Category: Safety

NSSF Recognizes Senator Ted Cruz’s Support for Project ChildSafe

U.S.A. -(AmmoLand.com)- NSSF, The Firearm Industry Trade Association, presented an award to U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) for his longstanding support of Project ChildSafe, the firearm safety program that has partnered with 15,000 law enforcement agencies in all 50 states and five U.S. territories to distribute over 40 million firearm safety kits, which include free gun locking devices.

Senator Cruz spoke during a Senate subcommittee hearing last year of his involvement at the inception of Project ChildSafe nearly a quarter century ago. He praised NSSF for administering the program that has been subsequently recognized for its efficacy by the National Safety Council’s Green Cross Awards and by the Government Accountability Office.

“NSSF is truly grateful to Senator Cruz for his commitment to safeguarding and protecting Second Amendment rights for all Americans and at the same time championing true firearm safety and responsible firearm storage,” said NSSF President and CEO Joe Bartozzi. “Senator Cruz proves each and every day that true gun safety doesn’t come at a cost of sacrificing Second Amendment rights. In fact, the strongest advocates of protecting Second Amendment rights are those like Senator Cruz who advocate for voluntary safe and responsible firearm storage methods that save countless lives.”

Senator Cruz spoke of his involvement in creating Project ChildSafe while serving as a staffer on then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush’s campaign in 1999. Gov. Bush brought Project ChildSafe to Texas with a state grant. That program has since grown to include partnerships with law enforcement to provide firearm safety materials and free locking devices nationwide.

“Critical to that is that it is voluntary,” Sen. Cruz said in a hearing last year. “That it is providing child locks so you have the equipment free of charge so that cost is not a barrier to being able to lock a firearm, but it is not mandatory. And I believe people can and should make a judgment about what the needs of their home, of their neighborhood, of protecting their family are. All of us want to prevent firearm accidents.”

To date, over 40 million free firearm safety kits have been distributed through NSSF’s Project ChildSafe campaign. This is in addition to over 100 million free locking devices voluntarily included with each new firearm shipped from a manufacturer. NSSF strongly encourages firearm owners to use any of the variety of safe firearm storage options available to secure firearms when not in use. Project ChildSafe is fully funded by members of the firearm industry and a component of the industry’s Real Solutions, Safer Communities. initiative.

Mississippi Senate passes bill allowing teachers to be armed

Legislation that would allow public and private school teachers in the Magnolia State to be armed has passed the Mississippi Senate.

On Wednesday, Senate Bill 2079, authored by Senator Angela Hill, R-Picayune, passed after receiving 39 yea votes and 13 nay votes.

The bill would establish a School Safety Guardian Training Program, which would be administered by Mississippi Homeland Security under the umbrella of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety (DPS).

Governing bodies of school systems throughout the state would have the autonomy to determine whether or not they will participate in the program. Authorities within participating school districts would either approve or deny permission for a volunteer school employee to be involved in the program.

“If a school wants to put together an armed educator team to work with law enforcement and to be trained to basically assist in the time of an active shooter or some unfortunate situation, the framework is now in place once we get this bill through the House,” Senator Hill said on The Gallo Show.

To participate in the program, one must possess an enhanced or concealed carry permit prior to applying.

According to DPS Commissioner Sean Tindell, once qualified, those participating in the program go through a two-to-three-week training session where they are educated on tactics related to gun safety and proper interaction with the police if a crisis happened to occur.

“They would learn self-defense tactics. They would learn firearm tactics. They would learn communication with law enforcement,” Tindell said on MidDays with Gerard Gibert. “If we’re going to have teachers in schools with a firearm, they’re going to have the proper training and an interaction plan with law enforcement.”

Training would be conducted at the Mississippi Law Enforcement Officer Training Academy in Pearl and led by multiple law enforcement agencies in collaboration with one another.

AR-15s are Mindbogglingly Safe
“Assault Weapon” homicides are so rare you need graphs to comprehend it.

It is taken as an obvious given by approximately half of the United States that we are in a massive epidemic of AR-15 homicides, and that something must be done about it. This given is not only completely false, the level of falseness of it is almost incomprehensible. Let’s try and understand exactly how false it is by using simple arithmetic.

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Elitist snobs from New York always think the land between the coasts is populated by nothing but hicks and cows

As the Wyoming Legislature considers several bills that would make it easier to carry firearms in public spaces, there’s evidence that those practices make things worse, a gun control advocate said.

“We’ve seen things like guns routinely being left in bathrooms on campuses,” Andy Pelosi told Cowboy State Daily.

As executive director of The Campaign to Keep Guns off Campus, which is based in New York State, Pelosi was answering what he claims are flawed arguments from Wyoming concealed-carry advocates who have said that the loosening of concealed carry restrictions in other states hasn’t caused problems.

Causes More Problem Than It Solves?

Allowing firearms on college campuses has led to problems and even some tragedies, Pelosi said. That has included more suicides or perpetrators using firearms to force sexual assaults.

He cited some studies his group has compiled from reports of gun-related incidents on campuses, including Colorado State University. Concealed carry is allowed at CSU.

It generally isn’t allowed on the University of Wyoming Campus. Students or staff may carry at UW only if they’ve obtained a special permit from university police for some pressing reason, such as being stalked.

Some of the incidents in Colorado that Keep Guns off Campus cites include student gunshot suicides in 2008 and 2017 and an accidental shooting on the CU-Denver campus in 2012.

And in 2017 at Fort Collins Community College, “A 26-year-old female student pulled a loaded gun on her professor after he confronted her about cheating,” according to one of the studies cited.

Overall, allowing guns on campuses and other previously gun-free public spaces isn’t shown to diminish crime, but instead increases the number of incidents such as suicides, threats and accidental shootings, Pelosi said.

The Associated Students of the University of Wyoming opposes allowing concealed carry on campus, the group’s representative, Caitlin Heddins, told legislators during a recent discussion of one of the firearms-related bills.

Still A Good Idea, Some Say

However, advocates for the bills – House Bill 105 and Senate File 135 – argue that it violates the Second Amendment rights of Wyoming residents to not allow concealed carry into government buildings, government meetings and the like.

They contend that gun-free zones simply create “soft targets” for mass shooters or others with ill intent.

New ‘Capitol Carry’ Bills 

A pair of new bills introduced to the Wyoming Senate on Monday would help allow concealed carry in the Wyoming Capitol building, where civilians are now prohibited from having firearms.

Senate File 149 would create an “enhanced concealed carry permit.” The current Wyoming concealed permitting process does not require applicants to take any actual firearms handling or live-fire training. Instead, they take only classroom or online courses.

Under the bill, those regular concealed carry permits would still be available. But for people wishing to take it to another level, enhanced concealed carry permit training would entail hands-on firearms safety courses, as well as live-fire training and qualification sessions.

Under Senate File 150, people who had obtained the enhanced concealed carry permits would be allowed to concealed carry their firearms in the Capitol.

Poll: Majority of Americans Oppose ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban

Bans on AR-15s and similar firearms have continued to fall out of favor with the American public.

51 percent of Americans now oppose adopting a national “assault weapons” sales ban, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll released Monday. That’s a ten-point jump in opposition since the question was last asked in 2019. Only 47 percent said they support the policy. That represents the second-lowest level of support measured since the poll began in 1995.

Those who strongly opposed a nationwide ban also outpaced those who strongly supported it for the first time since 2015.

The results are just the latest to confirm a decreased appetite for the ban. At least three separate polls conducted in 2022 documented a decline in support for the policy, even in the immediate aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting.

The latest results arrive just one day before President Biden (D.) is slated to give his State of the Union Address, where he is likely to reiterate his support for an assault weapon ban. Biden has made an assault weapon ban one of his signature gun policy goals, and he routinely calls for Congress to pass a ban after every prominent shooting–a request his party delivered on in the House last year but not the Senate.

The polling results suggest the public is increasingly turning a deaf ear to those calls.

Pollster David Langer said the decline in support for the gun ban was “broadly based across groups” but could only speculate as to what was driving the drop in support.

“It would take a study focused in more detail on the issue to assess its reasons, but other studies provide clues,” he said in a statement. “In a Pew Research Center poll last year, the public divided on whether or not making it harder to get guns would reduce mass shootings.”

Beyond public opinion souring on the bans, the court system has also started to cast doubt on their constitutionality after the Supreme Court’s decision in 2022’s New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen. The High Court vacated a federal decision upholding Maryland’s assault weapons ban shortly after that ruling and sent it back down to the lower courts to be relitigated under the new standard it set. Since then, federal judges have blocked two local assault weapon bans in Colorado, and a state court blocked Illinois’ new ban.

However, that hasn’t stopped lawmakers in blue states from continuing to push for the bans. Illinois joined Delaware in passing the first statewide assault weapons bans in several decades when it adopted its version last year. Lawmakers are also considering new bans in Washington, Rhode Island, Colorado, and New Mexico this year.

Langer Research Associates conducted the ABC News/Washington Post poll by cell phone from January 27-February 1. It sampled 1,003 adults with a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points.

Gun Control Kills People

When will the fascist far left admits that it has blood on its collective hands and it’s time to restore the people’s common sense civil rights?

“There is no comparison whatever between an armed and disarmed man; it is not reasonable to suppose that one who is armed will obey willingly one who is unarmed; or that any unarmed man will remain safe.”
—Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

Did you notice that the national socialist media spent little time trying to exploit the recent mass shootings in the people’s republic of California? Anti-liberty authoritarians of the fascist far left live to exploit other people’s pain for their political gain.

And yet aside from a few perfunctory calls for more restrictions on liberty, they only issued only desperate excuses for why their gun-grabbing agenda didn’t work.

Where was the usual wall-to-wall coverage stretching on for weeks so the result will be a new set of incremental restrictions on our civil rights?  Where were the endless repetitions of the names, images, and backgrounds of the mass murderers to spread the media contagion once more?

It wasn’t just that the mass murders didn’t meet the proper media profile.  They’re always ready to push the propaganda for ratings.  If that just happens to inspire further attacks, as it always does through the known phenomena of media contagion, that’s just icing on the cake.

Why weren’t the ghouls of the gun-grabbing lobby looking for more restrictions on liberty?  Why would they let a golden opportunity to take guns away from the innocent slip by?

It wasn’t just the perpetrator profiles; the national socialist media and the gun-grabbers have just about everything they ever wanted in controlling other people in the state.  With that, the leftist gun-grabbing ghouls have run into a brick wall.

They’ve run out of ideas aside from outright gun confiscation, so now they have two big problems:

    • They have nothing else to offer.
    • Everyone is wondering why their liberty restriction agenda doesn’t work.

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Analysis: How Will SCOTUS Handle the Domestic Violence Restraining Order Gun Ban?

A federal appeals court has found disarming people under domestic violence restraining orders unconstitutional, setting up a showdown at the Supreme Court. How will the justices react?
A three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit unanimously vacated a Texas man’s conviction for possessing a gun while under a restraining order. They applied the standard the High Court handed down in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen and determined there was no historical analogue that matched the modern law’s purpose or methods.
“The Government fails to demonstrate that § 922(g)(8) ‘s restriction of the Second Amendment right fits within our Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. The Government’s proffered analogues falter under one or both of the metrics the Supreme Court articulated in Bruen as the baseline for measuring ‘relevantly similar’ analogues: ‘how and why the regulations burden a law-abiding citizen’s right to armed self-defense,’” Judge Cory T. Wilson wrote for the panel in United States v. Rahimi. “As a result, § 922(g)(8) falls outside the class of firearm regulations countenanced by the Second Amendment.”
The ruling sets up a situation where a federal gun law is no longer in effect for Texas and Louisiana. The Department of Justice is unlikely to let that stand for long without asking the Supreme Court to intervene. And the Court tends to take the government’s appeals over everyone else.
I can see only two mitigating factors that might slow the case’s assent. The first is that there is still one more level of review available in the Fifth Circuit, specifically an en banc hearing in front of the entire court. The second is that a circuit split now exists on this issue, but the Fifth Circuit is the only appeals court to have heard a case on this issue in the wake of the Bruen decision.

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FACT CHECK: Gavin Newsom Says ‘Permitless Carry Does Not Make You Safer’

CLAIM: In the lead-up to his February 1 push for more gun control, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) claimed, “Permitless carry does not make you safer.”

VERDICT: Partly False.

On June 7, 2017, Breitbart News relayed FBI data published by the NRA that showed two of the earliest permitless carry states, hereafter called constitutional carry states, were Alaska and Arizona. And both states saw their handgun murders decline when their concealed carry permit requirements were abolished.

The date showed Alaska’s handgun murder rate “declined after the state enacted [constitutional carry] in 2003.” Moreover, in the 14 years between the abolition of the permit requirement and 2017 “handgun murders…declined as a percentage of the total number of murders.”

A drop in handgun murders also took place in Arizona after that state abolished its concealed carry permit requirement in 2010.

More recently, the Maine Wire noted that crime fell in Maine after the state abolished its concealed carry permit requirement in 2015.

FBI data shows violent crime beginning a decline in 2016 that continued through 2020.

There are currently 25 states with constitutional carry. When there were only 13–Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Dakota, West Virginia, and Wyoming–the Crime Prevention Research Center (CPRC) showed that data from the 13 states showed overall murder numbers fell from 4.49 to 4.31 post-constitutional carry enactment, and that violent crime fell from 331.5 to 318.2.

But murder levels can vary for a variety of reasons, and CPRC’s John Lott explains some of the numerous factors that are often at play:

Firearm homicide is not a good measure of the effect of Constitutional Carry laws because murders can be committed with other weapons as well as by hands and fists. Also, gun homicide data include justifiable homicides, including homicides by police in the line of duty. Justifiable homicides are benefits, not costs, and they might understandably increase when more citizens are allowed to defend themselves with guns. The FBI murder rate has neither of these problems and is a better test of the effect of constitutional carry laws. Nevertheless, my analysis finds that Constitutional Carry laws do not increase firearm homicide.

It should also be noted that Lott points out that constitutional carry helps to make the poor safer, by making self-defense affordable.

Lott adds:

Constitutional Carry will make it easier for poor people, who are the most likely victims of violent crime, to be able to defend themselves and their families. Costs matter; just compare the numbers in neighboring states, Illinois and Indiana. In Illinois, the total cost of getting a five-year permit is $450; there is no license fee in Indiana. While only 4% of Illinoisans have a concealed handgun permit, 22% of adults in Indiana already have one, the second-highest number of permits per capita.

Newsom’s claim is partly false.

11 US Cities — All Governed by Democratic Mayors — Listed Among 50 Most Dangerous in World

Eleven U.S. cities rank among the 50 most dangerous in the world, according to a recent report published by Numbeo, a global quality of life database. All 11 are governed by Democratic mayors.

Three U.S. cities — Baltimore, Memphis and Detroit — are ranked among the 20 most dangerous cities on the planet.

The three cities have more in common than just violent crime. All three are run by Democrats.

Baltimore ranks #15 on the annual dangerous cities list, with Memphis and Detroit close behind at #18 and #19, respectively.

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When and How We Should Teach Our Children About Armed Defense

I write about armed defense every week. We’ve covered many stories where young men and women defended themselves or their family. We’ve talked around the issue of teenagers and guns, but let’s look at it directly. When should we teach our children about firearms? The obvious answer is to teach your children when it is the safest thing to do. There are risks on both sides. Fortunately, we make similar decisions about our children’s education all the time. This article isn’t the last work on any of the issues, but I hope it is a good starting place.

As a responsible parent, we have to teach our children what to do if they see an unsecured firearm. We have to choose when and how to tell our children that we have firearms in our home. We have to establish the rules about when our children are allowed to touch our guns. As they grow older, we have to teach our children to be responsible around firearms. Later, we have to teach them when and how to use a firearm as part of our family’s safety plan. Those are a few of the milestones, but there are lessons in between. Other parents have been there before.

What is new is that many families who have a gun today did not grow up with guns and are entering the firearms culture for the first time. We’ve lived with guns for several centuries so there are many well worn paths. To take some of the emotional heat out of the issue, this isn’t an all or nothing proposition. The alternatives are not ignorance about firearms or having our 15-year olds carrying concealed in public. Teaching and learning about firearms comes in a number of small steps on the way to self-defense. You’ve done things like this with your children already.

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Analysis: Whole Community Effort Needed to Combat Mass Shootings

A new U.S. Secret Service report adds to a growing body of research documenting common behavior patterns among mass attackers. It also highlights the potential for community intervention, both broadly and on a small scale, to make a real difference.

The National Threat Assessment Center’s (NTAC) report published Wednesday analyzed 173 “mass attacks”—defined as incidents in which three or more people, not including the attacker, were harmed in public or semi-public places—between 2016 and 2020. The report uncovered many patterns linking various attackers to one extent or another, but what most perpetrators had in common was striking.

More than three-quarters of the individuals who committed mass attacks exhibited concerning behaviors or shared alarming communications before carrying them out. Nearly two-thirds exhibited behaviors or shared communications that were so concerning “they should have been met with an immediate response,” according to the researchers. Roughly 60 percent of the attackers exhibited behavior that caused others to fear for the safety of the attacker, themselves, or the broader public.

Often these concerning behaviors manifested in the form of expressed threats, actively making plans to carry out an attack, more minor acts of violence, or harassing behaviors.

For anyone who has spent time following the news coverage of these all-too-frequent incidents, the study results likely won’t come as much of a surprise. Time after time, it seems reports come out of the woodwork only after an incident has already transpired, revealing troubling details from an attacker’s past that, in hindsight, should have made it all too clear what was bound to happen.

But this new report makes clear that such perception is more than just anecdotal. The data bears it out. Mass attackers do, in fact, routinely exhibit a pattern of troubling behaviors that are generally identifiable by others, whether it’s family members, friends, classmates, employers, coworkers, or law enforcement.

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Dem Lawmaker Unwittingly Makes Case for 2A With Bill Requiring Armed Guards at Chicago Banks, Retail Stores

An Illinois state representative this week introduced legislation that would mandate armed guards at businesses susceptible to armed robbery. The irony couldn’t be better, given that the proposed legislation flies in the face of several Democrat narratives and destroys many of their illogical claims.

The Armed Security Protection Act, if passed, would require banks, pawn shops, grocery stores, and gas stations in municipalities with populations greater than two million to employ and have on the premises at least one armed guard during business hours, as reported by Blaze Media. While the bill doesn’t mention Chicago, the Windy City is the only city in the state with a population greater than two million. How “clever.”

 

Irony abounds, here.

Congressional Democrats have long opposed arming school teachers, and the gun-grabber in chief, Joe Biden is steadfastly opposed to “hardening schools” against potential shooters. But here we have a Democrat state lawmaker, desperate to stop violent crime, proposing legislation requiring armed guards to protect money, obviously believing the adage that bad guys with guns are only stopped by good guys with guns. Yet, Democrats refuse to apply the same (correct) logic to protecting America’s school children, irrationally choosing instead to attempt to deny the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners.

Totally logical, right? Uh-huh — about as logical as the ridiculous sign below.

Incidentally, the ridiculousness of “gun-free zones” has always amused the crap out of me. Imagine a really bad dude, armed to teeth and determined to rob a specific bank, maybe close to where he lives. So, our would-be bank robber gets jacked up to rob that bank, shows up with adrenaline flowing through his veins, and comes “face-to-face” with a “gun-free zone” sign. What now?

Does the dude look at the sign, the air escaping from his balloon as he reads it, and say “Damn. I really wanted to rob this bank,” then tuck his tail between his legs and dejectedly go home to sulk? Please.

On the contrary, if the dude has a brain at all, once he sees the sign, he gets even more jacked up, and it’s go-time. And the bank in our scenario could be a gas station, grocery store, pawn shop, or any other business, or a neighborhood plastered with similar idiotic signs. But I digress; let’s get back to the Illinois story.

The Irony Continues

While Illinois Democrat lawmakers generally support more gun control and fewer guns, rather than more guns to fight runaway violent crime, the primary sponsor of the Armed Security Protection Act, Democrat Rep. Thaddeus Jones, also voted for a ban on pretend “assault rifles” (AR-15 and various other semi-automatic firearms), which Illinois Democrat Gov. J. B. Pritzker signed into law earlier in January.

And embattled Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot notoriously and delusionally blames guns for the ever-skyrocketing number of murders and other violent crimes, vs. those who pull the triggers. Last time I checked, a total of zero guns have committed murder or other crimes.

Speaking of Lori Lightfoot, as I reported last Friday, the crack crime-stopper offered a brilliant tip to Chicagoans in fear of being robbed at gunpoint: Don’t carry money. No, really — how could you make that up?

The Bottom Line

While I applaud a Democrat lawmaker introducing legislation to place armed guards at businesses susceptible to robbery, I have a helluva problem with hypocritical Democrats refusing to apply that same logic to the protection of school children, and the rights of American citizens to protect their homes and their families with the legal weapon(s) of their choice. Why the difference?

We’ve heard Democrats, including Biden, preach about not “needing” AR-15s and other semi-auto firearms. But unfortunately for the left, the Second Amendment specifically speaks to “rights,” not “needs,” and the notion of the federal government (Democrat Party) as the arbiter of who “needs” what type of firearm and who doesn’t, is anathema to freedom-loving, Second-Amendment supporting Americans across the fruited plain — Democrat gun-grabbers be damned.

No Second Amendment Would Render Us Powerless

America is on a razor’s edge. Three mass shootings within 48 hours have the usual liberal suspects exploiting the carnage to push gun control.

President Biden and his acolytes keep babbling the same platitude that is as smug as it is irrelevant. After a tragic shooting, Democrats keep bleating about how no hunter needs a semi-automatic weapon to kill deer.

This snide commentary shows a complete ignorance of the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Second Amendment right of individuals to own guns has absolutely nothing to do with hunting. The right to own guns “shall not be infringed” by the government because that very government is why individuals own such guns.

The Second Amendment is part of the Bill of Rights, a charter of negative liberties that protects Americans from their own government. If the government were to ever turn inward and try to commit genocide, they would face resistance from armed citizens.

The issue is not whether America’s government would ever turn inward. What matters is that without the Second Amendment, they easily could. With the Second Amendment, their task is much more difficult.

The dark reality is that the American government only exists under a threat of death to that government. This is a collective truth, not a call to rebellion. Every one of our legal 325 million citizens can remember that they individually say and do matters. If not liberty, then death.

Our First Amendment allowing us to challenge ideas and people exists only because of our Second Amendment. As Yale law professor Akhil Reed Amar stated, “The framers recognized that self-government requires the people’s access to bullets as well as ballots.”

This is no antiquated concept in modern America. We have approximately 77.49 million adult gun owners. 2020 reflected the highest number of firearm sales in history, with 39,695,315 background checks for the sale of firearms and explosives. Americans own over 436.4M million guns . These are comforting facts.

Your individual conversations, vote and money matter as much as anyone else’s, all backed by the threat of the government’s demise. That is part of America’s shadow, never to be forgotten.

The United States, Mexico and Guatemala are the only three countries in the world that currently have a constitutional right to own a gun. Six other countries had a constitutional right to bear arms but repealed those laws.

America is the only country with a right to keep and bear arms without constitutional restrictions. Our Second Amendment is rare and exceptionally good.

This is why leftists remain set on trying to limit guns. Only then can Americans be fully controlled. That is not our way nor our agreement.

Every regime of death began by removing guns. The philosophy of the power of owning guns and knowing why we have them is at its essence as important as the guns themselves.

Our Second Amendment backing our First Amendment right to call out hypocrisies and lies is America’s own nuclear balance. Our government points its warheads at us. We in an act of detente point back ours collectively.

There is an inherent understanding, even in places led by tyrants: that those who go too far and try to implement tyranny in America, will one day see their power usurped, and their reign ended. This is detente for our people, not a darker position of violence. We must never forget the shadow side of our Second Amendment and its darker threat of death as a real tool for maintaining the balance of power in America.

God forbid we ever need to even think about using our arms, as citizens, against government. The Second Amendment thus still remains as a a useful reminder to those who lead us, why the Amendment was crafted in the first place – by our Founders.

Guns Don’t Kill People . . . People Kill People

Three recent mass shooting incidents in California have “gun violence” in the news again.  And most assuredly loud calls for banning guns will also be heard.

Tragedies like these three incidents make me think about a line from the 1953 film “Shane.” In the movie the lead character Shane famously remarks to Marian Starrett, ‘A gun is just a tool, Marian.  It’s no better or worse than the man using it.’

While this is true, it’s only true up to a point.  Guns are tools but they are not ordinary tools.  They were invented as weapons of war.  But they do  serve necessary and useful purposes as well.  Guns are used for hunting and other sport. They are also used for self-defense.

Guns

A number of television shows depict the reliance people here in the U.S.  have on hunting as a means of providing food.   The biathlon, in the Winter Olympics, and target and skeet shooting (clay pigeon shooting), are also  popular sports among gun enthusiasts.  And as the Heritage Foundation points out:

“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, almost every major study on defensive gun use has found that Americans use their firearms defensively between 500,000 and 3 million times each year.”

Case in point: On July 17, 2022 a man lawfully carrying a firearm shot and killed an “an assailant suspected of fatally shooting three people and injuring two others in an Indiana mall on Sunday evening.”  The incident took place at the Greenwood Park Mall just outside Indianapolis.  Greenwood Police Chief Jim Ison called the man a “hero.”

And this brings us back to Shane’s point – a gun is no better or worse than the man (or woman) using it.  So let’s not get emotional or delusional about guns.  As the adage says, “Guns don’t kill people.  People kill people.”

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Another problem with Gun Violence Archive’s numbers

Supporters of gun control love to use Gun Violence Archive as an authoritative source on the number of shootings we have in this country. The number of mass shootings as compiled by the site–a number that doesn’t reflect what most people think of as a mass shooting, it should be remembered–is presented uncritically by the media.

It happens all the time, and in the wake of two shootings in California, it’s happening yet again. While we know plenty about those two shootings and will likely learn more as we go forward, proponents of gun control site Gun Violence Archive’s total number of mass shootings to show it’s more than those two incidents.

Take this editorial as just one example.

History is full of horrific events in which we shake our heads and ask, “How did that happen? What were they thinking?”

The Holocaust and slavery are two prime examples.

It begs the question of what is transpiring today that will be regarded by future generations as deplorable. That historians will record with the hope that they will never be repeated.

Climate change, yes. And then there is gun violence.

California has had three mass shootings in the last four days. Seven people were killed and one injured in Half Moon Bay on Monday. One person was killed and six injured at an East Oakland gas station later that evening. Eleven people were killed and nine injured in Monterey Park on Saturday.

We are not even at the end of the first month of 2023. Yet the Monterey Park and Half Moon Bay shootings bring the number of mass shootings (in which four or more people were killed or injured) to 39 this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive. That follows the 647 mass shootings recorded in 2022 and 690 mass shootings in 2021.

Of course, what follows is the true-to-form call for gun control we typically see from many editorial boards.

Now, in the wake of two deadly mass shootings, I sort of get it. However, they’re not just holding those two incidents up as why we somehow need gun control. They’re holding Gun Violence Archive’s numbers up as well.

And yet, what do we know about any of those shootings?

Well, we know three or more people were injured at those shootings–the low standard the site uses to categorize something as a mass shooting in the first place, which includes gang warfare, drivebys, and so on–but little else.

If we’re going to have a conversation about how we need gun control, about how certain guns shouldn’t be allowed in private hands, or how certain people should be legally barred from buying guns, shouldn’t we also need to know about any of those hundreds upon hundreds of so-called mass shootings?

I ask because I know statistically where most of those weapons came from, and it’s not from lawful gun sales.

How can you say that the gun laws are insufficient when so few of these hundreds of “mass shootings” were carried out with a lawfully-obtained firearm in the first place?

See, Gun Violence Archive is a favorite among the media and anti-gun set (but I repeat myself), yet it only shows part of the picture. To cite their numbers without important context on where those guns were obtained amounts to little more than trying to view a masterpiece by only looking at one single bit with a microscope.

It’s not a full picture by any stretch.

And it matters because while actual mass shootings make headlines, the real violence problem in our country happens in our inner cities. They get counted by Gun Violence Archive to try and push gun control when all the gun laws in the world aren’t going to help.

I wouldn’t say she purposefully lying. She just likes that paycheck too much to actually do any research on her own for the facts of the matter.
She reads from out of a notebook that has all the approved answers for probable questions already provided for her. And if it doesn’t have an answer for her to parrot, she always uses one of two or three standard ‘boilerplate’ deferrals she’s memorized.

FACT CHECK: WH Press Sec. Falsely Claims ‘Assault Weapons’ Ban Reduced Mass Shootings

CLAIM: White house press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre claimed the result of the 1994-2004 “assault weapons” ban was that “mass shootings went down.”

VERDICT: False.

Jean-Pierre opened Tuesday’s press conference by talking about the mass shootings that have been occurring in California, the state that has more gun control than any other state in the Union.

Ironically, one of California’s gun controls is an “assault weapons” ban.

Nevertheless, Jean-Pierre pushed for an “assault weapons” ban at the federal level, saying, “The last time we had an ‘assault weapons’ ban on the books, thanks to the President and Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) leadership, mass shootings actually went down.”

Jean-Pierre’s claim is 180 degrees out of sync with the information discovered and published by the Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ).

Breitbart News reported the NIJ’s findings, which were originally published just as the “assault weapons” ban was coming to an end. The NIJ made clear that the ban could not be credited with any reduction in crime.

The Washington Times quoted University of Pennsylvania professor Christopher Koper, author of the NIJ report, saying, “We cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence. And, indeed, there has been no discernible reduction in the lethality and injuriousness of gun violence.”

The NIJ report continued, “The ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.” It put matters into perspective by pointing out that “assault weapons” were “rarely used in gun crimes even before the ban.”

Breitbart News noted on January 18, 2013, that “’assault weapons’ were tied to less than .012 per cent of overall deaths in America in recent years (2011)”. This point is poignant, in light of the NIJ report showing “assault weapons” were “rarely used” in crime to begin with. The guns are bulky and difficult to conceal, making them a bad choice for criminals seeking to avoid detection.

Also, the January 21 Monterey Park attacker used a pistol, and NBC Bay Area’s Christine Ni noted that the January 23 Half Moon Bay attacker appears to have used a handgun as well.

Jean-Pierre’s claim that the 1994-2004 “assault weapons” ban reduced mass shootings does not square with the Department of Justice’s NIJ report.

Near everything on the gun grabber’s list of laws and not a one of them actually do anything to stop those bent on mayhem and murder.

Newsom: Second Amendment turning into “suicide pact”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is lashing out at gun owners, the firearms industry, and even the Founding Fathers as he tries to spin another failure of the state’s gun control laws into an attack on the Second Amendment.

Speaking to CBS News on Monday evening, Newsom claimed that while he has no “ideological opposition” to “responsible” gun owners, at least in theory, the shootings in Monterey Park demand a further crackdown on the right to keep and bear arms.

“Nothing about this is surprising. Everything about this is infuriating,” he told “CBS Evening News” anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell on Monday. “The Second Amendment is becoming a suicide pact.”

Newsom clarified that he has “no ideological opposition” against people who “responsibly” own guns and get background checks and training on how to use them.

But he told O’Donnell that current regulations are falling short.

Maybe because the gun control laws Newsom favors are aimed at legal gun owners instead of violent criminals?

Newsom mentioned the role of mental health in mass shootings, but he singled out gun access as a factor exacerbating the problem.

“I’m really proud of the work we’ve done in this space, but we’ve had decades of neglect,” he said. “But respectfully, I will submit that regardless of the challenges it relates to behavioral health, there’s not a country in the world that doesn’t experience behavioral health issues.”

And there’s not a state in the U.S. that regulates and restricts gun ownership to the extent that California does, and yet according to the FBI it was California that had the most most active shooter incidents in 2021. Part of that may simply be an artifact of California’s large population, but it’s also evidence that restricting a constitutional right to self-defense in the name of public safety doesn’t stop committed killers nearly as effectively as it prevents peaceable gun owners from exercising their 2A rights.

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If the representatives of the people betray their constituents, there is then no recourse left but in the exertion of that original right of self-defense which is paramount to all positive forms of government, and which against the usurpations of the national rulers may be exerted with infinitely better prospect of success than against those of the rulers of an individual State.
–Alexander Hamilton