Category: Safety

Gun Control and Racism: The Laws and Taxes Meant to Limit Minority Gun Ownership in America

“There’s a direct correlation between gun control and black people control.” – Stacy Swimp, President of the Frederick Douglass Society

Every schoolchild knows that the Declaration of Independence declares that the basic equality of man is “self-evident.” The United States Constitution enumerates what the inalienable rights only alluded to by the Declaration. An inalienable right is one that exists regardless of whether or not it is recognized by the state. For example, you have a right to free speech regardless of whether or not the Constitution recognizes it. Thus any restrictions on free speech are curbs of this pre-existing right, not an actual elimination of that right. One of them is the right to keep and bear arms. Another is the right to a speedy and public trial.

However, particularly with the Second Amendment, there’s long been a struggle between the ideals of America and the reality on the ground with regard to race. What’s more, minorities in the United States are disproportionately the victims of violent crime. Both of these things together make it crucial to understand self defense and the Second Amendment from the perspective of race in America.

Part of the problem is that, unlike European nations which grew organically, America is an invention of a handful of Englishmen. They founded the nation on a set of ideas and there has always been a tension between those ideas and the reality. This is, in some sense, unavoidable: reality will always have trouble living up to an ideal. A failure to live up to that ideal in the past according to terms established today doesn’t make the entire project – or any specific part of it – worthless or suspect.

Before we get into the meat of the matter, we should note that the American ideal has expanded the Second Amendment (and the rest of the Constitution for that matter) to de jure include all Americans. One can be skeptical of the notion of “progress” while seeing the moves to repeal race-based restrictions on firearms ownership as big steps in the right direction.

Finally, it is worth noting – and we will do so at length later – that none of the racially-motivated laws on the books in America are uniquely American. Racism, in the sense employed by the average person not the expanded version used by left-wing ideologues, was not a uniquely American institution, but the norm throughout human history. Continue reading “”

Alabama voters approve gun proposal for Franklin County

Alabama voters have approved a constitutional amendment that provides specific protection to anyone who kills someone in self-defense in a church in Franklin County. The attorney general’s office has said Alabama’s “stand your ground” law already applies inside churches. But backers supported Amendment 5, saying more specific provisions for churches in the northwest part of the state.

I’ll take riots in Philly for $500, Alex

Why people are buying guns at a record pace in Pennsylvania in the run-up to Election Day

Charlotte Heller, a 71-year-old grandmother from Lower Macungie Township, was never a fan of guns.

Then came 2020.

This September, Heller and her 73-year-old husband Ira joined scores of other Pennsylvanians in becoming first-time gun owners during a year expected to break gun purchase records across the country.

“Let me tell you, I’ve never liked guns. I was always kind of afraid of guns,” Charlotte Heller said. “I felt like we didn’t need them.”

But 2020, of course, is a year like no other ― fueling gun sales with a combination of factors, experts say. Start with the coronavirus pandemic and shortage of basic supplies, then add a wave of protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota and the resulting property damage and violence, and cap it with one of most divisive presidential elections in modern history, and you’ve got a perfect storm for one of the most basic human emotions. Continue reading “”

BLUF:
“Our final analysis finds that race, gender, political ideas, ideology does not matter” in determining gun ownership, Khubchandani said. “What matters is, have you been threatened? Have you been exposed to violence? Do you know someone who was threatened, and therefore, by default, does that make you a little more protective about your own self and your family?”

Health Care Workers Help Drive Gun Surge, New Study Says

When the coronavirus hit American shores, nurses and doctors stocked up on guns, a new study reports.

Researchers at New Mexico State University and the University of Toledo found that being a health care provider was one of the strongest predictors of buying a firearm during the first few weeks of the coronavirus pandemic. Sixty-seven percent of people who reported buying a gun during the pandemic also reported being health care professionals.

“One of the things we should see, in my limited view, is these are people who are civilians who are not criminals and they have seen a lot of unrest in the past six months,” New Mexico State University professor Jagdish Khubchandani told the Washington Free Beacon. “And they want to be on the front foot with their own safety.”

Khubchandani said this surprising finding becomes more understandable when considered alongside the study’s other main finding: Gun-ownership demographics as a whole have shifted during the pandemic.

Gun buyers were more likely to be younger, more urban, more female, and less white. As the gun-owning demographic diversifies, then, it starts to look more like the demographics of health care, one of the country’s largest industries.

“America now has more job opportunities in health care,” Khubchandani said. “Almost 15 percent of Americans today have a job in health care. And as that demographic has changed, so has the gun-owning demographic, and they’ve intersected.”

Khubchandani pointed to two recent surveys finding that between a quarter and half of physicians own guns. He also noted recent real-world examples of health care professionals lining up at gun shops to purchase guns. Continue reading “”

U.S. voters agree on one thing: They’d feel better owning a gun

CHANTILLY, Va. — Like many Americans, two women a thousand miles apart are each anxious about the uncertain state of the nation. Their reasons are altogether different. But they have found common ground, and a sense of certainty, in a recent purchase: a gun.

Ann-Marie Saccurato traced her purchase to the night she was eating dinner at a sidewalk restaurant not long ago in Delray Beach, Florida, when a Black Lives Matter march passed, and her mind began to wander

It takes only one person to incite a riot when emotions are high, she remembers thinking. What if police are overpowered and can’t control the crowd?

Ashley Johnson, in Austin, Texas, worries about the images she’s seen in past weeks of armed militias showing up to rallies and making plans to kidnap governors. The outcome of the election, she thinks, will be devastating for some people regardless of the winner.

“Maybe I’m just looking at the news too much, but there are hints of civil war depending on who wins,” Johnson said. “It’s a lot to process.”

In the U.S., spikes in gun purchases are often driven by fear. But in past years that anxiety has centered on concerns that politicians will pass stricter gun controls. Mass shootings often prompt more gun sales for that reason, as do elections of liberal Democrats. Continue reading “”

Study Reports Record Number of Carry Permits in U.S.

A study issued by Crime Prevention Research Center on Sept. 21 reported that the number of concealed carry permits nationwide is now up to 19.48 million, a 34-percent increase compared to 2016’s figure. The continued upswing is particularly noteworthy when the number of states that no longer require law-abiding citizens to secure the license is now up to 17.

Roughly 7.6 percent of Americans have a carry permit, according to its findings. Slightly more than 26 percent of them are female and the number of new women outpaced men by 101.2 percent. There are now five states with more than 1 million people with carry permits. They are Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Texas. Per capita, by qualified adult resident, 28.5 percent of the Alabamans have a license—the top figure in the nation. Indiana claims second-place honors with 18.7 percent and Iowa trails in third.

The cost is even going down. John R Lott and Rujun Wang, the report’s authors wrote, “A lot of changes in fees are occurring this year. Arkansas just reduced its fee from $142.11 to $91.9 and Washington from $48 to $36. Indiana’s 5-year license to carry has become fee exempt since July 1, 2020, while Tennessee’s 8-year license fee has dropped from $100 to $65, effective from January 1, 2020. West Virginia also reduced $75 fee for a LCDW to $25, starting on June 1, 2020.”

The number of people with carry permits in 1999 totaled 2.7 million. The figure rose to 11.1 million by 2014, but pales by comparison to this year’s record-setting 19.48 million.

“At the same time that there has been an exponential growth in permits, there has been a general linear decline in murder and violent crime rates,” the co-authors wrote. “Murder rates fell from 5.7 to 5.0 per 100,000, a 12-percent drop. Overall violent crime fell by 29 percent. Meanwhile, the percentage of adults with permits soared by five-fold.”

The Second Amendment as a Guard Against Government-Sanctioned Tyrannous Factions

The rioting and looting that occurred in American cities during the summer of 2020 highlights an heretofore ignored aspect of the Second Amendment—the Framers’ concerns about the danger of factions.
The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment, through which the Second Amendment applies to the states, witnessed first-hand freedmen and white Republicans being subjected to terrorist campaigns supported or accommodated by local law enforcement which the “Redeemers” controlled politically. Similarly, the riots and looting of 2020 illustrate that even today, local government officials can be complicit in law-enforcement using political, unequal criteria in determining whether and to what extent to preserve and enforce law and order.
Reviewing the events of Summer 2020 suggest that the individual right to self-defense is not only still important, but remains a necessary check on violent factions allied with corrupt local government.

This paper argues that the Second Amendment carries a particular force and has special application when individuals must defend themselves and their property against tyrannous factions that operate with the direct or indirect support of government.
The Second Amendment counters faction in two ways: it protects the individual right of self-defense against violent factions; and it checks the power of government to oppress its citizens through violent factions. Although the Constitution as a whole embodies a concern about faction, the Second Amendment provides unique protections against the abuses of faction by giving citizens the right to defend themselves from criminal aggression when the government will not.

The Right to Prompt Access to Guns in a Time of Unrest

What with the way most smart people won’t even talk with pollsters,  I’d say the numbers are higher.

22% of Gun-Owning Households Have Added A Gun Since Anti-Police Protests Began

Over one-fifth of Americans who have a gun in their household have added one since the Black Lives Matter anti-police protests began in late May and feel safer because they’ve done so.

Forty-three percent (43%) of American adults say they or someone in their household owns a gun, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey.(To see survey question wording, click here.)

Of these Americans, 22% say they or someone in their household has purchased a gun since the violent anti-police protests began.

Fifty-four percent (54%) of adults who live in gun-owning households say they feel more safe with a gun in the house, although that’s down from 61% in February 2018. Only seven percent (7%) feel less safe. Thirty-eight percent (38%) think the presence of the gun has no impact on their personal safety. Continue reading “”

Riots of 2020 have given the Second Amendment a boost.

This year’s riots, sparked by the death of George Floyd and continued in the names of several others, have destroyed billions of dollars in property, cost numerous people their lives and businesses and jobs, and promoted what will probably be a decade or more of de-urbanization. But whatever else happens, they will have accomplished an important social change. Thanks to these riots, the case for the Second Amendment and the personal right to own weapons is growing steadily stronger, as is the legal case for private gun ownership.

That’s the thesis of a new paper by George Mason University law professor David E. Bernstein, who also serves as the director of GMU’s Liberty and Law Center. “The Right to Armed Self Defense in the Light of Law Enforcement Abdication,” notes that the experience of this year’s riots undercuts the classic argument against an individual right to arms. While gun-control proponents have for decades argued that individual gun ownership is unnecessary in the modern era, where we have police forces to control crime, that hasn’t worked out very well this year for people in numerous urban centers around America.

Violence spreading in cities in 2020
Bernstein offers an extensive review of happenings in cities ranging from Seattle to Louisville, Portland to Chicago and New York and Raleigh, and many other cities. In case after case, police were told to stand down, in order to avoid provoking violence. And in each case, the result was more violence, more property destruction, and more damage to businesses and jobs, while political leaders stood by. Continue reading “”

Self Defense, an Unalienable Right in a Time of Peril: Protected and Preserved by the Second Amendment

For Americans frightened for their own and their family’s safety, the Covid-19 pandemic; lockdown in March 2020; release of convicted offenders; protests against the police morphing into weeks of violence and calls to defund them; and a presidential candidate promising to seize their guns has led to record-setting applications for firearms.

This essay explores the constitutional background of the right to armed self-defense then tests the arguments against it: 1) it’s unnecessary, the police will protect you and 2) guns in your hands pose a danger to public safety. But can the police protect us and do they have a legal duty to do so? To answer the questions the success of restraining orders for vulnerable individuals and violent crime statistics during an era of increased public carry are examined. The essay concludes with the experience of England, where the very right to self-defense has been effectually removed.