The DC Project, Women for Gun Rights, a nationwide grassroots organization of women dedicated to safeguarding the Second Amendment, today released a new video titled, We’re on Offense Now.
Category: Safety
Do Right-to-Carry Concealed Weapons Laws Still Reduce Crime?
A review of the literature studying the effect of right-to-carry laws shows that the weight of evidence indicates that such laws reduced violent crime.
However, more recent studies, using more recent data, tend to find that these laws cause increases in various kinds of violent crime, raising the possibility that circumstances have changed since 2000, causing these laws to become detrimental.
We suggest that these recent studies, which do not use all the available data, are seriously compromised because they compare states that only recently have adopted right-to-carry laws with states that have had these laws for many years, instead of comparing against states with more restrictive laws.
Early adopting states experienced relatively large reductions in crime corresponding to large increases in the number of right-to-carry permits. Late adopting states passed rules making it difficult to obtain permits and exercise the right to carry concealed weapons. Ignoring the fact that these late adopting states with stricter rules on obtaining permits issue relatively few permits can produce perverse results where coefficients imply an increase in crime even though the opposite is true.
We demonstrate this effect with a simple statistical test.
SSRN-id3850436Bill would allow Ohio school staff to carry guns with 20 hours of training
(WJW) – There’s a new push for Ohio lawmakers to approve a bill that would allow educators to carry guns in school.
It’s called House Bill 99 and it would give Ohio schools the authority to put guns in the hands of school staff with only 20 hours of training.
“We have some serious concerns about HB 99 which would essentially gut training requirements for any school employees who are authorized to carry weapons on school property,” said Scott DiMauro, president of the Ohio Education Association.
DiMauro said right now, an Ohio teacher must undergo basic peace officer training at 700 hours in order to carry a gun in school.
“What the bill would do is put a maximum of 20 hours training in that state standard, completely tying the hands of the experts who are tasked with the training regimen,” said DiMauro.
The Buckeye Firearms Association supports the legislation.
“The current requirement has shut down security programs all over the state and there are a lot of schools right now that are wide open and defenseless,” said Dean Rieck, Executive Director.
In addition to teachers, the bill would allow janitors, cafeteria workers and support staff to carry a gun with 20 hours of training.
Rieck said he believes the legislation will give complete control to districts about security in their schools.
“A lot of schools that have security programs with armed personnel are in rural areas where they are far from law enforcement. It could take 15-20 minutes for them to show up,” said Rieck.
Under the proposed legislation, it would still be up to each individual district to decide what they would require.
“There is no state that allows for teachers to be authorized to carry weapons that have a training standard as low as what is being proposed in House Bill 99,” said DiMauro.
The bill has passed in the House. It’s currently in Senate committee but has not been voted on.
Missouri Self-Defense Bill Advances from Senate General Laws [Committee]
….the Senate General Laws Committee voted 4-1 to pass House Bill 1462, to reduce areas where law-abiding citizens are left defenseless. It will now advance to the full Senate for further consideration. Please contact Senate President Dave Schatz and the Senate Majority Floor Leader Caleb Rowden, and ask them to schedule HB 1462 to be heard on the floor.
House Bill 1462 repeals arbitrary “gun-free zones” that do nothing to hinder criminals, while leaving law-abiding citizens defenseless. It removes the prohibition on law-abiding citizens carrying firearms for self-defense on public transit property and in vehicles. This ensures that citizens with varying commutes throughout their day, and of various economic means, are able to exercise their Second Amendment rights and defend themselves.
The bill also repeals the prohibition in state law against carrying firearms for self-defense in places of worship. This empowers private property owners to make such decisions regarding security on their own, rather than the government mandating a one-size-fits-all solution.
SR22® PISTOL PRODUCT SAFETY BULLETIN
SR22 PISTOLS WITH A SERIAL NUMBER OF 369-40079 AND ABOVE ARE NOT AFFECTED BY THIS SAFETY BULLETIN.
Ruger has discovered that a small number of SR22® pistols may have right and left frame inserts that are not properly secured together. In rare circumstances, this condition may render certain internal safety mechanisms ineffective and the pistol has the potential to discharge upon decocking. Pistols that may be exhibiting this condition will intermittently exhibit a “slack” single-action trigger.
NOTE: A “slack” single-action trigger occurs if, while operating the pistol in single-action mode with a magazine inserted, the slide forward, and the manual safety disengaged, a trigger pull does not encounter resistance and the hammer does not fall.
Although only a very small number of pistols appear to be affected, Ruger is committed to safety and would like to examine all SR22 pistols that have ever exhibited a slack single-action trigger or discharged upon decocking.
Potentially affected pistols include any SR22 pistol with a serial number of 369-40078 or lower (including all SR22 pistols with a “SS” prefix). If your SR22 pistol has ever exhibited one of the conditions described above, you should immediately stop using your pistol and sign up for the Safety Retrofit as outlined in the Safety Bulletin. If you have never experienced either condition, your pistol is not affected by this Safety Bulletin.
Details about what to look for and how to sign up for the retrofit also appear on our website at Ruger.com/SR22Retrofit. The website also contains answers to Frequently Asked Questions, a video demonstrating the inspection process, and other information that you may find helpful.
What Gun Restriction Would Biden Pass That Isn’t Already the Law in California?
“We must do more than mourn — we must act,” President Joe Biden said on Sunday’s shoot-out in downtown Sacramento that killed six. Biden called on Congress to ban ghost guns, pass “universal” background checks, ban assault weapons, and repeated the lie that gun manufacturers have special immunity from liability.
California already has “universal” background checks. It has “red flag” laws and domestic-violence gun confiscation (often, without any real due process). It has an assault-weapon and magazine ban, deputizing citizens to enforce them. California has safe-storage laws and a ghost-gun ban. The state has a firearm-sales record and the strictest gun-dealer regulation in the nation. It empowers local authorities to further regulate firearms but not to deregulate. It has raised the allowable age even to buy a shotgun or rifle from 18 to 21. In most municipalities, concealed-carry permits are almost impossible to get.
California is home to 111 laws — not counting the thousands passed in cities and counties — that restrict “the manner and space in which firearms can be used,” according to Boston University School of Public Health. “California has the strongest gun laws in the United States and has been a trailblazer for gun safety for the past 30 years,” says Giffords Law Center. The only thing California hasn’t done is outright ban semi-automatic weapons, which is where all these incremental restrictions are meant to lead.
The Hypocrisy of Gun Control Elitists
In 2020, then-presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg was asked how he could continue to demand gun control while being protected by private guards equipped with the same firearms and magazines that he wanted to ban others from owning. “Does your life matter more than mine or my family’s or these people’s?” Bloomberg’s response, in essence, was that he was not an ordinary person. He was a celebrity and billionaire who received more threats than most people: “That just happens when you are the mayor of New York City or you are very wealthy.”
At the same time, another big-city Democrat politician known for pushing gun control on the lower orders was being shielded by a small army of police officers, presumably at the taxpayers’ expense. The Chicago Sun-Times recently disclosed that a special police security detail, Unit 544, was created two years ago to protect Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, her home and office, and to “oversee her personal bodyguard detail.” The special unit consists of approximately 71 officers, in addition to the mayor’s existing “separate personal bodyguard detail” of 20 officers.
Both cities – ex-Mayor Bloomberg’s New York City and Lightfoot’s Chicago – are experiencing horrific surges in violent crime. The most recent “CompStat” report from the NYPD indicates rapes, robberies, felony assaults, burglaries, grand larceny, and auto thefts have all increased significantly as compared to the same time last year, and the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) own “CompStat” contains the same dismal message.
While privileged politicians float above this wave of criminality, untroubled by threats to person or property, less exalted individuals are forced to rely on whatever police resources may be available or become their own version of Unit 544.
Last week in Chicago, for instance, a 70-year-old Uber driver, threatened by robbers who then carjacked his vehicle, had to wait 75 minutes before police could respond. Police assigned to serve the area had been drastically reduced to 261 officers, the “lowest monthly staffing level for the district since at least August 2017,” so no one was available to take the assignment until the next shift began. The problem isn’t restricted to that police district: overall, more than 660 CPD officers retired in 2021, almost double the number of retirees in 2018, and recruiting of new officers dropped during the pandemic. Carjacking reports, meanwhile, have set a new monthly record as of February 2022, up 390% from February 2019.
The impact on public safety is what makes Lightfoot’s private defense force of almost 100 officers all the more outrageous. In 2020, residents had already complained that patrol officers in areas close to Lightfoot’s home were redeployed to the mayor’s residence. It’s at odds with the mayor’s oft-used theme of “all hands on deck” to address public safety using a “coordinated and collective effort,” if scores of the deckhands are used for what amounts to private security work. And Lightfoot herself can’t pretend that police resources aren’t affected, because the creation of Unit 544 coincided with her proposal to cut the CPD budget by $80 million as part of addressing a pandemic–related citywide budget shortfall.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Lightfoot asserts her special police detail became necessary because in 2020, there was “a significant amount of protests all over the city, and some of them targeted [] my house.” (News reports from 2020 indicate that the protests included, ironically, calls to remove police from schools, for reforms to the CPD, and to defund the police.) A 2020 news report quotes Lightfoot defending, as well, the closing off of residential streets around her home to activists, because of threats to her safety. “[T]he situation can’t be compared to protests at former mayor Rahm Emanuel’s home given the pandemic… This is a different time – like no other.”
John Catanzara, president of Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police, observes that “[w]hile murders are soaring, while districts are barebones for manpower, all that matters [to Lightfoot] is protecting her castle.”
Of course, it is completely reasonable for Lightfoot to take lawful measures to protect herself and her family, the same as anyone else, but her situation is arguably no more dire nor compelling than the crisis of crime faced by every other Chicago resident today.
The problem is that the mayor, and others like her, are the same anti-gun advocates who see no contradiction between demanding ever more pointless restrictions on the ability of constituents to legally access firearms for self-defense, and ensuring their own safety with assigned police bodyguards and armed security. Ordinary citizens don’t need guns because the police will protect them – even if crime climbs to levels not seen in decades and there’s upward of an hour’s wait on a 911 call.
These people would have you believe that this isn’t gun control elitism in action – it’s just that they aren’t like you and me. After all, if you don’t have bread you can always eat cake.
About that “GOP states have higher murder rates” study
I debated long and hard about giving this “study” from the moderate Democratic group Third Way even a paragraph’s worth of attention because of how shamelessly unscientific it is, but I’ve seen enough chatter about it online that I feel like I can’t ignore the problems I have with it, especially since I’m sure that gun control activists will be pointing to what Third Way has to say as evidence for the need for more gun control laws.
Let’s start with the premise for the “study,” which Third Way calls “The Red State Murder Problem” even though their own summary demonstrates that’s not exactly the issue.
- The rate of murders in the US has gone up at an alarming rate. But, despite a media narrative to the contrary, this is a problem that afflicts Republican-run cities and states as much or more than the Democratic bastions.
In other words, what Third Way’s research shows is that the increase in violent crime beginning in 2020 was seen across the board. I don’t think there’s any disagreement on that, though it should be noted that there were also areas of the country that saw declines in homicides in 2020, including blue-state Baltimore and red-state Oklahoma City. In fact, here are the cities with the biggest increases and decreases in homicides in 2020, as reported by the anti-gun outfit Everytown for Gun Safety. Let’s start with the cities that saw the biggest murder spikes.
- In seven cities, the gun homicide rate at least doubled in 2020 compared to 2019: Lubbock, TX; Des Moines, IA; Fresno, CA; Vallejo, CA; Trenton, NJ; Columbus, OH; Syracuse, NY; and Milwaukee, WI.
By the way, those crack researchers at Everytown say there were seven cities where the gun homicide rate doubled, but I count eight cities up there. Third Way looked at states that voted for Trump vs. states that voted for Biden in 2020 as their “red/blue” metric, which in this case means that cities in three Trump states had double digit increases in the gun homicide rate, compared to five cities in Biden states. This completely cuts against Third Way’s hypothesis about the increase in homicides being a red state problem, but it gets even worse from there.
Hmm. seems the answer is: Have a big enough gun, know how to use it, and if you decide a bear needs shooting, SHOOT THE BEAR AND KEEP SHOOTING UNTIL IT STOPS AND GOES AWAY, OR IS DEAD, or you are.
Lessons From Handgun Defense Failures Against Bears
In 2016, this correspondent and others started searching for incidents in which a handgun was fired to defend against a bear or bears, and failed to stop the attack by driving off or killing the bear.
Access to a defensive tool, such as a shotgun, rifle, bear spray, handgun, hatchet, or knife all present similar problems. Therefore we only considered cases where a handgun was actually fired. If we were looking at the effectiveness of bear spray, we would only look at cases where the bear spray was actually sprayed.
To prevent selection bias, all cases where a handgun was fired defensively against a bear or bears, which could be documented, were included.
People on the Internet claimed handguns were ineffective in defending against bears. Over years, we found 120 cases where handguns were effectively used in defense against bears. We found three failures.
The three failures included failures against the three bear species found in North America, one each of polar, grizzly, and black bears.
Here are the details of the three cases, presented in chronological order, followed by analysis and commentary:
Question O’ The Day. I think the answer just might be ‘Reverse Gears!‘
California has toughest U.S. gun laws. After Sacramento shooting, what else can lawmakers do?
They’ve banned high-capacity magazines and cracked down on assault weapons. They’ve made it so Californians have to pass a background check to purchase a gun and ammunition. They’ve prohibited buyers from having ammo or “ghost” gun parts shipped directly to their homes.
When it comes to gun laws, California’s legislators have passed some of the most stringent regulations in the country, checking off nearly every box on national gun control advocates’ wishlist.
A mass shooting early Sunday that left six dead and 12 wounded just a block from the Capitol — the very building where these laws were enacted — immediately prompted new calls for legislation to curb gun violence, from California elected officials and gun-control advocates across the nation.
“The scourge of gun violence continues to be a crisis in our country, and we must resolve to bring an end to this carnage,” Gov. Gavin Newsom, who’s already signed 15 gun-control laws, said Sunday in a prepared statement.
The call for action on the federal level reached as far as the White House.
“Ban ghost guns,” President Joe Biden said, expressing his sorrow for the Sacramento victims. “Require background checks for all gun sales. Ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Repeal gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability.”
But what else can California’s lawmakers do to restrict guns that they haven’t already done — and have their laws survive the inevitable challenge by Second Amendment advocates?
Even before Sunday’s shooting, Democratic legislators planned to do more. One new bill, introduced by state Senator Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys, would give citizens the “private right of action” to sue gun manufacturers and suppliers. The bill, SB 1327, is modeled after an anti-abortion law enacted in Texas.
State Sen. David Min, D-Irvine, introduced Senate Bill 915, which would prohibit the sale of firearms or ammunition on state property, effectively ending gun shows on 73 state-owned fairgrounds. Previous efforts on a blanket-ban on gun shows at fairgrounds have failed.
“These are all practical actions we can take today to stop gun violence,” Hertzberg said Sunday.
But the fact is, the recent legislation pending in California is relatively modest compared to some of the sweeping reforms that gun-control advocates are demanding in other states and on the federal level — simply because most of the toughest curbs are already part of California law.
Armed school staff bill advances in Ohio statehouse
Constitutional Carry may be the biggest Second Amendment-related bill to win approval in Ohio this year, but hopefully it won’t be the last. Nearly four months after the Ohio House approved a measure that would once again allow for school districts across the state to have trained and vetted volunteer staff serve as an armed first line of defense against attacks on school grounds, the state Senate is now taking up the issue.
House Bill 99 received its first Senate hearing Wednesday in the Veterans and Public Safety Committee, with bill sponsor Rep. Thomas Hall, R-Madison Township, saying local schools need to be able to make decisions to protect students.
“At the end of the day, what we are talking about here is empowering our local schools to make the best decision for their students and educators so that our children feel safe and are safe in Ohio schools,” Hall said. “We have worked tirelessly on this bill to do our part in protecting our schools and our communities.”
For several years districts across the state were able to have armed school staff in place with no issue, but after several parents sued the Madison School District (with the help of Everytown for Gun Safety), the Ohio Supreme Court ultimately ruled that under current state law all armed school staff must undergo more than 700 hours of law enforcement training.
Under HB 99, those training standards would be dropped to a much more reasonable 20 hours, with 4 hours of annual training. Those volunteering to protect their school don’t need to waste hours of their time learning about processing evidence, defensive driving, and a host of other activities that police officers regularly perform but armed school staff members would never have cause to do. These staff members aren’t cops, and they’re not supposed to be. They only reason they’re carrying on campus is to stop a deadly attack aimed at students or staff members. Period.
The duty of those volunteers was one of the points raised in opposition to the bill by one police union in Ohio, whose representative warned that teachers may have to abandon their students if there is a threat on campus.
“If a school employee, regardless of her position, is carrying a firearm, they are considered on duty according to [the Ohio Revised Code],” Mike Weinman testified on behalf of the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio. “When armed, the teacher’s primary responsibility is no longer teaching but an armed first responder. She will be required to abandon her students and respond to whatever threat may be in the building at a moment’s notice.”
Six school districts and two county sheriff’s departments, however, testified in favor of the bill. “Trust the locally elected officials to do their jobs and govern on behalf of the people who elected them and put them in their positions. Trust that they care for the safety and well-being of their students and staff,” Ira Wentworth, superintendent of Indian Valley Local Schools, testified. “The school boards and those staff members who are selected and volunteer to conceal and carry are not the bad guys; they are the good guys wanting to protect others from the bad guys. Put your trust in the good guys.”
There are currently thousands of Ohio educators who have undergone the three-day FASTER training course and who were already carrying on campus before the state Supreme Court decision disarmed them on the job, and as far as I’m aware of there had been no issues reported in any of the districts that had set up an armed school staff policy. Many of these school districts are rural or smaller in size, and simply don’t have the budget to have a school resource officer in every building. In some districts it might take police ten minutes or more to arrive on campus, even in the most dire of circumstances, and that’s far too long to wait for an armed response when there’s someone actively attacking the students inside the school.
HB 99 would restore some sanity to the current law, and would be a huge boost to student safety in those districts that choose to have armed school staff members in place. I’m really glad to see the state Senate start to move on this bill, and I hope that, just like Constitutional Carry, it too will soon be sent to Mike DeWine’s desk for his signature.
Observation O’ The Day
The largest study of modern society and firearms is in progress here in the U.S. It’s called ‘constitutional’, or ‘permitless’ carry.
So far it’s a grand success. The data seen provides such a conclusion, and really, no further study is needed.
To put it simply, self defense with firearms in the hands of common people works (for everyone but government and criminals, that is)
But since that doesn’t fit the narrative, it can’t be correct.
Out of 27,900 research publications on gun laws, only 123 tested their effects rigorously. (‘rigorously’ as only in relation to the others which were unmitigated slop)
So this jerk of a professor feels that if you can’t successfully stop all of the assailants attacking you with a “low capacity” mag then you deserve to die for your lack of “marksmanship training”
How gun control proponents might win over some Second Amendment advocates
The writer is a is a professor of psychology at Elon University.
I’m no expert on firearms engineering or policy, just a concerned citizen who has spent my lifetime around knowledgeable and responsible gun owners.
From this personal experience, one thing is clear to me: A considerable number of proponents of gun control seem to know very little about the firearms they seek to regulate and so often sound ignorant when discussing gun control.
Those in favor of expansive gun rights are keenly aware of this lack of understanding, making it difficult for Second Amendment advocates to take serious proposals to further regulate guns.
It’s time to stop obsessing over the nebulous term “assault weapon” and the cosmetic features that qualify a firearm as an “assault weapon.”
There is one functional feature of many “assault weapons” that, if regulated, could substantially reduce injuries and fatalities during mass-shootings — high-capacity magazines. A ban on such magazines would be a meaningful step to reduce the potential damage a firearm can cause in a mass shooting scenario.
There is no legitimate sporting or self-defense need for someone with proper marksmanship training to possess a 10-plus round magazine.
Creating a regulatory environment where the possession, sale and manufacture of such magazines could be phased out over time would be a substantial advancement from a harm-reduction standpoint. It could include a multi-year plan where low-capacity magazines would be made widely available to law-abiding gun owners before anything was banned outright.
Common-sense gun regulations (such as extensive owner training, licensing, and perhaps the registration of all firearms) that treat guns and shooting the same way we treat motor vehicles and driving are worthy of significant discussion. But this dialogue becomes challenged when the proponents of such regulation are fixated on the form of particular firearms, rather than their function.
Mat Gendle, Elon
Ukraine war reintroduces U.S. politicians to the Second Amendment
Ukrainian police should burn their gun registration records now
Will Russian President Vladimir Putin’s military overrun Ukraine like Adolf Hitler’s army overran France in 1940, or will Kyiv become Mr. Putin’s Stalingrad? Ukraine’s armed population could play an increasingly decisive role, from house-to-house fighting in the cities to guerilla strikes in the countryside. In the United States, Second Amendment supporters see Ukrainian resistance as exemplifying the virtues of an armed citizenry, while detractors are aghast at the implications.
On Feb. 23, as Russian troops stood poised to attack, the Ukrainian Parliament (Verkhovna Rada) passed a law granting citizens the right to carry firearms for self-defense outside their homes. Ukrainians could buy AR-15 and AK-47 semi-automatic rifles.
When Russia launched its attack on Ukraine the following day, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — who previously resisted liberalizing firearm laws — directed that any citizen who wanted to defend the country would be given a weapon. More than 25,000 automatic rifles reportedly were distributed in Kyiv alone.
Ukrainians obviously have no wish to be part of Mother Russia. In the “Holodomor,” the Soviet-induced famine of 1932-33, Stalin exterminated 7 to 12 million Ukrainians. Many thought the Germans would be liberators when they attacked in 1941, only to find that the Nazis regarded all Slavs as “Untermensch” (subhuman). Some would fight against both the Nazis and the Reds. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army continued to fight the Communists until 1950.
When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, Ukraine inherited Soviet restrictions on gun ownership, including strict licensing and registration requirements. Ukraine reported in 1997 that 722,739 civilians had registered firearms. According to GunPolicy.org, that left “uncounted a national stockpile of 1.5 million to 5.5 million undocumented, illicit small arms.” Illicit? When the state denies the right to have arms, subjects will do what is necessary to defend themselves. Should Mr. Putin win the current aggression, those with registered guns will be hunted down. Hunting down “undocumented” gun owners won’t be so easy.
As late as 2018, there were 892,854 registered firearms in Ukraine, compared to an estimated 3.5 million “illegal” firearms. This is the same pattern in states like California and New York, where laws requiring the registration of so-called “assault weapons” are largely ignored.
Ukraine has been the only European nation with no actual firearm statutes, though the Ministry of Internal Affairs, in 1998 — seven years after independence — issued Order No. 622, which gave government officials discretion to decide who could obtain or carry firearms. Under this corrupt practice, officials gave hundreds of thousands of firearms to their friends in the elite.
Despite this aberration, Ukraine had been gravitating toward Western values and away from Russian domination. In 2013, Ukraine’s oldest law journal, the Law of Ukraine, published an issue on the U.S. Bill of Rights. Having read my book, “The Founders’ Second Amendment,” the editor invited me to contribute an article on the subject. George Mason University Law Prof. Joyce Lee Malcolm, author of “To Keep and Bear Arms,” also was featured.
Support was growing for liberalized gun laws at that time. The Ukrainian Gun Owners Association and some political parties were demanding action. My article highlighted the right to arms as the mark of a free people. Referring to “the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation,” James Madison wrote that the European monarchies “are afraid to trust the people with arms.”
In this period, Mr. Putin was promoting agitation over Crimea. On Feb. 22, 2014, the Rada ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, a long-time Soviet apparatchik who fled to Russia. The Rada then elected Oleksandr Turchynov as its chair, who immediately proposed a constitutional amendment that included the following three clauses.
First, military training was required for all able-bodied citizens.
Second, everyone had the right to defend their constitutional rights against the usurpation of power or encroachment on the sovereignty of Ukraine.
And third: “Every citizen of Ukraine has the right to possess firearms to protect his life and health, house and property, the life and health of others, constitutional rights and freedoms in case of usurpation of power, and encroachments on the constitutional order, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”
That broad language expressed the ideals held by our Founders, which found more concise expression in the Second Amendment. The Ukrainians seem to have improved on James Madison’s draftsmanship.
Mr. Putin did not recognize the legitimacy of the new government, and four days later, on Feb. 26, 2014, Russian troops invaded Crimea. Mr. Turchynov, who was also acting prime minister and commander of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, fought back against Russian surrogates engaged in terrorist activities. Still, Ukrainian forces were no match for the Russians and their toadies.
Mr. Putin hasn’t forgotten. Just days ago, amid the current invasion, Pravda called for bringing Mr. Turchynov to justice for his supposed “war crimes.”
Russia’s military annexation of Crimea brought the reform efforts to a halt, and the proposed constitutional amendment was not acted on. Only when the current invasion appeared imminent did the Rada enact a liberalized gun law, and the government handed out countless firearms to citizens.
When Nazi Germany overran France in 1940, Nazi military officials posted notices that all who failed to turn in their firearms within 24 hours would be executed. French police had gun registration records, making it convenient for the Germans to find the “legal” gun owners. But many Frenchmen had not registered their guns and, despite daily reports of executions, hid them. The arms would be used by the Resistance.
I can’t be sure if Mr. Putin’s invaders have been posting similar notices, but now would be a good time for Ukrainian police to burn their gun registration records. Those who never registered won’t have that specific worry.
While the 2014 constitutional amendment was not adopted, many Ukrainians now possess arms for the very purpose our Second Amendment was enacted: so citizens can protect their freedom, the sovereignty and territorial integrity of their country, and their lives and those of their families and countrymen.
So, next time you hear U.S. politicians propose restrictions on Second Amendment rights, you’ll know what to tell them: Remember Ukraine.
First-time ‘Pandemic Gun Buyers’™ support gun rights just as much, if not more than pre-pandemic gun owners
One in Five American Households Purchased a Gun During the Pandemic
Survey: First-time gun purchasers during the pandemic were more likely to be younger and People of Color, compared to pre-pandemic U.S. gun owners, but they share similar views on gun control.
CHICAGO, March 24, 2022 – Eighteen percent of U.S. households purchased a gun since the start of the pandemic (March 2020–March 2022), according to new survey data from NORC at the University of Chicago, increasing the percentage of U.S. adults living in a household with a gun to 46%. Over this period, one in 20 adults in America (5%) purchased a gun for the first time.
According to the FBI, an average of 13 million guns were sold legally in the U.S. each year between 2010 and 2019, increasing to about 20 million annual gun sales in both 2020 and 2021.
[large images linked]
“Increasing gun sales during the pandemic were driven in nearly equal parts by people purchasing a gun for the first time and existing gun owners purchasing additional firearms,” said John Roman of NORC at the University of Chicago. “New gun owners during the pandemic were much more likely to be younger and People of Color compared to pre-pandemic gun owners in America.”
Despite demographic differences between first-time and pre-pandemic U.S. gun owners, NORC’s experts found that the two groups have similar views on gun-control policies. Both first-time and pre-pandemic U.S. gun owners support more permissive gun policies than non-gun owners. These included policies such as expanding concealed carry, shortening waiting periods before gun purchases, and allowing teachers and school officials to carry guns in schools.
“First-time gun buyers’ attitudes toward gun control look remarkably similar to those of the pre-pandemic U.S. gun owner,” said John Roman. “Whether they bought a gun because of existing beliefs about gun control—or owning a gun changed their policy views—is unknown, but it is notable that the policy positions of new gun owners are so different from non-gun owners.”
The lies the media refuses to call out
The media isn’t exactly friendly towards gun ownership. We all know this, so I’m not exactly breaking news here.
However, they will still occasionally take issue with outright lies, even if they ultimately agree with the position.
There are some lies they won’t bother to call out, and this is one of them:
What is known about the links among gun prevalence, gun purchasing trends and gun violence?
We’ve known for a long time that the more access there is to firearms in a society, the more firearm violence there is likely to be. It’s been shown in comparisons of societies and U.S. states with different levels of firearm ownership.
During the pandemic, as purchasing picked up across the country, we learned there was – at least early on – a relationship between an increase in gun purchases above expected levels and a later increase in violence above expected levels.
As 2020 went on, that signal was lost, except for domestic violence, because many other things were contributing to increases in violence.
We’ve known no such thing about access to firearms.
We’ve been told that such a link exists, but when you look at the studies that claim this, you can see serious problems with every single one of them.
For example, when comparing societies or even different states, it’s impossible to truly control for other variables that may somehow impact violent crime. While the prevalence of guns may exist, so do numerous other factors that can easily contribute to the problem.
Issues like jobs, education, population density, and a host of other factors all have been argued to contribute to crime. So why wouldn’t they also be a factor where guns are easily accessible?
That’s a question the media never answers.
Nor do they seem to consider why this knowledge is so unquestionable despite crime skyrocketing someplace like Los Angeles, which doesn’t have easy access to firearms?
It’s because the media simply doesn’t care about the truth.
They’ve pushed the gun control narrative with every fiber of their being. They’ll have a gun-control advocate on the primetime talk shows to calmly discuss their point of view, but gun rights advocates are often paired with another gun-control activist so they can debate the issue, tilting the balance so people are really getting inundated with one side.
Media personalities have to know what they’re doing, just like they have to know that this idea that we know definitively that increased access to guns somehow makes violent crime higher is bogus.
They know and they don’t care.
They like these kinds of lies because they can hold up those flawed studies and say they’re only spitting facts, trusting that most people wouldn’t understand why those studies are complete and utter BS. They’re hoping you’re too stupid to learn how to read a study, learn to find the flaws in a given study, then criticize it for being what it is, an attempt to push a narrative.
Frankly, I’m kind of sick of seeing this nonsense from our media. The thing is, I don’t expect to ever see them do better, either.
Clear Thinking About Taxing Guns
We are strange creatures. We see the world and build mental models of how the world works. Soon, those models become more significant to us than reality itself. That is dangerous when so much of our “experience” is from the news and entertainment media. We think our tiny screens show us what is really happening. We want to be carful about what we put into our heads.
Here in the USA, there are over a million violent crimes a year. The vast majority of them do not involve the criminal using a gun. At the same time, honest citizens like us defend ourselves with a firearm over a million times. Each year criminals also kill a few thousand people with a firearm. Mass murderers kill a few hundred of us. That isn’t what we see on our small screens.
The media inverts those proportions. We might think that mass murder is common and armed defense is rare. That lets special interests with a political agenda play on our distorted view of reality. That distortion is dangerous for all of us.
Three states recently passed constitutional carry legislation. That means that people who legally own a gun are allowed to carry their gun in public without asking for a permit and paying a tax. The new law won’t change how armed criminals behave since criminals who were not allowed to own a gun were already carrying their guns illegally. Breaking the law is what criminals do every day. Our gun laws disarmed the people who obey the law, and now we’ve reduced those infringements on honest people in three more states.
Now that constitutional carry passed, more law-abiding citizens will carry a legally owned firearm in public and at home. That makes life harder for criminals since the thugs don’t know if their intended victims are armed. The criminal’s uncertainty makes all of us safer. We are safer if we choose to carry a personal firearm and if we choose to go unarmed.
I studied the effects of concealed carry licensing across the United States. As you’d expect, fewer of us get our license to carry as that license becomes more expensive and more time consuming. What surprised and pleased me was that more of us take firearms training when the costs of a license go down.
That sounds counter intuitive from one point of view. If we drop the state mandate to take a firearms training class then more of us will take a class? I see why you could be skeptical.
Now consider another perspective. The state not only required a class, but they taxed us if we wanted to have a carry permit. No one would be surprised if more of us got firearms training if the state gave us a few hundred dollars. That is what happens when licensing fees decrease. We were able to spend our safety budget on firearms training rather than on paying state taxes and fees. We’re wealthier because the state isn’t taxing us as much, and now we can afford to take more firearms safety training.
That isn’t what the anti-gun Democrat politicians told us would happen. They said that blood would flow in the streets. They say the same thing each time a state considers removing the taxes and regulations on honest people who want to defend themselves with a personal firearm.
Whether we believe the politicians or not depends on the models of human behavior we carry in our heads.
Ask yourself if these anti-gun politicians were right. Did disarming the law-abiding victims make us safer? We already have over 23 thousand firearms regulations. In contrast, there were 21 states that already allowed ordinary citizens to carry a firearm in public without a permit. When you listen to the news and hear stories of violent crime, are those stories from states where honest citizens are armed or from states where honest citizens have been disarmed? Does the disarmament model actually make us safer?
It is nearly impossible to get a carry permit in parts of California, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and in Maryland. Cities like Los Angeles, New York City, Springfield, Camden, and Baltimore are some of our most violent cities. If disarming honest citizens made us safer then we should see the results on the nightly news. What do you see?
We all want to stop violent criminals. Some people decided that guns were bad so they passed laws that disarmed the people who obey the law. I think that model of human behavior is incomplete. I like it when the good guys can defend themselves. That happens over a million times a year. I think that model of human behavior gives us better results than disarming the victims.
There is a bit of good news that we don’t see reported yet. We are not all the same. Some of us were able to pay the thousand-dollar tax in order to protect our families with a firearm. Many of us couldn’t afford that much. Removing some of the fees and regulations on armed defense means that more of us can now afford a gun and self-defense training. More of us will be armed at home and in public. Fewer of us will be unarmed victims. More poor people can defend themselves from violent criminals.
That helps the people who need help the most. I like that, and so do most of you.
The authors call the 2nd amendment “dangerous”, a violation of international law, and say right to carry laws cause “assassinations”
Dad calls people like this: ‘overeducated idiots’.
The SCOTUS decisions in the Heller, McDonald & Caetano cases show these ‘academics’ to be precisely that.
Abstract
The second amendment regarding the right to bear arms is regarded as one of the most problematic provisions in the US Constitution. Despite its historical roots, “bearing” arms for personal self-defense might no longer be suitable for the 21st century in light of recent jurisprudence and sociology findings. Freedom and autonomy are the foundation upon which the bill of rights was drafted. The bill of rights offers protection for individuals against state interference by granting them, inter alia, the right to bear arms for self-defense, right against self-incrimination, and due process rights. Nonetheless, the Texas Senate Bill 8 was passed to limit the Roe v. Wade right to abortion only to the first six weeks of pregnancy – essentially obliterating Roe v. Wade. The Texas Senate Bill 8 design allowed it to withstand the initial consideration by the US Supreme Court. In this research we ask three interrelated questions. First, does the Second Amendment right constitute an afront to International Law’s right to life under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“UDHR”) and the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights (“ICCPR”)? If yes, can states adopt a design similar to Texas Bill 8 to ban or extensively regulate the second amendment right? Finally, what are the intrinsic differences between the right to bearing arms and the right to abortion? If they are intrinsically different, this research calls for examining each of them under a different scrutiny standard. In order to answer the last question, we assess two landmark cases regarding abortion and right to bear arms currently pending before the US Supreme Court, in an attempt to predict the future of those rights.
South Dakota: Three Pro-Gun Bills Signed by Governor Noem
Last week, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem signed a trio of pro-gun measures that strengthen our right to self-defense in the Mount Rushmore State. These measures will go into effect on July 1, 2022.
Senate Bill 195 clarifies South Dakota’s current Stand your Ground law by establishing that the burden of proof, by clear and convincing evidence, lies on the party seeking to overcome the immunity provided under this law. This measure clarifies the burden of proof and who bears the burden of proof in Stand your Ground self-defense cases.
House Bill 1162 updates the definition of “loaded firearm” under South Dakota law to designate that a firearm is considered loaded only if a round is chambered. This update provides easier methods of storing firearms in an “unloaded” manner, while still maintaining utility in self-defense situations when seconds matter.
Senate Bill 212, as amended on the Senate Floor, reduces the cost of South Dakota carry permits to $0. SB 212 allows those who wish to use South Dakota’s reciprocity agreements with other states, to do so and not be heavily burdened by what is essentially a tax on their right to self-defense.