Come On In "Girl With A Gun"

Welcome to self responsibility and self defense.

"A veteran GOP political strategist told me he likens the current state of America to pressure building inside a volcano and predicts, “It will blow its top immediately after the election.”

"Living in Florida, perhaps I watch too much of The Weather Channel, but my own election natural disaster analogy resembles the tracking of a monster hurricane as it moves closer to the U.S. mainland. Based on present conditions, we know at least a Category 3 will strike late on Nov. 3 and gather strength on Nov. 4 or 5. Virtually everyone is aware of the potential for devastation, and millions are taking pro-active precautions — buying guns and ammunition."

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/09/03/the_guns_of_november__144125.html

Action, Re-Action

 Wills the Dems pay again for their soft on crime "let them burn it" approach?

"This is bad news for the Biden/Harris campaign and gun control activists across the country. It’s not just red states that are seeing a huge influx in the number of new gun owners these days. Even anti-gun strongholds like New Jersey are seeing unprecedented interest from residents who’ve decided it’s time to exercise their Second Amendment rights."

https://bearingarms.com/cam-e/2020/08/21/new-jersey-interest-in-2a-at-record-highs/

Media Myths about Guns Prevail

Myth 1: Los Angeles Times: “Why the U.S. is No. 1 — in mass shootings”

This claim is based on one study by Adam Lankford at the University of Alabama. Lankford asserted that the U.S. accounted for 31% of mass public shooters from 1966 to 2012, despite having less than 5% of the world population. But for over four years, he refused requests from both academics and media outlets, including Real Clear Politics, Fox News, and the Washington Post, to release his data. When he finally released his list of cases after I had published an academic paper going through the data, it was clear why he had waited so long. He had over-counted cases in the U.S. and missed thousands of others in the rest of the world.

The United States accounted for just 1% of the shooters — far less than its share of the world population. France, Switzerland, Russia, Finland, and Norway all have substantially higher per capita fatality rates than does the U.S. Indeed, France’s rate is 111% higher than ours. By far, the worst mass public shootings have occurred in Europe.

Americans may be surprised by these numbers, because they hear so little about mass shootings in other countries. The dozens of times in recent years that such shootings are stopped by concealed handgun permit holders is also ignored. Something else the news media won’t tell you: Since 1950, 94% of the mass public shootings have occurred in gun-free zones, places where citizens are banned from having guns.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/08/01/myths_the_media_perpetuate_about_gun_control_143848.html

Showing the Virtue of the 2nd Amendment

“My whole adult life, opponents of private gun ownership have insisted that an individual right to keep and bear arms was outmoded because it is better to rely on the police,” Georgetown Law professor Randy Barnett recently remarked. “In multiple ways, in 2020 that argument has been completely demolished.”

He is correct on both counts. The argument that only the police should have guns was once standard. It has now become unfashionable, as everyone is expected to accept the premise that only criminals and rioters should have them.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/abolish-police-and-the-second-amendment-becomes-a-first-resort

The 2nd Amendment was instituted to allow us to defend ourselves against an over bearing government, however, it comes in very handy when the government fails to accomplish its legitimate purpose of defending individual rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 

This is a thoughtful read. I remember when NICS was passed and we the gun owners knew it would just be a boon doggle, as it has been. However, if the money's going to be spend by we the people to do NICS, it should be done well. 

Taxpayers should be able to sue criminally ineffective governments. If only ...

Take universal background checks as an example. Although these could probably be legislated in a way that respects gun owners’ privacy and the Second Amendment, there is no evidence that any significant amount of crime is committed using the very small minority of guns whose sale would be affected — i.e., intrastate purchases in the 31 states that do not already require a background check. We are not aware of even one mass shooting committed with such a gun, and we doubt that many such guns are used in common crimes either. In short, universal background checks are an attainable but not very useful idea. They wouldn’t prevent much violence.

As another example, take prohibitions on the sale of so-called “assault weapons.” Although there is a campaign underway lately to rewrite history and pretend that the assault weapons ban of the 1990s was effective in preventing shootings, its failure has been statistically demonstrated, and it was universally acknowledged at the time Congress allowed it to expire. Moreover, gun violence has rapidly declined in the time since.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/editorials/congress-did-something-about-gun-sales-and-its-helping

Heartbreaking to read. I cannot believe the claim of "no warning signs" was ever made.

“This incident that occurred, this outrageous tragedy that we have had to deal with, we really had no signs, no warning, no tips,” announced Broward County School Superintendent Robert Runcie on CNN on Feb. 15, 2018.

Runcie was speaking of the tragic school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that had left 17 students and staff dead the day before. 

“No signs, no warning.” Well, that’s simply not true.

The confessed shooter in Parkland, Florida, had a long history of violence that school officials were well-aware of—a history that should have alerted them to the potential risk. 

The demand for socialism is on the rise from young Americans today. But is socialism even morally sound? Find out more now >>

Andrew Pollack and Max Eden document this in their new book “Why Meadow Died: The People and Policies that Created the Parkland Shooter and Endanger America’s Students.” Pollack is the father of Meadow, a girl who lost her life on the third floor of Stoneman Douglas that day. 

The warning signs were abundant—from animal torture and attempted suicide, to bringing knives and bullets to school and an overall obsession with guns. Police had been called to the shooter’s home 45 times to deal with incidents involving him or his brother.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/09/18/father-of-parkland-victim-on-what-could-have-stopped-the-tragedy/

Another Not-Crisis

“What he is proposing is the infliction of a massive injustice on millions of Americans who had nothing to do with this or any other shooting by infringing on their rights. Justice Department statistics show that rifles of all types are used in murders less often than clubs, bare hands, or knives.”

https://www.ammoland.com/2019/09/a-comparison-of-techniques-in-defending-the-second-amendment/#axzz5zbTbzc8N

If you listened to the media types, you'd never guess that gun violence rates are at an all time low.

John Lott: Myths of American gun violence - NY Daily News

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/john-lott-myth-american-gun-violence-article-1.2268490

"In his address to the nation, Obama claimed that, "We as a country will have to reckon with the fact that this type of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries. It doesn't happen in other places with this kind of frequency."

But Obama overlooks Norway, where Anders Behring Breivik used a gun to kill 67 people and wound 110 others. Still others were killed by bombs that Breivik detonated. Three of the six worst K-12 school shootings ever have occurred in Europe. Germany saw two of these — one in 2002 at Erfurt and another in 2009 at Winnenden. The combined death toll was 34. France and Belgium have both faced multiple terrorist attacks over the past year. After adjusting for America's much larger population, we see that many European countries actually have higher rates of death in mass public shootings."

Permit holders or the Popo - who's more dangerous?

https://www.dailysignal.com/2016/08/09/these-gun-owners-are-least-likely-criminals-report-finds/

“With about 685,464 full-time police officers in the U.S. from 2005 to 2007, we find that there were about 103 crimes per hundred thousand officers,” the report reads. “For the U.S. population as a whole, the crime rate was 37 times higher—3,813 per hundred thousand people.”

The study refers to Texas and Florida, which it says mirror most other states, to compare permit holders with police and the overall population. It used data from 1987 through 2015.

“We find that permit holders are convicted of misdemeanors and felonies at less than a sixth the rate for police officers,” the report says. “Among police, firearms violations occur at a rate of 16.5 per 100,000 officers. Among permit holders in Florida and Texas, the rate is only 2.4 per 100,000.10. That is just one-seventh of the rate for police officers.”

Murder and concealed carry - what's your bet?

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jul/14/murder-rates-drop-as-concealed-carry-permits-soar-/

The number of concealed carry handgun permits has skyrocketed since President Obama was first elected, while murder rates have fallen, according to a new report released Wednesday.

Since 2007, the number of concealed handgun permits has soared from 4.6 million to over 12.8 million, and murder rates have fallen from 5.6 killings per 100,000 people to just 4.2, about a 25 percent drop, according to the report from the Crime Prevention Research Center.

No Gun Ban Will Work, Just Ask the French

New Zealand's bad idea.
https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/435110-new-zealand-gun-ban-is-not-the-answer-to-stop-mass-shootings

Fewer Guns Less Crime? Nope

But, as we can see, civilian guns in Austria, for instance, are six times more numerous what they are in the UK. But the homicide rate is lower in Austria. Similarly, there are twelve times more civilian guns in Switzerland than in the Netherlands. Yet both countries have about the same homicide rates.

Attempts at proving causality here then especially starts to go off the rails when we look at Russia. In Russia, there is a modest 12 guns per 100 people — which is about half the Swiss rate. And yet the country's homicide rate is 10.8 per 100,000.

https://mises.org/power-market/fewer-guns-less-crime-not-europe

Ruby

Dallas, Oswald, Ruby, Watts, Whitman, Manson, Ray, Sirhan, Bremer, Viet Nam, Nixon, Watergate, FBI, CIA, Squeaky Fromme, Sara Moore—the list goes on and on. Who the hell wrote this script, and where will it end? A dozen years of violence, shock, treachery, and paranoia, and I date it all back to that insane weekend in Dallas and Jack Ruby—the one essential link in the chain, the man who changed an isolated act into a trend.

https://www.texasmonthly.com/politics/who-was-jack-ruby/

Good bye Levi's ...

Levi’s Teams with Billionaire Michael Bloomberg to Attack Gun Rights

That company won't miss the $40 or so I spent on their product as much as I will miss knowing what jeans I like to wear. Tried LL Bean, not terrible, will try Duluth Trading Post next. 

Common Sense Gun Reform and Other Unicorns

This is why I opposed back ground checks all those years ago - they don't work, they are expensive and they reinforce the idea of dependence on government for our safety.

https://www.nraila.org/articles/20181130/anti-gun-researchers-undermine-the-anti-gun-narrative

John Lott on FBI Active Shooter Records

In all, the FBI claims that concealed handgun permit holders have stopped 3.2 percent of active shooter incidents.

But the bureau misses at least 23 cases where permit holders saved the day. That means they stopped 11.5 percent of active shooter incidents from 2000 to 2017.  We at the Crime Prevention Research Center are more confident that we have all of the cases from 2014 to 2017, when 16.5 percent of attacks were stopped.

Back in 2015, when I pointed out errors in the original report, the FBI simply responded, “We acknowledge in the FBI report that our data are imperfect.”  But no correction was ever made. https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/10/23/the_problem_with_the_fbis_active_shooter_data_138425.html

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics - what do we know?

It is essential that we look at data, and it is easy to be fooled by what we find when looking at the data.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/09/04/mass_shootings_in_america_anatomy_of_a_hyped_statistic_137960.html

Publish the data with the conclusions, let others review it, that's the first step towards legit science. 

The Flaccid Left

Point 1 - look at list of mass murderers, and you are looking at a list of mentally ill people. Why pretend otherwise?  It should be self evident - shooting kids is probably the easiest definition of mental illness - so what can be done within the bounds of civil liberties do about this? How can these mentally ill people be stopped from getting guns?
Point 2 - don't look to media for anything other than entertainment or entertain-rage.
Point 3 - it apparently generates ratings to blame the NRA and the GOP. There's an assumption that these groups stop "common sense gun control" or whatever else it is that many believe would have been or would be done that would stop this kind of gun violence.
Point 4 - Democrats had all the power they needed in 2008 to do anything the Constitution would allow to stop gun violence, criminalize types of guns, raise the legal age for gun purchases, beef up the background check system or make the DoD comply with the laws regarding service personnel who are discharged with felony level convictions from the UCMJ. They did nothing. That is most likely because they lost their shirts when they did it before and decided they would rather not do anything difficult about guns again.
Summary: the left is as pathetic as all the politicians.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/16/opinions/democrats-spare-me-your-hypocrisy-on-shooting-cupp/index.html

The Moment It Becomes Obvious

"In early 2016, I decided to leave San Francisco and to build a house in Washington. Previously I lived most of my life in apartment buildings with security entrances that provided a tad more security, but as my house was being built I started wondering what I would do in the event of a home invasion. I knew right away becoming a gun owner was going to be the best way to defend myself."

https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/opinion/columnists/2018/04/24/lifelong-anti-gun-liberal-nra-life-member/545851002/

Reposted

http://news.northeastern.edu/2018/02/schools-are-still-one-of-the-safest-places-for-children-researcher-says/

Couldn't be overstated.