.

Fantastic Activism: MAIG E-Mails FOIA’d

Sean Caranna over at the All Nine Yards blog has obtained copies of Linda S. Vaughn’s e-mails, showing MAIG is definitely pulling the strings, and possibly endangering their related foundation’s tax status. This should be a template for all other MAIG funded public employees.

Ingratitude

You’d think with Obama stocking the federal courts with people who will redact the Second Amendment clean out of the Constitution, and running the numbers up for guns going to Mexico to create a pretext for a new Assault Weapons Ban, our opponents would show more gratitude than this:

Whether they want to believe it or not, Obama is their last great hope, in that, if he wins re-election, they have some. There’s a good chance they can reverse or severely limit Heller and McDonald in that instance. You’d think with that on the table, they’d just play along with the charade.

Bad News For Municipalities?

There is a very easy solution to the problem of municipalities and gun regulations: don’t break the law. Why is this such a leap or so radical? Because, as our Supreme Court has said, firearm regulation is a matter of statewide concern, it is a matter that is the exclusive prerogative of the state legislature.

Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray, who backed the local initiative, said the bill would invite frivolous lawsuits.

Mayor Gray apparently doesn’t appreciate the idea that he will not be able to break the law with impunity. There is an alternative I can propose for the Mayor: if he is so concerned with taxpayer dollars going to waste, we can easily run a bill that will hold him and his council personally responsible for the lawbreaking, like they do in Florida. How’s that sound?

This Week’s Bob: VPC In Denial on Falling Crime Figures

I was starting to think the Baghdad Bob thing was getting old, but the other side continues to deny reality in utterly hilarious ways. Following up on reports that crime has dropped, VPC has chosen the path of utter denial, suggesting we have to take a more nuanced view:

VPC More Nuanced

The more nuanced view is that you’re losing, and rapidly descending into the dustbin of history where your cause rightly belongs.

Bagdad Bob Anti-Gun Meme VPC Crime