Category: Fraud O’ The Day

Cue the meme:

Joe Biden faces new plagiarism claim over DNC acceptance speech

That’s sloppy, Joe.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden reprised his penchant for borrowing lines from other people’s work this week — apparently relying a bit too heavily on the words of a deceased Canuck party leader during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, reports said.

Biden concluded his Thursday night speech by saying: “For love is more powerful than hate. Hope is more powerful than fear. Light is more powerful than dark.”

But Canadian media quickly noted that the former veep’s words were uncannily similar to those of Jack Layton, the leader of Canada’s left-wing New Democratic Party, who issued a poignant open letter to his fellow citizens as he lay dying in 2011.

“My friends,” Layton wrote, “Love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair.”

Biden’s word play — delivered two days before the nine-year anniversary of Layton’s death — gave some in the Great White North a serious case of déjà vu. Continue reading “”

Yep, she a fraudulent, deceitful,  hypocrite.
Nothing new about demoncraps

Remember That Moment Kamala Skewered Biden in the Debate? Watch What She Told Stephen Colbert About It Now

In other words, how could you have possibly taken what she said seriously then, Stephen? She said what she thought would hurt him and help herself at the time. Nothing personal that she accused Biden of something terrible, hahaha, it’s just a debate. Now she’s still saying what she thinks will help herself once again. So just forget that she said all that. And watch for the cackling tell. Hillary had that too. Whenever they don’t want to answer the question/gloss over the subject, they’ll start laughing inappropriately to deflect.

This is what being phony and having no principles looks like. This is why people despise unscrupulous politicians, because it really isn’t about principle but about doing whatever they can to get into power.

Fun With Data: More ‘Research’ Blames Mass Shootings On Those Who Didn’t Do It

It’s time to play “spot the lousy gun research” again! There’s yet a new “study” out that purports to link high rates of firearm ownership to higher rates of mass shootings. It’s economically entitled Comparing the Impact of Household Gun Ownership and Concealed Carry Legislation on the Frequency of Mass Shootings and Firearms Homicide, by Emma E. Fridel.

I had to read this paper because the pseudo-news reports included a remarkable factoid.

In order to address these challenges, a unique dataset of all mass murders in the United States from 1991 to 2016 was created. …

To date, this represents the most comprehensive and accurate database available on mass shooting incidents in the United States, with a total sample size of 592 mass shootings during the study period.

Five hundred, ninety-two mass shootings? Gun Facts only found 94 from 1982 to 2019. The Violence Project lists 174 from 1966 to 2020. The Rockefeller Institute of Government identified 318 from 1966 to 2017.

Where did Fridel find hundreds more than any other researcher over a shorter time frame? The devil is in the definitions.

Rockefeller’s Capellan and Jiao defined “mass public shooting” as “the killing of four or more individuals in one or more closely related locations within a 24-hour period.” That’s representative of the definition usually used. It excludes targeted killings like gangbangers fighting over turf, or domestic disputes gone massively wrong.

It excludes serial shootings that don’t occur in a single incident. Fridel went with something a little different.

Defined as the killing of four or more individuals (excluding the offender) with a firearm within 24 hours… …

As WISQARS does not provide linkage information, firearms homicide was measured as a count of victims rather than incidents.

Four or more within 24 hours.

No gang or family exclusions. It doesn’t even necessarily specify that the four victims be shot for related reasons or even by the same shooter.

I’m sure she dinked around with that highly questionable definition until she got one that generated clusters in all the wrong states. Since she’s using WISQARS in part, I’m not even sure the “mass shooting” victims had to be in the same city or state, just the same 24 hour period.

Then I hit this.

Household gun ownership was measured using a common proxy, the proportion of suicides committed with a firearm.

“Gun ownership” is estimated from suicides by firearm. Never mind that a goodly percentage of suicides are committed with firearms not owned by the subject. Never mind that better proxies, such as firearm hunting licenses, concealed carry licenses or in states like Illinois and Massachusetts, firearm owner licenses, exist.

Fridel gets to generate bogus data and reinforce the gun-ownership-equals-suicide canard, a twofer.

I should have quit there, but I was gripped by morbid curiosity.

She controlled her data for various socioeconomic and demographic factors. She included firearm homicide rates. But she specifically excluded non-firearm homicides, and violent crimes and property crimes.

It turns out she had per capita hunting license data, but decided not to use it; she just threw it out.

What this really is, then, is a study in how to manipulate and misuse data to further an agenda. Fridel could probably teach Garen Wintemute a few new tricks. Her data is so bad she probably wears an isolation suit to massage it.

The Flynn File

The General Flynn case, after years of judicial stalling, may be finally coming to an end, as a Federal appeals court ordered the presiding judge to dismiss the case. The presiding judge could appeal the ruling to the full court or even take it to the Supreme Court, but his chance for success is negligible. Most likely his appeal would be refused, but it would buy some time. He could also refuse to comply with the writ of mandamus or stall for time so his prosecutor can file his claims.

The case has been a microcosm of what is going on with our ruling class. The sheer pettiness of the process reflects a cultural attitude that exists in the ruling managerial elite that is not seen among the commoners. This meanness is all over the current revolutionary spasm. Mel Gibson was just cancelled again for something he may have said 25 years ago. No people hold a grudge like the chosen people and that sensibility is now an identifying feature of the managerial class.

Continue reading “”

Science Magazine Publishes Bogus Science From RAND On Gun Control

In a paper titled, “Changes in firearm mortality following the implementation of state laws regulating firearm access and use,” RAND Corporation staffers have published a paper examining child access prevention (CAP), right-to-carry (RTC), and stand your ground (SYG) laws. The paper shows that the people at RAND are continuing doing very biased and poorly done research on gun control.

We have never previously seen a paper that uses 80% confidence intervals. As soon as you look at their table 1, it is clear that they did that because they wouldn’t have gotten any statistically significant results if they used 95% or even 90% confidence intervals. Indeed, only one of their findings might be statistically significant at the 85% level (the child access laws for total firearm deaths would be at about 1.00 and one would need more information to know whether it was just above or below 1.00 to see if that was statistically significant at the 85% level).

The bottom line is that NONE of their results are statistically significant.

Continue reading “”

And now you know where the marxist/communist  term ‘useful idiots’ came from, as that’s all the protesters are.

Video surfaces of Black Lives Matter founder saying, “We are trained Marxists”

A 2015 video clip has surfaced of an interview with Black Lives Matter founder Patrisse Cullors in which she assures her interviewer that the group has an underlying ideology, saying, “We’re trained Marxists.”

Responding to the interviewer’s concern that the BLM movement might not have enough of a “clear ideological structure,” Cullors responded by saying that she and another co-founder “in particular” are dedicated to the ideology of Communist leader Karl Marx:

“We actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia in particular, we’re trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We are super versed on ideological theories.”

Alicia, whom Cullors mentioned, is Alicia Garza. Garza, Cullors, and a third woman, Opal Tometi, founded Black Lives Matter together.

This is coming down to be a ‘personal issue’ than a’racist police’ one.

George Floyd, Derek Chauvin “Bumped Heads” Working at Nightclub, Says Former Coworker

Derek Chauvin and George Floyd not only knew each other, but also “bumped heads” working security together at a Minneapolis nightclub, a former coworker of the pair has told CBS News.

“They bumped heads…It has a lot to do with Derek being extremely aggressive within the club with some of the patrons, which was an issue,” David Pinney, a former coworker of the two men, said in a recent interview.

Pinney reportedly once became upset by the amount of a paycheck from the club, which Floyd handed to him, and took that out on Floyd.

Pinney said he does not doubt the former police officer knew Floyd and believes Chauvin knew him “pretty well.”

Members of Floyd’s family said they believe the May 25 incident which killed him was partly personal. The family’s attorney, Benjamin Crump, has asked for Chauvin to be charged with first-degree murder. The highest charge against Chauvin currently is second-degree murder.

Image

When the question answers itself.
What does it mean when they have to twist facts to promote their agenda?

Everytown Ignores Its Own Data to Get Attention

Everytown for Gun Safety produced an “analysis” that sought to tie an “‘alarming’ spike” in fatal firearms-related accidents involving children to the recent surge in firearms purchases across the country. Their point is predicated on the deliberate exclusion and misuse of their own data – they used the tragic deaths of children to push their anti-gun agenda. Their own historical data disproves their claim.

Shannon Watts spoke to CBS News about this analysis and said: “‘We know that there are risks to having guns in the home, and with the surge in gun sales in the last two months, it could create more opportunity for kids to gain access to guns and unintentionally hurt themselves or someone else,’ said Shannon Watts, founder of Everytown’s anti-gun violence volunteer network Moms Demand Action. ‘The numbers show there’s been an increase in these horrible shooting tragedies during the time the pandemic was at its peak.’”

Watts and Bloomberg must be desperate to spin the recent increase in gun sales into a negative. The Everytown research division put together this analysis by comparing the number of fatal accidents involving children and teens (up to age 17) as either the victim or the accidental perpetrator in March and April 2020 to the average number of children and teens involved in fatal firearms-related accidents in the same months for 2017 through 2019. They say that there were 21 such deaths in March and April 2020, and that the average number of such deaths in the same months for 2017 through 2019 is 15.

Watts wants you to think that those additional deaths should be attributed to the increase in gun sales because the 2020 total is higher than the average for the previous three years.

Every accidental death of a child is a tragedy, no matter the means, but Everytown is using these tragedies (and some misinformation) to further their political agenda.

The truth is within the data that Everytown scraped (on which their analysis is based). There were, according to Everytown’s data, 21 deaths resulting from a firearms-related accident involving children or teens. The average for March-April over the last three years is, in fact, 15.  Why use an average, and why use three years of data when five is available? Let’s look at the annual totals for March-April, according to Everytown’s data:

Sadly, the 21 fatalities in 2020 is not the peak for the March-April period according to Everytown’s data. It is tied for second with the year 2016. Everytown focuses on averages to avoid the year-to-year comparison that shows that the 21 fatal accidents in 2020 is similar to – and even lower than – other years in their own data. The time period used for their average was deliberately chosen because it gives the smallest average possible. The victims of these tragic accidents from 2015 through 2020 range in age from 1 to 28 years old, with the age of one victim unknown to Everytown.

Everytown’s deliberate misrepresentation of their own data is disgusting. These are people – including young children – who lost their lives in tragic ways. Everytown is treating them as a means to an end.

No one wants children to be hurt or killed. The NRA developed the Eddie Eagle program to teach kids to stop, don’t touch, run away, and tell a grown-up if they come across a firearm. More than 30 million children have participated in this program since 1988. The firearms industry trade group NSSF developed Project Child Safe in 1999 and has distributed more than 38 million cable locks and safety kits to gun owners.

Everything with Shannon Watts and Everytown comes back to their desire to strip away the gun rights of law-abiding Americans. Why else make a baseless and inaccurate claim that is obviously designed to score political points by pulling emotional levers?

These children and teens deserve better than to be weaponized by Shannon Watts and Everytown.

The Truth About 3-D Printed Guns and Criminal Gun Usage

Gun control activists have found a new target to go after: 3-D printed guns.

Why? It’s an easy scapegoat to lay blame on, just like every proposed gun control policy mulled before Congress and state legislatures.

This effort is attributed to two things: the reintroduction of Senator Richard Blumenthal’s (D-CT) “Untraceable Firearms Act,” and a recent ‘60 Minutes’ CBS report claiming criminals overwhelmingly prefer them when committing crimes. The former, if passed, would ban the manufacture and sale of “ghost guns.”

Giffords, a gun control organization operated by former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords (D-AZ), just launched a campaign against these firearms. Unsurprisingly, the organization and its senior policy advisor, David Chipman, are spreading misinformation about them.

In a recent blog post titled Ghost Guns Are Specifically Designed for Criminals, the retired Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) special agent claimed, “These days, we’re seeing an alarming new trend among criminals and firearm traffickers: ghost guns. Not enough people are talking about this growing threat, and that’s got to change.”

He added,“Why do criminals love ghost guns? That’s a no-brainer. It makes their jobs easier.”

Congressional Democrats, Giffords, and ‘60 Minutes’ are intentionally deceiving the public about 3-D guns. Let’s explore the facts about them and their alleged primary use in gun crimes.

No Evidence 3-D Guns Predominantly Used in Crime

While “ghost guns” were recently trafficked and used in last year’s Saugus school shooting, there’s no evidence suggesting they’re a criminal’s to-go gun.

For example, a January 2019 survey from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) found criminals didn’t readily use “ghost guns” in perpetrated crimes. The survey, Source And Use Of Firearms Involved In Crimes: Survey Of Prison Inmates, 2016, concluded of the 287,400 prisoners surveyed who possessed guns during their offense 56 percent had stolen them, 6 percent had found the firearms at the scene of the crime, 43 percent obtained it from the black market or illegal means while 25 percent were gifted the guns by family members or friends. A mere 7 percent of respondents surveyed had purchased guns from federal firearms license dealers (FFL).

According to a 2016 Chicago Inmate Survey of Gun Access and Use (CIS) from University of Chicago Crime Lab, Windy City criminals primarily obtained firearms from strangers (34.4%), theft (31.7%), friends/family (26.7%), gangs (22.6%), straw purchases (20.8%), and on the street (19.7%).

Even the ATF officer featured in the ‘60 Minutes’ special, Thomas Chittum, couldn’t say the number of “ghost guns” used in crimes. In fact, he admitted they constitute a minority of guns involved:

Bill Whitaker:  How many of these guns are on the streets, you have no idea?

Thomas Chittum: Uh, no, I have no idea.

Bill Whitaker: And how many crimes are being committed by these guns, you have no idea?

Thomas Chittum: Well, not with precision. They still represent a minority of the firearms that are being used in crimes. But we do see that they’re increasing significantly and rapidly.

3D Printed Guns are Already Highly-Regulated

‘60 Minutes’ also claimed, “…federal gun law only regulates a part, called a frame or a lower receiver.”

That’s simply incorrect.

In order to manufacture and sell these custom built firearms, one must obtain a special license from the ATF. Their website states, “Any person “engaged in the business” as a manufacturer must obtain a license from ATF.”

Washington Free Beacon’s Stephen Gutowski tweeted this in response to the CBS report, “To be clear, it is currently not legal for prohibited persons (like convicted felons) to build their own firearms. Nor is it legal to sell guns you’ve manufactured yourself unless you have a license. It is legal for the law-abiding people to build their own guns for personal use.”

Law-Abiding Americans Have Been Building Guns Since USA’s Inception

The concept of custom-building firearms, most recently with popular semi-automatic Armalite Rifles (AR-15s), isn’t new. In fact, people have been designing and modifying firearms for personal use essentially since our nation’s inception.

Per ATF rules, “An individual may generally make a firearm for personal use.”

Criminals using “ghost guns” in crimes are generally prohibited possessors who shouldn’t be in possession of them in the first place. How does regulating these firearms in question, which already have strident restrictions placed on them, any further deter criminals? It won’t.

3-D Printed Technology is Expensive and Not Easy to Acquire

It’s very hard for individuals—let alone criminals—to obtain 3-D printed guns. They don’t come cheap nor are they easy to procure and possess.

In an op-ed for 3DPrint.com, a self-described leading authority on 3-D printed technology, Scott J. Gruenald wrote, “…making a 3D printed gun is not easy, it is not quick, it is not cheap and it does not result in especially dangerous or deadly weapons. Not only is it cheaper to just buy a real gun in the United States, but it is also probably a lot faster to go buy one, even with any state-mandated waiting periods.”

Conclusion

Criminals will use whatever tool is at their disposal—be it a 3-D printed AR-15, handgun, or knife—to inflict pain onto their victims. Unfortunately for gun controllers, none of their beloved laws or bills have deterred criminals from committing ghastly acts. In fact, they have invited more crime.

It’s time for our opponents finally to get serious about tackling criminal misuse of firearms, not scapegoat 3D printed firearms.

Giffords’ and Democrat Mayors’ Plea to Congress Can Only Make Urban Violence Worse

U.S.A. – -(Ammoland.com)- “Four people were killed and 41 others were wounded in shootings across Chicago so far over the first weekend of May,” Sun-Times Media Wire reported Monday. “Twenty-one of the weekend’s victims were shot in a seven-hour period from Saturday night to Sunday morning, including five teenagers wounded in a drive-by in Lawndale on the West Side.”

“As Chicago struggles to treat the flood of COVID-19 patients, a surge in gun violence continues to disproportionately affect the city’s most vulnerable communities and further puts a strain on the city’s resources,” Mother Jones complains. “[G]un violence is surging in several major cities—including Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Dallas—and many of those cities’ resources to address the issue are dwindling.”

Several levels of fraud are being perpetrated here, which isn’t surprising, considering the source. The most obvious is the use of the pejorative term “gun violence,” meant to transfer blame from human actors to inanimate tools. Firearms aren’t the issue, nor are people having access to firearms. If they were, we’d be reading about daily bloodbaths perpetrated by members of the National Rifle Association, who number five million strong and are arguably the most heavily armed civilian population on the planet. When was the last time you read about an NRA member committing a “gun crime,” a hold-up, a drive-by or a rampage? Is there any doubt such an event would be headline news, played for all it’s worth, and shoved in gun owners’ faces at every opportunity?

So perhaps the issue is the “wrong” people having access to firearms? If you advocated racist policies, like Everytown and Demanding Moms bankroller Michael Bloomberg, you’d be pointing to the numbers for “male, minority and between the ages of 15 and 25,” and using that as an excuse to disarm them all, regardless of who they are as individuals endowed with certain unalienable rights. It disregards the racist roots of gun control and the strides for freedom made by leaders of groups like Deacons for Defense and Justice and undermines the needed messages from important contemporary voices.

Still, there’s no arguing which communities the problems with violence are coming from. The anti-violence groups themselves admit as much, as does the Giffords group and a coalition of mayors petitioning Congressional leaders for more money. While they claim to be all about “violence interruption and targeted outreach,” it’s inescapable that every signatory to the letter is a rabid gun-grabber and a Democrat.

So while Giffords’ executive director Peter Ambler offers pandering weasel words like “In the midst of a difficult situation, violence interrupters and street outreach workers are providing hope and lifelines to communities who need it,” never doubt for a moment that his goal is citizen disarmament, and the goal of the mayors is a monopoly of violence. What such urban wealth redistribution programs really do is keep a handful of manageable voices parroting a narrative that the problem is with guns. They make it look like the “political leaders” are “doing something,” helping them retain and grow their power.

Having Congress provide more money for that will only make everything worse. That means more people will die. With “progressives,” every day is Opposite Day.
Think about what it would really take to “end urban violence” using guns – especially since those committing the acts of violence invariably are already breaking every “gun law” in the books, starting with having them in the first place. It would take nothing short of the complete elimination of all guns outside of “authorized” possessors to achieve the goal, and that’s clearly not going to happen – first because there aren’t enough enforcers to kill all of us who will not disarm, and also because anyone trying to do so legislatively would see the same “success” as the so-called “war on drugs.”

No doubt the ones who would profit the most would be cartels, which would add a whole new turf war dynamic.

The truth about urban “gun violence” is it’s not about guns, but about “progressive” fraud that keeps charlatans in power through a seemingly endless cycle of dependency and manipulation. True, race is a factor—not as a cause of violent crime, but as an indicator of populations most influenced and thus victimized by a continuing history of destructive collectivist controls over the economy, over education, and over the lives of those trapped in a corrupt system.

‘Dead Sea Scrolls’ at the DC Museum of the Bible are all forgeries.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – On the fourth floor of the Museum of the Bible, a sweeping permanent exhibit tells the story of how the ancient scripture became the world’s most popular book. A warmly lit sanctum at the exhibit’s heart reveals some of the museum’s most prized possessions: fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ancient texts that include the oldest known surviving copies of the Hebrew Bible.

But now, the Washington, D.C. museum has confirmed a bitter truth about the fragments’ authenticity. On Friday, independent researchers funded by the Museum of the Bible announced that all 16 of the museum’s Dead Sea Scroll fragments are modern forgeries that duped outside collectors, the museum’s founder, and some of the world’s leading biblical scholars. Officials unveiled the findings at an academic conference hosted by the museum.

“The Museum of the Bible is trying to be as transparent as possible,” says CEO Harry Hargrave. “We’re victims—we’re victims of misrepresentation, we’re victims of fraud.”

In a report spanning more than 200 pages, a team of researchers led by art fraud investigator Colette Loll found that while the pieces are probably made of ancient leather, they were inked in modern times and modified to resemble real Dead Sea Scrolls. “These fragments were manipulated with the intent to deceive,” Loll says.

The new findings don’t cast doubt on the 100,000 real Dead Sea Scroll fragments, most of which lie in the Shrine of the Book, part of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. However, the report’s findings raise grave questions about the “post-2002” Dead Sea Scroll fragments, a group of some 70 snippets of biblical text that entered the antiquities market in the 2000s. Even before the new report, some scholars believed that most to all of the post-2002 fragments were modern fakes.

“Once one or two of the fragments were fake, you know all of them probably are, because they come from the same sources, and they look basically the same,” says Årstein Justnes, a researcher at Norway’s University of Agder whose Lying Pen of Scribes project tracks the post-2002 fragments.
Since its 2017 opening, the Museum of the Bible has funded research into the pieces and sent off five fragments to Germany’s Federal Institute for Materials Research for testing. In late 2018, the museum announced the results to the world: All five tested fragments were probably modern forgeries.

But what of the other 11 fragments? And how had the forgers managed to fool the world’s leading Dead Sea Scroll scholars and the Museum of the Bible?

“It really was—and still is—an interesting kind of detective story,” says Jeffrey Kloha, the Museum of the Bible’s chief curatorial officer. “We really hope this is helpful to other institutions and researchers, because we think this provides a good foundation for looking at other pieces, even if it raises other questions.”

Under the microscope

To find out more about its fragments, the Museum of the Bible reached out to Loll and her company, Art Fraud Insights, in February 2019 and charged her with conducting a thorough physical and chemical investigation of all 16 pieces. Loll was no stranger to fakes and forgeries. After getting her master’s in art history at George Washington University, Loll went on to study international art crime, run forgery investigations, and train federal agents on matters of cultural heritage.

Loll insisted on independence. Not only would the Museum of the Bible have no say on the team’s findings, her report would be final—and would have to be released to the public. The Museum of the Bible agreed to the terms. “Honestly, I’ve never worked with a museum that was so up-front,” Loll says.

Loll quickly assembled a team of five conservators and scientists. From February to October, the team periodically visited the museum and pulled together their findings. By the time their report was finalized in November 2019, the researchers were unanimous. All 16 fragments appeared to be modern forgeries…….

No Evidence ‘Assault Weapon’ Bans Reduce Mass Shootings

A study released by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health declares there is no evidence “assault weapon” bans lead to a lower “incidence of fatal mass shootings.”

Expanded Background Checks Don’t Lower Mass Shooting Rate

A study by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found expanding background checks does nothing to lower the mass shooting rate.

Researchers did claim licensing requirements like those in Connecticut help reduce the number of mass shootings, but their study omitted the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School in which 26 were killed at the school and another victim was killed in a private home.

In other words, a study which claims licensing reduces instances of mass shootings omitted one of the most often cited mass shootings in U.S. history, even though that shooting occurred in a licensing state.

Moreover, John Hopkins’ criteria for licensing laws allowed them to bypass Illinois which, in turn, allowed them to sidestep the never ending gun crime of Chicago.

But the study was clear there is no evidence tying “assault weapons” to a lower incidence of mass shootings.

Johns Hopkins Study:

Firearm Purchaser Licensing Laws Linked to Fewer Fatal Mass Shootings
BANS ON LARGE-CAPACITY MAGAZINES WERE ALSO ASSOCIATED WITH FEWER FATAL MASS SHOOTINGS AND FATALITIES
Firearm purchaser licensing laws that require an in-person application or fingerprinting are associated with an estimated 56 percent fewer fatal mass shootings in states that have them, according to a new study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

The study analyzed fatal mass shootings in 45 states between 1984 and 2017 and the association between the rates of those shootings and the presence of various firearm laws.

The study was published in a February 2020 special issue on mass violence in the U.S. in the journal Criminology & Public Policy.

The researchers also found evidence that laws banning large-capacity magazines, defined as those that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition, were associated with significant reductions in the rate of fatal mass shootings with four or more fatalities and the number killed in those shootings. >>>>The size and precision of the estimated effects of LCM bans varied across many statistical analyses presented in study.<<<<

(in other words, our evidence depends on our point of view because the numbers really don’t add up)

“After each horrible mass shooting, there are always policy debates on how they can be prevented,” says lead author Daniel Webster, ScD, MPH, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research and Bloomberg Professor of American Health in Violence Prevention. “One side often calls for expanding background checks to private purchasers, and the other usually calls for fewer restrictions on civilian gun carrying. Our findings indicate that neither of those prescriptions are associated with lower rates of fatal mass shootings. What does appear to work to reduce mass shootings are licensing laws and laws banning large-capacity magazines.”

(But later on down the page they admit that magazine laws have to be ‘controlled for’  – in other words numerically skewed to fit a preconceived idea – …so the above is a lie, right??)

In their analyses, researchers identified 604 mass shootings involving four or more victim fatalities; a total of 2,976 victims were killed in these incidents. Approximately 28 percent (842) of victim fatalities were from domestic-related shootings, 61 percent (2,057) were from non-domestic related shootings, and it was unclear among the remaining 11 percent (77) of victims whether the shooting was domestic-related. Most mass shootings had four to six victim fatalities.

As for licensing, federal law requires licensed firearm dealers—but not private sellers—to initiate a background check before the purchase of a gun. Firearm purchaser licensing laws require even more: a direct application to a law enforcement agency that conducts background checks, often aided by fingerprint-based identity verification of the applicant. Under such laws, a license or permit to purchase is needed for sales by private individuals as well as licensed firearm dealers. Nine states—Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina—and the District of Columbia currently have some form of firearm purchaser or owner licensing laws.

Previous research shows that firearm purchaser licensing laws are associated with reductions in rates of firearm homicides and suicides.

(Did they conveniently forget Chicago?) 

For the study, the researchers analyzed data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Supplementary Homicide Reports, a database of homicide records voluntarily reported to the FBI by local law enforcement agencies, from 1984 to 2017. Data for Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Nebraska, and Montana were excluded due to significant gaps in reporting.

(What are these ‘significant gaps’? Is it that the stats from these states don’t jibe with the anticipated outcome…hmm?)

The Supplementary Homicide Reports collects information on the number of victims, weapon(s) used, circumstances or motive, and the relationship between the offender and the first victim. Shootings connected to gang or illegal drug-related activities were excluded from the analyses.

Due to voluntary reporting policies, the FBI’s database did not include several high-profile mass shootings, including the 2012 Newtown, Connecticut, school shooting, 2012 Aurora, Colorado, movie theater shooting, and the 2017 Sutherland Springs, Texas, church shooting. The researchers addressed these gaps by using data from Stanford University’s Stanford Mass Shootings in America database and the Gun Violence Archive to identify 33 additional fatal mass shootings.

In their study, the researchers made a comprehensive list of all the mass shootings between 1984 and 2017 and categorized the events based on whether the shooter had a domestic relationship (family or intimate partner) to one of the victims. The researchers’ analyses estimated the independent association between annual rates of fatal mass shootings in states and the presence of various state and federal gun laws, while controlling for differences in demographics, social and economic conditions, alcohol consumption, deaths from drug overdoses, and national trends in fatal mass shootings.

Types of firearm laws examined in the study included regulation of civilian concealed carry; extensions of background check requirements at the point of sale for private transfers; prohibitions for non-felony violence, including restraining orders for domestic violence; assault weapon bans; and large-capacity magazine bans.

The study also examined purchaser licensing laws that required in-person application to a law enforcement agency or other fingerprint-based identification of applicants, regardless of whether the sale was by a licensed gun dealer or a private seller. Seven states—Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York—and the District of Columbia currently meet that criteria and were analyzed in the study. Three additional states—Missouri, Michigan, and Nebraska—were also included in the analyses based on their purchaser licensing laws; during the study period, these states repealed all or part of their licensing requirements.

The study did not find significant associations between the incidence of fatal mass shootings and concealed carry laws, comprehensive background check laws without licensing requirements, or firearm prohibitions for violent misdemeanor convictions and domestic violence restraining orders. Although researchers did not find a clear association between firearm restrictions for domestic abusers and reduced fatal mass shootings, other research has shown these laws do reduce intimate partner homicides.

In addition, the study did not find an independent association between assault weapon bans and the incidence of fatal mass shootings after controlling for the effects of bans on large-capacity magazines.

“Evidence Concerning the Regulation of Firearms Design, Sale, and Carrying on Fatal Mass Shootings in the United States” was written by Daniel W. Webster, Alexander McCourt, Cassandra K. Crifasi, Marisa D. Booty, and Elizabeth A. Stuart.

The study was supported by The Joyce Foundation and Dr. Webster’s professorship funded by the Bloomberg American Health Initiative.

(The Joyce Foundation…That right there is the tip off. TJF is and always has been one of the more rabid anti-gun/anti-self defense entities in the U.S. Just another scrap piece of proselytizing from the controllers.)

Perjury charge filed against woman who tried to have CSU officer’s weapons confiscated

FORT COLLINS, Colo. — A perjury charge has been filed against Susan Holmes, the woman who recently tried to use Colorado’s new “red flag” law to have a Colorado State University officer’s weapons confiscated.

Earlier this month, Holmes filed an extreme risk protection order against Cpl. Phillip Morris. It was denied.

Morris shot and killed Holmes’ son in 2017. The district attorney found the shooting to be “clearly justified.”

A petition for an extreme risk protection order requires the petitioner to have a connection to the respondent, such as being a blood relative, a marriage or domestic partner, or having a child in common with the respondent.

Under penalty of perjury, Holmes claimed she had a child in common with Morris when in fact, she does not.

On Thursday, Colorado court records showed Holmes is charged with one count of perjury and one count of attempt to influence a public servant. The latter charge is for allegedly lying to a judge.

The Larimer County Sheriff’s Office said a warrant is out for Holmes and she is not in custody. The sheriff’s office confirmed the warrant is in relation to the ERPO case.

The warrant has been active for about one week.

Holmes’ bond is currently set at $5,000.

Michael Bloomberg Isn’t Really Running For President, And That Should Worry You
The staff, the ad spending, the campaigning — Michael Bloomberg was going to do all of this to defeat President Donald Trump already. Doing it as a ‘candidate’ exempts him from limits on PACs and political donations.

Everyone was saying he was running just because he’s a narcissistic ass, but figuring it’s personal since they’re both NooYawk billionaires and he hates Trump’s guts is more reasonable. And just because he is a billionaire and apparently doesn’t mind spending a billion here and a billion there doesn’t mean if he can figure out a good deal, he won’t use it.

There is very good reason to believe Michael Bloomberg isn’t actually running for president.

Of course, there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. For one, he declared he is. He’s also hired more than 1,000 staff and is still expanding, offering salaries far above campaign averages. This week, he became the first of the declared candidates to have campaigned in all 14 states of March 3’s Super Tuesday primary battle, and he’s spent a quarter billion on political advertising so far. All would point toward Bloomberg indeed running for president.

But here’s the snag: He wanted to do all of this anyway. Everything, that is, but the declaration bit. That, he was loathe to do. But the staff, the ad spending, the campaigning — he was going to do all of this to defeat President Donald Trump already, and we know this because he told us so.

As early as February 2019, the billionaire pledged he’d spend at least $500 million to defeat the president as either a candidate or as what Politico called “a shadow political party for the Democratic nominee.” That massive spend, the report continued, represents “just 1 percent of Bloomberg’s estimated net worth.”

Just a month later, the wealthy New Yorker laughed at the idea he would ever run for president, mocking “Amtrak Joe” Biden for apologizing “for being male, over 50 [and] white,” and Beh-tóh O’Rourke, who Bloomberg joked had “apologized for being born.” Well, a few months later he jumped in anyway. But does the world-renowned winner have any intention of actually winning the nomination?

We might all agree it is strange to hear the hyper-competitive Bloomberg declare he will pay his sizable staff to work on behalf of the people who are supposed to be his primary opponents. His “army of some 500 staffers will march on through the general election in November even if he loses the Democratic nomination, campaign officials [told] NBC News” back when he employed a measly 500 staffers.

Of course, Bloomberg has said the same of the now $2 billion he’s reportedly willing to spend for any campaign to defeat Trump.

This magnanimity in defeat doesn’t seem to square with Michael Bloomberg, cut-throat capitalist billionaire, but it does make sense when viewed in the light of his Bloomberg News empire, which loses money every year. The losses don’t seem to bother Bloomberg, because in this aspect of business he is a man who wants his ideas in the world and is willing to pay to make it happen.

So why declare? Simply put, the billionaire mayor gets a lot more for his money as a candidate than he ever could as a donor or even as the operator of a super PAC.

First, there are limits to what a donor can give a campaign, and $2 billion is way out of the question. Even so, Bloomberg could pour billions into an organization to sway elections, as Charles Koch and George Soros seek to do. Then, there’s something campaigns have that no PAC has — and that’s access to the best rates the market has to offer.

See, super PACs pay more for everything. And not a little more: Depending on the spend, these outfits pay maybe double what a candidate for office must pay for advertisements in digital, radio, cable, newspapers, network television, and even mail.

By law, candidates for office are entitled to the best treatment a station can give. “In the 45 days before a primary and the 60 days before a general election,” Radio & Television Business Report explains, “legally qualified candidates get the lowest rate for a spot that is then running on the station within any class of advertising time and particular daypart.”

If a private entity earned a bonus spot, the ability for his ads to preempt other ads, or any other perks, those must also be made available to the person running for office. Someone is getting a deal for buying in bulk? Then so is the candidate, even if the campaign isn’t buying in bulk. And on and on.

PRESS RELEASE: HEARTLAND INSTITUTE REACTS TO NOAA’S CLAIM 2019 ‘SECOND-WARMEST YEAR ON RECORD’

Agency’s own data actually shows 2019 was cooler than 2005 in the United States; global temp claims riddled with problems

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (January 15, 2020) – The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) today

released a new report claiming 2019 was “the second warmest [year] since modern recordkeeping began in 1880. NOAA says this past year was 0.98 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1951 to 1980 mean, making the 2010s “clearly the warmest decade on record.”

Climate experts at The Heartland Institute dispute this claim, pointing to a cherry-picked period for the “mean” comparison and data that has been consistently adjusted to artificially make recent years appear significantly warmer than in decades past. In fact, NOAA’s state-of-the-art land-based temperature stations in the United States, placed by design to minimize the urban heat-island effect and other factors that corrupt the data, show that the U.S. was cooler in 2019 than in 2005. See the chart below from the U.S. Climate Reference Network via the NOAA website.

Trulli
 The following statements from climate and environment experts at The Heartland Institute—a free-market think tank—may be used for attribution. For more comments, refer to the contact information below. To book a Heartland guest on your program, please contact Media Specialist Billy Aouste at media@heartland.org.“The NOAA/NASA press release is inconsistently presented. For example, they can’t even agree on a common base period for comparisons. Some graphs use 1951-1980 while others compare to 1981-2010 averages to create anomaly plots. NOAA and NASA owe it to the public to present climate data with a consistent climate period for comparison, otherwise it’s just sloppy science.

“NOAA’s U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) has the best quality climate data on the planet, yet it never gets mentioned in their press releases. While the U.S. isn’t the world, the lack of a warming signal in the contiguous United States since 2005 suggests that the data NOAA and NASA use from the antiquated Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN) reflects warmer biases due to urbanization and adjustments to the data. The USCRN has no biases, and no need for adjustments, and in my opinion represents a ground truth for climate change.”

Anthony Watts
Senior Fellow
The Heartland Institute
awatts@heartland.org

“Modest warming has, thankfully, been occurring since we slipped out of the Little Ice Age a little more than a century ago. That was the coldest period of the past 10,000 years and brought horrible human misery. The modest warming that is lately occurring should naturally lead to subsequent years being a little warmer than previous years, which is the case. This is a good thing and just brought tremendous human health and welfare benefits, along with substantial environmental benefits.”

James Taylor
Director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center for Climate and Environmental Policy
The Heartland Institute
jtaylor@heartland.org

“Once again, NASA and NOAA are throwing gasoline on a fire they largely created by ignoring the best data on temperature, and instead using compromised or adjusted temperature readings to reinforce their claim humans are causing a climate crisis. The U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN), the gold standard of surface temperature data, plus data from global satellites and weather balloons, all record minimal or almost no warming over the past 40 years, yet NASA and NOAA ignore these sources of unbiased data, because it undermines their dogmatic belief in human caused climate catastrophe.”

“NASA and NOAA are like toddlers trying to fit round toys into square holes, and just as likely as toddlers to throw fits when their efforts are stymied by reality.”

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D.
Senior Fellow, Environment & Energy Policy
The Heartland Institute
Managing Editor, Environment & Climate News
hburnett@heartland.org

The Martyrdom of Saint Greta of Sweden

So Meat Loaf caused a little kerfuffle this weekend by saying he thought Greta Thunberg had been “brainwashed.”

I don’t know that should be a surprise, but it got me thinking about her again. I have a lot of sympathy for the kid.

For me, it started with seeing her picture. She’s small, slight, even scrawny; her head looks out of proportion to her body. She’s now 17 (as of 3 January) but she still looks childlike, prepubertal, younger than her 14-year-old sister. Frankly, she looks like she’s been in a concentration camp: malnourished over the long term

Sure enough, reading a little about her, we find that she’s an Asperger’s child (I guess this month that’s now called “high-functioning autism”), she has obsessive-compulsive disorder, she stopped eating for months and still refuses to eat anything but certain specific things, in particular, a dish of pancakes filled with rice — but her OCD keeps her from eating if there’s a sticker or label on the package. She suffers from “selective mutism”, which means basically that there are situations in which she’s unable to speak……..

Her public career started when she took Fridays off from school to hold up a sign outside the Swedish Parliament; this grew into a movement that spread throughout Europe.

Through it all, things keep striking me as odd. I don’t know what it’s like in Sweden, but cutting classes one day a week isn’t normally feted as heroic in the US. And she hasn’t been attending school for months as she traveled. In the US, that’s called “dropping out”.

So, this is what we’re being asked to believe: that an autistic kid with OCD who often can’t speak on her own has

  • organized a worldwide movement
  • given TED talks, spoken to the UN General Assembly, and been named Person of the Year by Time Magazine
  • managed to get a ride on a multimillion-dollar racing yacht so she wouldn’t have to fly (and bragged on how she wasn’t releasing CO2 on the trip, although it required seven plane tickets for the crew for the boat).

There’s a bucolic barnyard term for that — actually, several, depending on your choice of equine, bovine, or galline.

This isn’t a neurologically atypical high school kid arranging this: there are adults, and probably a lot of adults, using her as a front.

Exposing How The Hoax Of Climate Change Drives Delirious Political Policies

Once again, it’s Throwback Tuesday and time to wrap up the series on the hoax of man-made climate change by covering how undermining legitimate science affected government policies based upon fraudulent science.  Despite the scandal of Climategate in 2009 and Climategate 2.0 in 2011, the UN IPCC and associated scientists, whose wealth redistribution scheme was based upon the hoax of climate change, work doubly hard to discredit legitimate scientists, as we have found, through unsavory tactics and issue increasingly worsening fraudulent reports based on a political agenda instead of actual scientific data.  Through this measure, it uses fearmongering tactics to brainwash the people and those in government into buying the snake oil that stifling wealthy nations’ economies to give third world nations other people’s money will end/disrupt/quell/limit/slow climate change through decreasing the non-greenhouse gas of Carbon Dioxide (CO2).

Numerous former UN IPCC scientists with impressive credentials and legitimate work, who became disillusioned with the panel and its politically manufactured “scientific” conclusions, are willing to testify to the dishonesty of the process.  But, the UN IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri, in conjunction with Al Gore, calls “climate change” his religion.  Pachauri is no longer with the UN IPCC because of a sexual harassment scandal.  Pachauri’s resignation letter read, “For me the protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission. It is my religion and my dharma”.

Donna Laframboise, a journalist who has written numerous books critical of the UN IPCC, indicates the IPCC reports lack scientific integrity and individuals relying on those reports are basing decisions on information lacking scientific integrity.  According to Laframboise, “the IPCC goes back, after the fact, and changes the original scientific report so that it aligns with the politically negotiated summary”.

She also noted, “After the summaries are haggled over, the IPCC alters what the scientists wrote. That’s the reason the IPCC routinely releases its summaries before it releases the underlying scientific report. In this 2007 news clipping, the IPCC chairman explains: “we have to ensure that the underlying report conforms to the refinements.”

Greenpeace co-founder turned climate skeptic Dr. Patrick Moore commented on Laframboise’s report, noting this is the “perfect reason for the US to abandon the UN Paris climate ‘agreement.’”