Category: RKBA

He is right, just not in the way this gun grabbing communist is thinking though. People who want to be free to enslave you, want to take away your right to keep and bear arms.

Professor Ibram Kendi links ‘freedom to enslave’ with gun rights.

There are some who fight for ‘freedom to exploit, freedom to have guns,’ Kendi said

There is a link between the “freedom to enslave” and the “freedom to have guns,” according to Boston University Professor Ibram Kendi.

Kendi told host Margaret Brennan that “throughout the nation’s history, there’s been two perspectives on freedom, really two fights for freedom.”

“Enslaved people were fighting for freedom from slavery, and enslavers were fighting for the freedom to enslave, and in many ways, that sort of contrast still exists today,” Kendi said.

“There are people who are fighting for freedom from assault rifles, freedom from poverty, freedom from exploitation, and there are others who are fighting for freedom to exploit, freedom to have guns, freedom to maintain inequality,” Kendi said.

Kendi did not further elaborate or explain the connection between white supremacy or “the freedom to enslave” and gun ownership.
[He can’t ‘further elaborate‘, because there is no connection. He just thinks you’re so stupid you’ll simply accept his BS ]

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Meet the 14 GOP Senators Who Voted to Advance ‘Gun Safety’ Bill.

On Tuesday night, the Senate voted to advance a “gun safety” bill in response to shootings in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, N.Y. (the media has conveniently forgotten the shooting at a church in Laguna Woods, Calif., that took place between the other two shootings but didn’t fit The Narrative™ for the gun-control crowd).

The Hill framed the vote as the moment when the Senate “broke through nearly 30 years of stalemate on gun control legislation.”

I won’t rehash the bill here; instead, I’ll refer to my colleague Stephen Kruiser, who pointed out the worst features of the 80-page legislation:

There are two HUGE problems with this legislation, especially for conservatives: it legitimizes both federal intervention in state matters and “red flag” laws. The latter is particularly problematic because implementation is rife with gray areas, no matter how many stipulations are in place. As I have been fond of saying, once red-flag laws are on the books, we’re on the most slippery of slippery slopes. One day people are raising legitimate concerns, the next we have people reporting the neighbor who just rubs them the wrong way.

Those facts didn’t stop the measure from passing by a vote of 64-34. Every single one of the Democrats voted in favor of advancing the bill, which means that 14 Republicans went along with it. Here they are:

Some of those names are the usual suspects, the ones who are going to “go rogue” and vote with the Dems on other issues too.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the guy whose constituents booed him over his support for compromise legislation, ran point on the negotiations with Democrats at the behest of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

The Hill reports the negotiations in a way that makes them sound just as sinister as compromising with Democrats to violate the Second Amendment should: “McConnell tapped Cornyn to lead the negotiations for Republicans shortly after a bipartisan group of senators met in Murphy’s basement to begin talks in hopes of finding a way to respond to the Buffalo and Uvalde shootings.”

One of the most remarkable things about this list is that, while the usual squishes (Collins, Murkowski, Romney) appear on it, none of them have a low rating with the National Rifle Association. In fact, Collins rates a B with the NRA, while the rest have an A (Portman, Romney, Blunt, Cassidy, Graham, Tillis, Capito, Ernst, Murkowski) or an A+ (Cornyn, McConnell, Burr, Young) rating from the NRA.

Of the “GOP Gun Control 14,” as Off the Press calls them, only Murkowski and Young are facing re-election in 2022. Blunt, Burr, and Portman aren’t running for another term, so the vast majority of these senators have nothing to lose this election cycle.

Gun rights groups aren’t happy, needless to say.

“Once again, so-called ‘conservative’ Senators are making clear they believe that the rights of American citizens can be compromised away,” Erich Pratt of Gun Owners of America said in a statement. “Let me be clear, they have NO AUTHORITY to compromise with our rights, and we will not tolerate legislators who are willing to turn gun owners into second-class citizens.”

“We will oppose this gun control legislation because it falls short at every level,” read a statement from the NRA. “It does little to truly address violent crime while opening the door to unnecessary burdens on the exercise of Second Amendment freedom by law-abiding gun owners. This bill leaves too much discretion in the hands of government officials and also contains undefined and overbroad provisions – inviting interference with our constitutional freedoms.”

Stephen Gutowski reports at The Reload:

“Since the shooting, my office has received tens of thousands of calls, letters, and emails with a singular message: Do something,” Senator John Cornyn (R., Texas), a negotiator from the Republican side, said in a floor speech. “Not do nothing. But do something. I think we’ve found some areas where there is some space for compromise”

“Today, we finalized bipartisan, commonsense legislation to protect America’s children, keep our schools safe, and reduce the threat of violence across our country,” Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D., Ariz.), a key coalition member from the Democratic side, said in a statement. “Our legislation will save lives and will not infringe on any law-abiding American’s Second Amendment rights.”

Gutowski also points out that the vote to advance the bill suggests that the votes are there to pass the bill before Congress goes on its Independence Day break.

a synopsis of the new federal gun control law

Section 12001

The bill amends all of the prohibited categories (18 USC 922(d)(1 through 9)) to include actions taken against such person while they were a juvenile (that is, you got convicted of a crime punishable by more than one year’s incarceration as a juvenile, you would be barred from gun ownership).

The bill modifies the above by saying the adjudication as mentally defective or involuntary treatment under section (d)(4) had to be when the person was 16 years old or older.

This would be “retroactive” that is if you were convicted of a juvenile offense in 1992, but you are now 45 years old, you would become ineligible to possess firearms when this bill is enacted, and would have to dispose of any firearms you have, or your possession would be illegal as of the effective date of this law. The bill does not limit it to only applying to juvenile offenses or adjudications that happen after this bill is enacted.

This section also says that firearm transfers to persons under 21 years of age by a dealer may not be made after three days of no response from NICS, the way that current law works. Instead, as to persons under 21 years of age, NICS can extend the “pending” or non responsive response time to ten business days.

In addition to consulting the three Federal databases that NICS currently checks for a firearm background check, if the buyer is under 21, the bill says NICS is to contact the state, or local, repository of juvenile records, to see if the person has any juvenile adjudications that would disqualify the person.  These requirements for NICS to ask the state or local repositories sunset as of 9/30/2032.

The section also asks every State and every Federal agency reporting information to NICS to submit a report on records removed from the database and the reason why the records were removed.

Section 12002

This section rewrites the definition of being engaged in the business of dealing in firearms. Federal law requires persons “engaged in the business” of dealing in firearms have a license. The new definition says that a person is engaged in the business if their purpose is “to predominantly earn a profit.” Formerly, profit had to be the “principal objective” of the seller.

Section 12003

This section allows grants made for criminal justice purposes to states, to also be used for red flag law enforcement. The bill says that such red flag laws have to meet whatever due process requirements the courts have found to be necessary.
The bill says that such programs need not provide indigent persons with counsel at government expense.

Section 12004

This section makes it unlawful to buy a firearm for another person knowing the other person is disqualified from buying a firearm under 18 USC 922(d), or that the other person is going to employ the firearm in connection to a felony crime, a drug trafficking crime or a terrorism crime, or that the other person is going to provide the firearm to a third person who will employ it as described.
The bill defines drug trafficking and terrorism.
The bill provides for a more enhanced penalty for drug trafficking and terrorism, up to 15 years incarceration if the person is buying for someone disqualified under 18 USC 922(d), and up to 25 years if buying for someone who the person knows will employ it for committing a felony, drug trafficking or terrorism.

This section also makes interstate sale of a firearm a crime if the seller knows the buyer intends to use the firearm for crime. It also makes receipt of such a firearm a crime. There is an enhanced penalty, up to 15 years, as compared to regular interstate sale of firearms by unlicensed persons, which is illegal under current law.

The section also has enhanced penalties for unlicensed or unpermitted import or export of firearms or ammunition to or from the U.S.

The section also says that the NICS system may be used for a FFL to conduct a background check on a current or prospective employee. Notice must be provided to the employee, and they have to consent to it.

The section requires the FBI to provide access to FFL holders to the database of stolen firearms maintained in the NCIC database, so they can see if a firearm in inventory is stolen. Checking would be voluntary. Not checking would not create civil liability.

Section 12005

This section creates a new firearm disability for persons convicted of a misdemeanor where the victim is someone the person was ‘dating’. It does not require any prior sexual, or even ‘cohabiting’ relations between the offender and the victim for the relationship to be a ‘dating relationship’.

The section says that in order for the disability to apply, the conviction must have occurred after this bill became law. It will not apply to convictions that happened before this bill became law.

The section says that if a person only has one such conviction as to a dating partner, and five years have elapsed with no other convictions for any crimes involving use or attempted use physical force or the threat of use of a deadly weapon (whether against a domestic partner or dating partner or not), then the dating partner conviction is no longer disqualifying for possession of firearms purposes.

However, convictions related to a domestic partner as a victim (as under existing law) are disqualifying forever, as under current law. And a dating partner conviction, and then a second misdemeanor crime where the victim is anyone, that involves physical force or a deadly weapon (as outlined above) is disqualifying forever.

The powers states have to expunge records and pardon offenders that remove firearm possession prohibitions are not affected

If Gun Control Saves Lives, Then Why are California and New York State so Dangerous?

A few disturbed young men want to become famous by killing innocent people. Each time they try, we are told that we need to take guns away from honest citizens. That proposal isn’t new. Gun-prohibitionists passed severe gun-control laws decades ago in a few Democrat controlled states. Let’s see if that made us safer. Based on recent evidence from New York State and California, it did not.

You don’t have to take my word for it when I say that California and New York have strict gun-control laws. Take the opinion of the Giffords gun-control group funded by anti-gun billionaire Michael Bloomberg. Giffords gives California an A rating and New York an A-.

Laws like this are why-

  • There are many models of firearms that ordinary citizens can’t own in New York and California.
  • Ordinary citizens must pass background checks when they purchase a handgun at a gun store or at a gun show. In California, there is also a mandatory background check before we may buy ammunition. New York proposed similar ammunition restrictions.
  • California has a mandatory ten-day waiting period after we submit our background check and before we may take possession of our firearm. There is also an additional one-gun-a-month restriction. New York also requires a license before we are allowed to own a handgun.
  • Both states have a magazine capacity limit that reduces the number of cartridges that a firearm magazine may hold.
  • Both states have “Red Flag laws” that allow family members, romantic partners, schoolteachers, doctors, and the police to request that we be disarmed. We are not present when a “Red Flag” hearing is held to confiscate our guns.
  • Both California and New York require statement of “demonstrated need” before honest citizens like us are granted a permit to carry a concealed firearm in public. In many cities, those permits are only given to judges, politicians, and to campaign donors. The rate of concealed carry is far lower in New York State and in California compared to the rest of the US.
  • Schools are “gun-free” zones and even school staff are disarmed.

We were told that gun-control would keep us safe. Last year, California had the most active-shooter incidents of any state in the nation. This year, we saw mass-murders and attempted mass-murders in New York state and even in New York City.

How could these gun control laws fail so badly? Here are a few of the many reasons that gun-control fails time after time-

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Everytown Calls for Censorship on How to Work on Firearms

This correspondent has repeatedly written the First and Second Amendments of the US Constitution are intertwined and support each other. A power-craving government cannot effectively keep a population disarmed unless it censors information on how to make and use arms.

Billionaire Bloomberg supported Everytown for Gun Safety understands they cannot disarm the population, as long as people are free to transmit information on how to make, modify, and use firearms.

Their solution is clear. Forbid the knowledge of how to make, repair, and use firearms. From everytownsupportfund.org:

Based on our review of the writings by the shooter in the Buffalo mass shooting, it appears that he honed his knowledge of firearms and firearm modifications on YouTube. Just days before his attack, posts attributed to the shooter on Discord read, “I’ve just been sitting around watching youtube and **** for the last few days. I think this is the closest I’ll ever be to being ready. I literally can’t wait another week to do this.”

Technology platforms, such as YouTube, have a responsibility to users and the public-at-large to insure that posts do not incite violence or promote extremist content.

This correspondent, contrary to what Everytown posits, claims Technology platforms, such as YouTube, have a responsibility to users to protect and support their First Amendment rights of free expression.

Everytown admits they request that videos on how to modify guns be taken down. They say they have requested YouTube take down videos on how to make guns (which they call “ghost guns”).

YouTube has policies that censor some content on how to make or modify some guns and accessories.  From nbcnews.com:

YouTube’s firearms policy says users can’t post videos that show how to install certain gun accessories, including high-capacity magazines. In a statement on Friday, the company said the videos that the suspect allegedly used to modify his rifle don’t violate those policies.

It is more dangerous to people’s freedom to control the information they are allowed than to control their access to arms. Both are important. If the control over information is extensive enough, people will never attempt to use the arms they may have; they will consider themselves in the best of all possible situations, no matter how badly they are abused. This is the warning in George Orwell’s novel, 1984. It is even more difficult for the people to rise up if the abuse is carefully contrived and increasingly applied over generations, allowing the population to become accustomed to it.

Fortunately, the oligopoly of Big Tech’s control over information appears to be on the edge of collapse. Alternative platforms dedicated to free speech, such as Truth Social and Rumble, are becoming popular. Elon Musk may reform Twitter, from a means of directing cancel culture against its victims to a worldwide sanctuary for free speech.

In a famous case, the US government gave up attempts to restrict the publication of how to build a hydrogen bomb. The First Amendment clearly protects the publication of technology that is already in the public sphere.

What Everytown seeks to do is to convince the distributors of information to censor information it deems to be dangerous.

Everytown is unlikely to succeed.

In the Fifth Circuit, Defense Distributed’s lawsuit against New Jersey’s AG, Gurbir Grewal, was allowed to continue, on the grounds that Grewal violated Defense Distributed’s First Amendment rights when when he threatened to prosecute them for publishing computer code on how to print firearms parts.

It would be a short step for the newly proposed Bureau of Disinformation to censor information they deem “dangerous” to the public.

Unless the Progressive left succeeds in its Supreme Court-packing scheme, it is unlikely the Supreme Court would allow such an egregious violation of the First Amendment, when the inevitable court challenge is effectuated.

Everytown seems to agree with this quote, attributed to Stalin, but disputed:

Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas?

One of the most important effects of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, in the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, is the physical embodiment and clear demonstration the power of the government has limits. There are things it is not allowed to do, by law. An openly armed man, in public, is a clear and present demonstration of a Constitutional limit on government.

Progressives hate the idea of limits on government with a passion. It is part of Progressive DNA.

Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, had a view the opposite of Stalin’s supposed quote. In a private letter, shortly before becoming president, he wrote this:

 “for I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”1

It is clear those who wish for a disarmed public are closer to Stalin’s philosophy than to Thomas Jefferson’s.

Author Stephen Hunter makes valid point about guns

Author Stephen Hunter is best known for his Bob Lee Swagger books. He was also a film critic for the Washington Post until he retired in 2008.

While he writes thrillers, his career might make you think he’s anti-gun.

Well, he’s apparently not. In fact, he made a very good point about guns and massacres.

Possibly you’re old enough to remember the great massacre spree of 1964? Classrooms shot up, strip malls decimated, scout troops blown away, fast food restaurants turned into mortuaries.

And all because, in its infinite stupidity, the U.S. government dumped 240,000 high-capacity .30 caliber assault rifles into an otherwise innocent America.

The weapons clearly had a demon-spirit to them. Compared to anything else in the market, they had that murder-most-easy look. One glance at the sinister gleam of the walnut stock which caressed the military-gray receiver and barrel of the weapon, its magazine wickedly boasting of many cartridges ready and waiting, its photo- and Hollywood associations with war, and some went screwball. They had the overwhelming desire to use it as it was meant to be used. It was not powerful enough for deer and not accurate enough for vermin. It existed only to kill human beings.

Except there was no massacre spree of 1964, despite the fact that in 1963 the United States Army surplussed 240,000 M1 carbines via the NRA. They were available through the mail at $20. Not an NRA member? Eighty bucks, then, from any sporting goods store. Denver’s Dave Cook’s–“Guns Galore at Prices to Score”– had them by mail order, magazine and sling included, postage, $1.25.

The M1 carbine was a semi-automatic rifle with a detachable magazine that could fire pretty much as fast as an AR-15 and used a much larger round, from a pure diameter standpoint.

It was a recipe for disaster by today’s standard and yet, nothing. Not a single mass shooting with such weapons.

Hunter goes on to point out that in the summer of 1964, there were tons of inexpensive semi-automatic, magazine-fed rifles on the open market that could be mailed right to you, but there weren’t people like the Buffalo or Uvalde shooters.

It’s a very valid point and a great example of how the problem isn’t the availability of firearms. They were easier to acquire in 1964 than they are today and they were just as deadly. They could be discharged at a high rate of fire, too.

These were actual weapons of war, even, not something that just looks like one.

And yet, as Hunter notes, no massacres. No school shootings. None of the things we’re told result from “easy” access to firearms.

That suggests strongly that the problem here is something else, something else entirely. We, as a society, would be better off if we could stop blaming guns for five minutes and start looking deeper into why this is happening and why this continues to be an issue.

Yet that’s apparently not allowed by some in our world. They’ve got a vested interest in blaming the guns rather than in solving the actual problem.

Part of that, of course, is also blaming others for not agreeing that guns are the problem despite clear evidence that they’re not.

Quick take
There are two problems with this. It legitimizes both federal intervention in state matters and “red flag” laws. The latter is problematic because it’s a gray area, no matter how many stipulations are in place. One day people are raising legitimate concerns, the next we have people reporting the neighbor who just rubs them the wrong way.

The Senate gun control bill is finished ….sorta? ‘Discussion Draft’?

bipartisan_safer_communities_act_text

EXCLUSIVE: Rep. Andy Biggs — Expect House Gun Controllers to ‘Go After Ammo and Ammo Manufacturers’

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) spoke with Breitbart News about the current push for gun control in the House and warned us to be ready to see gun controllers “go after ammunition and ammunition manufacturers.”

Biggs noted a number of gun controls have been passed by the Democrat-controlled House, and even though those controls have not passed the Senate he believes the House will pass even more.

He explained, “I expect some additional gun control legislation to come out of the House. I expect there will be an attempt to do an ‘assault weapons’ ban, I think they’re going to continue to try to eliminate liability protections on gun manufacturers, and I think they’re also going to go after ammunition and ammunition manufacturers.”

Biggs then talked about gun control in the Senate, where he said, “When gun control reared its head again, after Uvalde, I expected 20 members of Senate Republicans to cave and give things like red flag laws and whatever else that the House pushing. But I’m sure what, if anything, is going to get out now, because it has taken so long and they have no language.”

He added, “When you have no language to look at, they start working off what is called a framework, and that leads to infighting where some Senators want certain things but not other things, and that indicates a lack a consensus.”

And Biggs stressed the more time passes the less chance there is consensus will occur.

He also noted the way Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) was booed on Friday at the Texas GOP Convention, and said, “That response indicates that gun owners are not real pleased with the Republicans that are undermining the Second Amendment.”

Biggs emphasized the launch of a watchdog group, the Arizona Second Amendment Coalition, a coalition of people he has pulled together to stay on top of the fight for Second Amendment rights.

Members of the coalition include elected officials, student advocates, individuals who work in the firearm industry, and members of pro-2A groups like the DC Project, among others.

Biggs said, “We’re trying to make it a broad-based coalition where we talk about challenges to the exercise of Second Amendment rights. Whether that is an ATF challenge, something the Biden administration is doing, or what policies–local, state, and federal–that may either positively or negatively impact the Second Amendment.”

On January 3, 2022, Breitbart News reported Biggs stressing that carrying a gun for self-defense is part of being a “free American.”

Biggs said, “When you start talking about my wife or me or someone else, we’re talking about self-defense, and the first liberty is the right to life. So, if you can’t defense yourself against the bad guys you start looking like the 12 cities in America that have the highest homicide rate in their history.”

He then added, “You don’t want to look like that. You don’t want to look like Venezuela. You want to be a free American and the way to be free and reduce crime is to allow people to carry guns.”

Know the lying demoncraps infesting the White House, this can almost be seen as confirmation

White House denies claims from guns group that ammo ban is under consideration

The White House is denying a recent claim from a gun foundation that a limited ammunition ban is under consideration, which would drive the price of legal ammunition higher.

The Biden administration supposedly informed Winchester Ammunition that “the government is considering restricting the manufacturing and commercial sale of legal ammunition produced at the Lake City, Mo., facility,” a spokesman from the National Shooting Sports Foundation told the Washington Examiner on Friday.

A White House official denied the claim.

Currently, Winchester is allowed to sell surplus ammunition after meeting the military’s needs on the civilian market, but Mark Oliva, the NSSF spokesman, warned that banning the practice would “significantly reduce the availability of ammunition in the marketplace and put the nation’s warfighting readiness at risk. Both NSSF and Winchester strongly oppose this action.”

This practice now represents roughly 30% of the 5.56 mm/.223 caliber ammunition sales.

Earlier this week, a bipartisan group of senators announced they had agreed in principle to the framework of new legislation to instill additional restrictions on guns that may have a chance to be passed in the Senate. Twenty senators, 10 from each party, signed on to the legislation, demonstrating the support it would need to pass the 60-vote threshold.

A White House official told the Washington Examiner that the reports on a possible ban “are way off,” while Oliva warned that the implementation of such a policy “jeopardizes the fragile negotiations of the framework deal that was agreed to by the bipartisan group of senators.”

After mass shootings, such as the ones in Uvalde, Texas, and Buffalo, New York, it is typical that gun owners flock to firearm stores in order to buy weapons over fears of new gun control legislation. That fear also prompts ammunition purchases, which have led to a shortage. Both gun and ammunition manufacturers saw their stocks go up after the Uvalde shooting.

“The typical hypothesis is that this is an exogenous shock, unanticipated, and as a result of a mass shooting, the reaction is there is an expectation that legislative steps will be undertaken to potentially restrict ammunition, access to guns,” Brian Marks, the executive director of the University of New Haven’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program, previously told the Washington Examiner.

WASHINGTON, June 16 (Reuters) – The lead Republican negotiator in U.S. Senate efforts to craft a bipartisan gun safety bill walked out of the talks on Thursday, while the lead Democrat remained optimistic that lawmakers could vote on legislation before leaving for a two-week July 4 recess.

“It’s fish or cut bait,” Senator John Cornyn said after hours of negotiations that included his fellow Republican Senator Thom Tillis and Democratic Senators Chris Murphy and Kyrsten Sinema.

“I don’t know what they have in mind, but I’m through talking,” Cornyn said.

However, Tillis and Murphy later said the talks were close to reaching agreement and added that legislative text for a bill could emerge in coming days……………..

Analysis: Guns Are Normal and Normal People Use Guns

As I hope to write regularly for The Reload, I thought my first contribution ought to say something about how I generally approach American gun culture, which bears on the fierce debates over guns taking place across the country.

I am a sociologist who has been studying American gun culture for the past decade. My approach to the topic differs considerably from most of my gun studies colleagues. Rather than focusing on crime, injury, and death with firearms, my work is based on the proposition that guns are normal and normal people use guns. This is not an article of faith or belief statement for me; rather, it is based on my empirical observations of guns and gun owners.

When I say guns are normal and normal people use guns, I mean it in two senses. First, guns and gun ownership are common, widespread, and typical. Second, guns and gun ownership are not inherently associated with deviance or abnormalities.

The normality of guns runs deep in human history. The use of projectile weapons is behaviorally normal for Homo sapiens as a species. Today’s widely owned civilian firearms are part of an unbroken thread of what Randy Miyan calls “the human-weapon relationship,” stretching back to rocks in the uniquely evolved hands of our prehistoric ancestors. As paleoanthropologist John Shea concludes, “Projectile weaponry is uniquely human and culturally universal. We are the only species that uses projectile weaponry, and no human society has ever abandoned its use.”

Although most societies today – consensually or not – give over to the state a monopoly on legitimate violence and hence the ability to restrict civilian ownership of projectile weaponry, the United States is an outlier in having a significant portion of the population insist upon their right to own firearms independent of the state, a right written into the U.S. Constitution and many state constitutions. In early American history, guns were widely owned by those who could legally do so. One reliable estimate found guns in 50 to 73 percent of male estates and even 6 to 38 percent of female estates. These rates compare favorably to other common items listed in male estates like swords or edged weapons (14% of inventories), Bibles (25%), or cash (30%).

Even as the nation has become more settled, more industrial, and more urbanized, levels of firearms ownership remain exceptionally high. Accounting for under-reporting of gun ownership in surveys, a reasonable estimate is that 40% of all American adults personally own a gun, over 100 million people. According to the Small Arms Survey, there are some 400,000,000 privately owned firearms in the United States. Actually, if the average gun owner owns 4 to 5 guns, then the actual number of civilian firearms could be closer to half a billion.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, shooting guns is also very normal in the United States. In 2017, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center asked, “Regardless of whether or not you own a gun, have you ever fired a gun?” Nearly three-quarters of respondents (72%) said YES. In population terms, nearly 180 million adults in America have fired a gun. Pew also asked, “Just your best guess, at what age did you FIRST fire a gun, whether you owned it or not.” 63% of respondents answered that they were under 18 years of age when they first shot a gun.

None of this denies that there are what Claude Werner calls serious mistakes and negative outcomes with guns. These range from unintentional discharges to mass public shootings. But huge denominators in terms of gun owners and guns owned means the absolute risk of accidental injury or death, homicide, or suicide is quite small.

I have previously illustrated this using conservative estimates of guns and gun ownership and broad estimates of negative outcomes (including accidental and intentional deaths and injuries as well as non-fatal criminal injuries and victimizations with firearms). I found that just 0.15% of guns and 0.79% of gun owners are involved in fatal or non-fatal injuries or victimizations involving firearms annually.

Looked at the other way around, 99.85% of guns and 99.21% of gun owners are NOT involved in fatal or non-fatal injuries or victimization involving firearms annually.

Of course, the normality of guns and gun owners is not just an academic question. It is reflected in the way many gun control activists and politicians approach guns. At a time when people use terms like “insane” and “addiction” — or worse — to characterize gun culture in America, it’s important to remember that guns are both commonly owned and generally non-problematic here.

Unfortunately, normality is unremarkable. It is not headline news. It is not of concern to social scientists. And yet it is my dominant experience of guns and gun owners.

Will We Choose Hard Work to Protect Our Children in School?

Set aside what you imagine about guns and protecting students at school. Keeping our kids safe is hard work. It is ugly and almost always unappreciated. We don’t want appreciation for what we’ve been forced to do if a murderer comes to school. It is far better to be known for what we prevented. Defending our students from media-fueled narcissistic psychopaths is a dull job. Being present every day so you can stop a murderer is easily ignored because it is out of sight. Contrast that grinding job with the one-click solution of “gun control”. Gun-control politicians say they can put a few more words on paper, hold a few press conferences, and it will be as if evil simply went away.. or did it? We’re conducting several large-scale social experiments at the same time. Our children’s lives depend on what we do.

Each day brings us something new. Our children live in a world where they are exposed to millions of online “friends” they’ve never met. Many of these friends might not even be real people. These online identities influence how our children think and feel. I’m not sure about the benefits, but the downside has been a surge in both narcissism and anorexia. Today, our children constantly compare themselves to an image on a small screen.

We also have millions of children growing up in broken homes. Many of these children are raised by the entertainment media and by electronic games. That isn’t good for healthy children, let alone the children who lack a healthy mom and dad. We also know that we are not all the same and that electronic games are catastrophic for some people. These gamers already feel alienated to an unusual degree. They think they deserve more recognition. Immerse these fragile youngsters into hundreds of hours of violent first-person roll-playing games, and something happens. The psychopaths eventually think to themselves, ‘I’d kill to get this much attention.’ Our voracious news media is ready to oblige. That is new.

In contrast, firearms have been a part of society for a relatively long time. We have lived with guns for at least the last four centuries. We’ve lived with semi-automatic rifles for over a hundred years. The so-called “assault rifle” is over 80 years old. What changed is that we’ve never grown up with mass media in our pocket 24-7 starting when children are 6 years of age. We don’t know what that does to people, and we’re conducting the real-time experiment on our children and on our society. We learn new things every day.

We’ve seen the mass media turn the last murderer into an instant celebrity by giving him a multi-million-dollar publicity campaign. The next murderer notices the attention poured on the last murderer. That creates a new generation of “celebrity-murderers”, a term that didn’t exist as little as two decades ago. We’ve seen over 80 copycat murderers after the attack on Columbine High School, but that data is now several years out of date.

Not only are our children ill-prepared to deal with the media, but adults and politicians do only a little better. The public is influenced by the most outrageous claim that can be taken from a situation or statement. The media and unscrupulous politicians feed us a series of false choices. Please consider each of these claims for more than a minute and you can easily see a context in which each statement is clearly right. You can also see a context in which the claim is clearly wrong.

  • You don’t care if our children die since you won’t disarm everyone,
    • but we’ve seen mass murders where firearms are banned.
  • It doesn’t help to put mental health counselors in school because we have to insure patient privacy and confidentiality,
    • but we’ve seen mental health counselors help, and we’ve also seen counselors be completely ineffective at identifying and treating violent patients.
  • Violence isn’t the answer,
    • but we have to use violence as necessary to stop the attacker or else we’ll perpetuate the next cycle of media-fueled murderers.
  • Don’t turn the murderer into a media celebrity,
    • but we have the right of free speech and freedom of the press.

Let me say it again that we are not all the same. Psychopaths are part of our population and always have been. We’ve seen the behavior of psychopaths change in our modern media environment. Today we see psychopaths target innocent victims in gun-free zones because that behavior rewarded by the mass media. Examined in hindsight, the murderers spent years happily planning their attacks. The threat of celebrity-violence is increasing as a greater number of fragile children are immersed in electronic media, and news outlets reward the latest murderer with greater and more sensational coverage.

We should be hungry for facts about protecting our children. Of course, we worry about what would happen if we allowed volunteer staff to be trained and then to go armed at school. But we already know what happens. We already have millions of man-hours with trained and armed-school staff on campus. Despite what we imagine, these staff have not had firearms accidents at school. More importantly, we have not seen a successful attack at a school when trained and armed school staff were present. We need to set our fantasies aside.

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