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.
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.
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.
Black Firearm Owners: Gun Control Hurts Our Communities
Jessica Luckett got her first gun at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic and it opened her eyes to the various laws and policies governing legal firearms ownership.
She works remotely for a nonprofit and lives alone in a West Pullman townhouse on the southern tip of Chicago. She often visits family and friends in Englewood, a high-crime neighborhood on the South Side where she grew up.
For Illinois residents to own a gun, they must get a firearm owner’s identification card, which is a months-long process.
Then, to carry the gun outside the home for self-defense, a concealed carry license is needed, which Luckett acquired.
Yet, through friends at a women’s gun club, she learned that other states observe very different gun laws. Most don’t ask for a firearm owner’s identification card and some don’t even ask for a concealed carry license.
“Why do we have an amendment that says right to bear arms, yet all states are so different?” she asked. “The amendment is for the entire United States, it is not for one state or another.”
She also questions the push for various gun control measures at the federal, state, and local levels, often by lawmakers from her party, the Democrats.
“It is taking away our Second Amendment right to bear arms, and I believe we should be able to protect ourselves,” she said.
Like Luckett, many first-time black gun owners are on a similar discovery journey, looking more closely at the narratives and policies affecting their newly embraced Second Amendment rights, according to Philip Smith, president of the National African American Gun Association.
During the pandemic-era gun sales boom, 21 million sales-related background checks were conducted in 2020, according to an estimate by Firearm Industry and Trade Association.
African Americans and first-time gun buyers were the groups that registered the biggest jumps.
The Iowa governor says gun control is not the answer.
Reynolds says strict gun control is not the answer after drive-by shooting
DES MOINES, Iowa — Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds had a message Wednesday on the deadly drive-by shooting outside of East High School last week.
At an event Wednesday, Reynolds called the shooting a heartbreaking tragedy but argued stricter gun laws are not the answer.
“The tragedy is our educational system is letting these kids down. They should have been in school. We should be figuring out resources to help them stay there,” Reynolds said.
Instead, she says the focus should be on keeping kids in the classroom.
“Let’s figure out how we get these kids in school, get them the education they need and set them up to be successful. Not set them up for jail or a life of crime. And so that’s where we’re going to continue to focus. We have gun laws. We have laws on the books right now for guns, and those weren’t accessed legally,” Reynolds said.
Des Moines police haven’t determined how the teens got the guns, but say they were possessed illegally because they were minors.
Fifteen-year-old Jose Lopez was killed in the shooting on March 7.
Two teenage girls were injured and remain hospitalized. Four of the suspects that are charged as adults have their first court appearance on Friday. However, one of them will not physically be in court because he entered a written appearance.
Iowa Democrats criticized Reynolds for placing blame on public schools.
House Minority Leader Jennifer Konfrst released a statement saying, “Iowans know the real tragedy is that a 15-year-old has died and two remain in the hospital. Instead of using our Iowa values to bring us together, Reynolds is using this tragedy to vilify teachers and drive Iowans apart.”
Des Moines Schools Superintendent Tom Ahart said Monday, “It’s unfortunate that our state and our country have become a place where firearms are far too easily accessible. We remain committed to protecting our students and staff, but real change to gun laws and access would go a long way to help us.”
License-to-Carry Applications Have Skyrocketed In Philly — Even More Than You’d Think
“When I saw how high the numbers were, I had to call our stats department to make sure they were right,” a Philadelphia Police Department representative told us.
It didn’t surprise me a bit to learn that license-to-carry applications in Philadelphia have risen over the past year. First, you have the constant reports of shootings, carjackings and other violent crimes in the city. Second, the Philadelphia Police Department made it dramatically easier to apply for a license to carry, starting in January 2021. But I wasn’t exactly ready for just how big this increase has been. And neither was the Philadelphia Police Department, it seems.
“When I saw how high the numbers were, I had to call our stats department to make sure they were right,” police department spokesperson Jasmine Reilly told me after I requested the data.
From 2017 through 2020, the number of license-to-carry applications in Philadelphia held about steady, ranging between 11,049 and 11,814 applications each year. But in 2021, 70,789 people applied for licenses to carry guns.
In other words, license-to-carry applications more than sextupled last year. And in January of this year, the number of applications continued its upward trajectory. (The Pennsylvania State Police publish an annual report showing the number of licenses issued in the counties surrounding Philadelphia as well as in the rest of the state, but a spokesperson for PSP says that data isn’t yet available for 2021.)
Wake Forest University sociologist David Yamane, author of the 2021 book Concealed Carry Revolution, says there’s a well-established trend over the past few decades of gun culture in America shifting from guns for sport, like hunting and target shooting, to guns for personal defense. “This trend has accelerated during the pandemic and other events of the last two years,” he says, adding that licenses to carry surged right along with gun ownership. “But this increase in Philadelphia is exceptional.”
I wonder why it is, you almost never find a gun control advocate who immigrated here from a nation controlled by a tyrannical goobermint?
Arizona campus carry advocate motivated by childhood in Communist country
Can you imagine if Cambodia had the Second Amendment?’
Legislation currently pending in Arizona would allow faculty members and students to “carry or possess” firearms while on campus, as long as they have their gun permits.
Young Americans for Liberty is supportive of the legislation because the libertarian organization believes it will help reduce crime on campus.
But the legislator behind the bill has a bigger concern too – preventing tyranny, like what he saw as a child during the Fall of Saigon during the Vietnam War.
The chief sponsor of House Bill 2447, Quang Nguyen, said he is motivated by his childhood in Vietnam.
“I came from a Communist country where people were actually killed at will,” he said. “Can you imagine if Cambodia had the Second Amendment? We wouldn’t have two million people killed by Pol Pot,” he said at the February 9 hearing.
The Republican legislator is also a concealed carry instructor and the president of the Arizona State Rifle and Pistol Association.
Permitless Carry Homicide Increase Claim Refuted by Cited Study
“A Republican permitless carry gun law will bring Ohio more death,” writer Craig Calcaterra asserts in a Tuesday Columbus Alive article. “Researchers have found that states with permitless carry laws have experienced an 11 percent increase in handgun homicide rates after enactment.”
The topic could not be timelier. At this writing, the legislature has passed Senate Bill 215 up to Governor Mike DeWine and it is awaiting his signature, his veto, or his silence, in which case it becomes law after 10 days without his participation.
DeWine has been a mixed bag for gun owners. At one time was called “a principled statesman” by the Brady Campaign, until he decided NRA’s endorsement worked better for his political ambitions. But recently he’s been making noises about distancing himself from that and going back to supporting gun laws like the so-called STRONG Act.
As expected, he’s being hammered by both sides, with the major, well-funded gun-grab groups and influential lobbyists like the Fraternal Order of Police getting the lion’s share of sympathetic headlines. Prominent among those is the aforementioned Columbus Alive article, especially influential because the outlet is part of the powerful Gannett Publications empire with its far-reaching USA Today network, and because Columbus is Ohio’s state capital, and politicians take note of what’s being said about them in the media.
An 11 percent increase in handgun homicides attributable to permitless carry is significant enough to make anyone sit up and take notice. If the figures bear out, gun owners can expect a governor (who at times appears to be working up the guts to chicken out) to set his speechwriters to work on excuses. And making that claim, right under the headline, is certainly an attention grabber.
“[P]ublic health researchers have found that states with permitless carry laws have experienced an 11 percent increase in handgun homicide rates after their enactment,” the article elaborates, providing a link to an August 2017 American Journal of Public Health abstract titled “Easiness of Legal Access to Concealed Firearm Permits and Homicide Rates in the United States.”
The curious thing is, I couldn’t find their subhead-“worthy” assertion substantiated. Perhaps readers here can check my work by following my methodology and see if they get different results.
First, I read the abstract. Nothing.
Then I decided to do a word search, starting with (since it’s the percentage quoted) the number “11.” That returned 18 results, for dates, footnotes, and stuff, with the only one coming close to relevancy being a claim that “firearm homicide rates … were 11.7% higher in ‘shall issue’ states.”
That’s very different from permitless carry. It also recalls a noteworthy deceptiveness of relying exclusively on rates over numbers:
“For example, in 1880 Dodge City, one person out of 996 was killed. However, 100 years later in Miami, 515 people out of 1.5 million were killed. Although more people were murdered in Miami, statistically speaking the city has a lower homicide rate — just 32.7, compared to the 100.4 of Dodge City in the 1880s.”
Relying on that abstract observation also neglects a significant and fundamental admission that it makes:
“At least 10 national studies have examined the relationship between shall-issue concealed-carry laws and firearm-related or total homicide rates at the state level. In 2 studies, shall-issue laws were found to decrease homicide rates. In 2 studies, these laws were found to increase homicide rates. Six studies reported no clear impact of shall-issue laws on homicide rates.”
That’s hardly “settled science,” and note it (unsurprisingly) makes no mention of the other side of the coin, lives saved by armed citizens.
Remember.
Ukraine gave up their nukes in exchange for promises of security.
We see how that turned out.
This is why we must NEVER give up our guns to any government.
— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) March 7, 2022
Gun Banners Struggling To Find Relevance In A World Prepping For War
When all is said and done, the conflict in Ukraine, will have been responsible for putting more guns into civilian hands than Barack Obama and Joe Biden combined.
For the American gun-ban industry, these world events hit at a particularly difficult period of time. Make no mistake, they still get up every morning, have a cup of coffee, and then decide how best to strip you of your constitutional rights.
But nowadays, it’s not as easy for them to find someone who is willing to listen to their inane pleas. They’re desperate for an audience – any audience – so they have changed-up the way they message their anti-gun campaigns. They’ve resorted to quick-hits – single messages of short duration – so when one fizzles, they can quickly pivot to another, all to keep their donors mollified and their money flowing in.
Things were not always this way. Before the plague, Gabby Giffords or Shannon Watts had only to snap their fingers and they’d get the lead story for an entire news cycle. Michael Bloomberg actually wrote his own headlines. The Trace – the propaganda arm of his anti-gun empire – successfully embedded its paid anti-gun activists into newsrooms across the country. It was a major coup for the diminutive demagogue. His stooges in the mainstream media still haven’t realized how badly they were hoodwinked and used. But COVID, the lockdowns, and a series of violent riots across the country put an end to all of this.
When Americans saw their neighborhoods going up in flames, more than 5 million bought firearms and apparently a lot of ammunition.
Yes, If America Is Ever Invaded, You Must Take Up Arms and Fight
When asked whether they’d flee or fight an invading force, far too many Millennials and Gen-Zers give the wrong answer.
As part of a recent survey of attitudes toward Russia’s execrable invasion of Ukraine, the polling firm Quinnipiac asked Americans whether they would stay and fight if the United States were invaded by Russia. The results make sobering — and often disgraceful — reading. Sixty-eight percent of Republicans said that they would “stay and fight,” with 25 percent indicating that they’d run away.
Among independents, those numbers are 57–36. Among Democrats, they’re in negative territory, at 40–52. Among 50- to 64-year-old men and women, the stay/leave numbers are 66/28. Among 18- to 34-year-olds, they are 45/48. Or, to put it another way: A majority of the prime-aged Americans whom the United States would need were such a crisis to arise imagine that they would flee if that crisis ever came.
For shame.
Lest the excuse-makers try to find nuance where none exists, let us note for the record that this is the most elemental question that a free man can ever be asked. There are no caveats or complexities here, and there is barely any politics, either. If the United States were to be invaded by Russia, America’s defense of itself could not plausibly be construed as “imperialism” or as “interventionism” or as a “foreign war” or “conflict of choice.” Nor could skeptics, à la Rupert Brooke, meaningfully complain that they were being asked to fight and die in a “corner of a foreign field.”
BLUF:
Clearly, simply being armed doesn’t stop every threat to our national or personal security. It does, however, give us a fighting chance at survival, and in these perilous times I’d argue it’s more important than ever for us to protect, preserve, and strengthen our right to keep and bear arms. We might not have to worry much about a Russian invasion of U.S. soil, but unfortunately there are still plenty of homegrown madmen capable of committing atrocities against innocents, and an unarmed populace would only put more of us at risk..
The importance of armed deterrence for national and personal defense
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to some strange political sights here at home, including some Democrats cheering on a government handing out “assault weapons” to civilians, even as they try to criminalize ownership of modern sporting rifles here at home. Meanwhile, gun control activists are trying to shut down any comparison between Ukraine’s self-defense as a nation-state and the importance of the individual right of self-defense.
Olight Ecommerce Technology Recalls Flashlights Due to Burn Hazard
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Hereby, we are calling you:
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Olight will cover all shipping costs.
BLUF:
Peter Ambler of Giffords Law Center is unhappy that gun rights advocates are pointing out evidence that further unravels his cause, so it’s not surprising that he thinks it’s “deeply irresponsible” to do so. In other words, he wants us to stop pouncing and seizing and hammering and exploiting and feasting and gloating.
Giffords’ Ambler to 2A Supporters: Stop pouncing on Ukraine!
The history and rationale behind the Second Amendment are clear-cut. The defense of self, family, community, and country is protected in the founding documents of several states, not just the U.S. Bill of Rights. In a constitutional republic with checks and balances, with power splintered and diffused among various levels of governments, an armed citizenry is the ultimate check and balance against enemies both foreign and domestic.
The United States is approaching its 250th anniversary. That the republic has lasted so long, contributed so much to human flourishing and prosperity, spread the ideas of liberty and justice around the world, doesn’t mean that we can take the status quo for granted and forget or distort what it took to get here. The rest of the world provides periodic reminders and warnings of what could happen if America abandons its founding principles. Ukraine is the warning du jour.
Our friends in the Gun Grab Lobby, however, aren’t drawing the same lessons from Ukraine. When faced with yet another example of why an armed citizenry is good, their response is to cry foul and ask us to not cite it.
Ukraine crisis emerges as talking point in U.S. gun debate
By Barbara Goldberg and Brendan O’brien
NEW YORK, March 1 (Reuters) – Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, gun rights advocates in the United States have sought to use the crisis to bolster their position on the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment to keep and bear arms, injecting a new element into the heated debate.
Arguments linking the invasion to gun rights have cropped up this week across social media, in a post by the National Rifle Association and during a legislative vote in the Georgia statehouse.
“What is happening in Ukraine proves the wisdom of our founding fathers in drafting the Second Amendment,” the NRA said in a blog post on Monday, pointing to Ukrainians who have armed themselves to defend their country.
Is a newly discovered fossil a talking point in the evolution “debate” or is it yet another piece of evidence supporting evolution? Ukraine is not a mere talking point despite how the headline downplays it as one.
Anti-gun violence advocates, however, point to increasing fire-arms deaths in the United States and say tighter regulations and fewer guns are what is needed.
Peter Ambler, executive director of Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said it was “deeply irresponsible” for gun rights advocates to tie their “more guns everywhere” advocacy to the Ukraine crisis.
“The tyrannical actions of Vladimir Putin don’t erase the fact that 45,000 Americans died from gun violence in 2020, nor do they erase the urgent need for commonsense, popular gun violence prevention policies like background checks and funding for community violence intervention programs,” Ambler told Reuters.
“Anti-gun violence advocates,” better described as Anti-Second Amendment activists or gun control supporters, want fewer guns in the hands of the citizenry. A good question to ask them would be, “Can you define fewer?” We all know the answer to that, and it’s no mystery that the question was not asked by the reporters.
Peter Ambler of Giffords Law Center is unhappy that gun rights advocates are pointing out evidence that further unravels his cause, so it’s not surprising that he thinks it’s “deeply irresponsible” to do so. In other words, he wants us to stop pouncing and seizing and hammering and exploiting and feasting and gloating.
Seasoned readers and Second Amendment advocates know this already, but new readers may not, so I will also point out that the 45,000 “gun violence deaths” that Ambler is citing is vastly inflated using suicides, which are the bulk of firearm mortalities. That would be like calling suicide by hanging “rope violence” and suicide by jumping “bridge violence” or “gravity violence.” Ambler’s suggested background checks and community violence intervention programs won’t do anything to address the bulk of those mortalities.
Ukraine was among the arguments wielded by Republicans to win a 34-22 vote in the Georgia state Senate on a concealed carry bill that split down party lines on Monday.
“I would be willing to bet you today that 99 percent of the people of Ukraine would give anything that they have to have a Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms,” Lindsey Tippins, a Republican state Senator, said in asking his fellow legislators to back the bill.
It’s unfortunate that it was a party-line vote, but thanks to the “arguments wielded,” the end-result is a win for our natural right of self-defense. Three cheers for pouncing on Ukraine!
