Remember when the Lower Hudson Journal News published the names and addresses of every carry permit holder in its coverage area (the northern NYC/southwest Connecticut subrban area)?  When pro-Second-Amendment bloggers struck back by publishing the names and addresses of the “newspaper’s” “journalists?”

The good guys are at it again.

Last year, a small majority of Connecticut legislators passed legislation that is, as we speak, leading to the confiscation of firearms in Connecticut.

And the bloggers are at it again.

(This blog doesn’t endorse intimidation.  The state needs to stop it).

I’ve said it for nigh-on 20 years, now; gun control is the class war the Left’s been barbering about for the past century.  And they are the patricians.

And the plebeians are winning. 

Glenn Reynolds notes something I’ve been talking about for the past half-decade; the legal, social and moral landscape of the gun question and the Second Amendment has inverted completely over the past 25 years:

Overall, the trend of the past couple of decades seems to be toward expanding gun rights, just as the trend in the 1950s and 1960s was toward expanding free speech rights. America has more guns in private hands than ever before, even as crime rates fall, and, after a half-century or so of anti-gun hysteria, the nation seems to be reverting to its generally gun-friendly traditions.

This is a state of affairs that seemed almost inconceivable a mere two decades ago, and therein lies a reminder: It often seems as if the deck is stacked, and change is inconceivable. Twenty years ago, the prospect of this kind of expansion in constitutional freedom seemed very dim. But in America, change, when it comes, can be sudden and dramatic — even when, as here, the general current of punditry and political opinion seems set in stone. Keep that in mind, as you contemplate other political issues.

And there’s an important lesson there; while the Second Amendment is in the ascendant, it’ll only stay there with constant vigilance and effort – and in the meantime, we have many other civil liberties that’ve been serving as bureaucratic playgrounds for decades now; the Fourth, Fifth and Tenth Amendments in particular are in about the same state today as the Second was thirty years ago.

While much of conservative Minnesota is having a hard time with “messaging”, the Real Americans of Minnesota’s Second Amendment human rights movement have a clear, resounding one.

This from the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance (GOCRA), in their session-eve email blast; it’s as crystal-clear a statement of principles and positions to the Legislature as you could ask for:

• Minnesota’s law-abiding gun owners will not take the blame for the actions of criminals
  We refuse to be treated like those criminals
• You don’t work for Michael Bloomberg and his billions: you work for your Minnesota constituents!
• We know what [Bloomberg’s] “universal background check” proposal really is: universal registration. And we will not sit still for it.
• You have a perfectly good criminal control bill, HF1325, co-authored by 99 senators and representatives, waiting for your action

As always, the gun rights movement – GOCRA, MN-GOPAC, the TC Gun Owners and Carry Forum, the NRA and the like – will be working hard to hold back the Metrocrat orcs’ assault on Real Americans’ freedom. 

And they need you. 

Look – whatever group you prefer, there’s one to fit your style, temperament and philosophy. 

• Dying to bite off a bite-sized piece of activism?  Sign up for GOCRA, and be alerted when action – phone calls, emails, hearings at the Capitol – is needed (send ’em a few bucks; they will put ’em to good use). 
•  Wanna put your money to direct political use, endorsing and influencing elections?  Send MNGOPAC a buck or two, or a few hundred.    
• Wanna fight the fight on main street – and University Avenue, for that matter?  Shelley and the crew at TC Gun Owners and Carry Forum have been spreading the gospel in the wilderness. 

Hell, help out all three.  It’s not like the Orcs are going away any time soon.

As much rhetoric as the Democrats have expended in the past eighty years about class warfare, this is the true class war in America; our would-be “elites” want Real America disarmed; the plebeians, the underdogs, the people are the Real Americans. 

Never let the Legislature forget it.

More guns in the hands of the law-abiding citizen?

Less crime. 

Go ahead, argue.  I don’t need to defeat you (although I will).  The facts do it for me.

Morgan’s prime-time show is now mulch.

He was most famous for trying to return America’s gun laws to pre-revolutionary standards.

No, even that noted conservative tool, the NYTimes, caught that:

Mr. Morgan’s approach to gun regulation was more akin to King George III, peering down his nose at the unruly colonies and wondering how to bring the savages to heel. He might have wanted to recall that part of the reason the right to bear arms is codified in the Constitution is that Britain was trying to disarm the citizenry at the time.

I, for one, was looking forward to dumping the unctuous old Pom into Boston Harbor.

But I’ll settle for this, for now.

I’ve got a big one tomorrow on the Northern Alliance Radio Network. 

First – former representative Jim Knoblauch will be on to talk about the latest on the Senate Office Building flap.

Then, and 2PM, Dr. Nicholas Johnson, author of Negroes and the Gun: The Black Tradition Of Arms.  This should be a fun one.

The problem with most – as in the vast majority – of media people when writing about the Second Amendment is that most of them haven’t the foggiest idea about the subject, and all of their sources on the subject are fellow liberals.

That’s the only excuse I can think of for this piece of suppurating journalistic drainpipe-meat from ABC News:

Gun owner and Second Amendment advocate Marlene Hoeber isn’t your typical member of the National Rifle Association. In fact, she isn’t a member of the NRA at all.

The Oakland, Calif., laboratory equipment mechanic regularly visits firing ranges, where, along with other members of her gun club, she shoots a variety of weapons. “Guns are fun to play with,” she says. She even makes her own ammunition.

But wait!  There’s a whammy!

She has no use, however, for the NRA’s conservative political agenda. By her own description, Hoeber is a feisty, liberal, transgender, tattooed, queer, activist feminist.

She belongs instead to another gun advocacy group entirely–The Liberal Gun Club–whose membership ranges, she says, “from socialists, to anarchists who can quote Marx, to Reagan Democrats.”

It’s also tiny – 1,200 members.  And I’m going to guess they’re in the Bay Area – the media only refers to a “Northern California Chapter” – and I’m going to guess they’re long on the “liberal”:

Its mission, she says, is to provide “a place for gun owners to talk to other owners about neat gun stuff, without having to hear how the president is a Muslim-usurper-socialist running a false-flag operation.”

Aaaaaand there you go.  (The NRA has no such institutional belief; to the extent you can find birthers in the NRA, I’m gonna guess you’ll find just as many “Bush took down the Twin Towers!” and “Trigger” types in the LGC.

Still, if they’re solid on the Second Amendment – let a thousand flowers bloom, I say.

Still, they could do with a little less narrative-mongering:

Although liberal gun owners are presumed not to exist, Gardner says they most certainly do.

There are plenty of Democrats in the NRA – and Minnesota’s Real American movement freely acknowledges we’d have never gotten Shall Issue permit reform without Democrat support.

Less paranoia.  More firepower.

Detroit mom repels three armed daytime home invasion robbers.

Her weapon of choice?  A “Hi-Point” carbine – a pistol-caliber semi-automatic rifle.  It’s lighter, handier, and doesn’t have the overpenetration of a full rifle-caliber rifle (or intermediate-caliber “assault rifle”), but has better accuracy and, perhaps most importantly, that “I’ve got a F***ING MILITARY GRADE RIFLE, AS***LE!” vibe about it.

Open note to the Detroit cop at the end; yes, you’re gonna get ’em – but how about a shout-out to the woman who actually took three scumbags off the street?

In related news, Nicholas Johnson, author of Negroes and the Gun, willl be joining me tomorrow on the NARN.

I first became a Second Amendment activist in the eighties.  It started out as an intellectual exercise – during my KSTP show from 1986-1987, it was mainly a libertarian though exercise.  It became much more personal in 1988, when I thwarted a break-in in my Saint Paul duplex with a .22 caliber handgun. 

At the time, there were eight “shall issue” states – states where the government was obliged to give carry permits to demonstrably law-abiding citizens who applied.  Most of the rest of the country, including Minnesota, was “may-issue”, better described as “arbitrary issue”, where getting a permit usually required some sort of social or poltical connection.  New York City was famous for denying permits to commoners but issued them liberally to celebrities and tycoons; the police chief in Bloomington Minnesota issued exactly one permit to a woman – his wife. 

And for over a third of the country, it was impossible to get a carry permit at all. 

And the burgeoning of applied Second Amendment rights since then has been one of the epic grassroots political victories in American history. 

David Kopel, writing at Volokh, charted the progress.  As of today, 2/3 of the American people live in shall-issue states, and non-issue states have dwindled – technically – to zero.  Arbitrary issue is now about 14%. 

And even that doesn’t fully show the magnitude of the swing:

Moreover, some parts of the Yellow “may issue” states are already issuing permits as if they were Green [Shall Issue]. In New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Delaware, permits are issued by local authorities, and in some jurisdictions, local authorities issue in a manner consistent with respect for the right to bear arms. Permits are rarely issued in Maryland, and are extremely rare in New Jersey.

The six hold-out states are increasingly isolated. Not counting tiny Rhode Island and Delaware, the four larger hold-out states each are all bordered mainly by Green [Shall Issue] states. (Mass. by upper New England and Connecticut; NY by Penn., Vt., and Conn.; NJ by Penn.; Maryland by Penn., Vir., and WV). It should also be noted that in two of Delaware’s three counties, permit issuance is often approximately what a Green [Shall Issue] state would do.

Big Liberalism posits itself as a battle between the little guy – “the 99%” in their self-serving lore – against the cigar-chomping “Monopoly Millionaire” tycoon caricature.  But the gun issue has shown the American political dichotomy as it really is; the plebeians are the majority of Real Americans who trust each other with civil liberty, versus a self-appointed patrician “elite” who believe that government (which disproportionally represents them) should have an unquestioned monopoly on force.

While Michael Bloomberg’s “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” loses more members to defection (and, occasionally, conviction and incarcertation), Real America continues to rack up the wins.

This time?  The US Ninth Circuit struck down a niggling provision in California’s heretofore strict carry permit law:

California law has a process for applying for a permit to carry a handgun for protection in public, with requirements for safety training, a background check, and so on. These requirements were not challenged. The statute also requires that the applicant have “good cause,” which was interpreted by San Diego County to mean that the applicant is faced with current specific threats. (Not all California counties have this narrow interpretation.) The Ninth Circuit, in a 2-1 opinion written by Judge O’Scannlain, ruled that Peruta was entitled to Summary Judgement, because the “good cause” provision violates the Second Amendment.

The Court ruled that a government may specify what mode of carrying to allow (open or concealed), but a government may not make it impossible for the vast majority of Californians to exercise their Second Amendment right to bear arms.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember – conservatives and Real Americans are winning some battles out there. 

The rest of conservative politics needs to follow the Second Amendment activists’ lead at grassroots politics:

• Clear, specific message; no meaningless platitudes.  (This is the Victim Disarmament movement’s big handicap; all they have is platitudes.  Specifics are what kill them)
• Massive popular engagement that stays passionate and committed, year in, year out. 
• Willingness to put money and time where mouths are
• Knowing the difference between a tactical bend and a “compromise”.  More on this later. 

Study and learn.

When Minnesota’s carry law went into effect in 2003, people – some of them pro-Victim-Disarmament, some of them unaligned but curious – asked “why does the law force stores that don’t want people carrying to put up those stupid signs?”

To prevent situations like this; Dwayne Ferguson of Buffalo, NY, a “community organizer” with a carry permit, racked up a felony charge because he didn’t know that the building he was in was a no-gun-zone.

Granted, schools are generally no-go zones for carry permittees everywhere, and you’re supposed to know where to go and where not to.   But the organizer had himself campaigned for the law that gave him one of his felonies.

Which is why it’s droll hearing people who normally rail against the law-abiding gun owner defending this particular organizer:

Those who have worked with him also said they believe it was an honest mistake.

“I’m sure Dwayne went into the school not thinking he had the gun on him,” said Rev. James E. Giles, a friend of Ferguson and president of Back to Basics Outreach Ministries. “We know this for a fact, that he called out to a Buffalo police lieutenant asking why the school was in lockdown, and that they were looking for a man with a gun.

“Dwayne’s reaction was to get his kids – he had about 50 of them – and make sure they were safe,” Giles explained. “He led them into the cafeteria and closed the doors.”

But Mr. Ferguson is fairly likely screwed. Because the law is the law, even if you’re a on the left.

Unless you’re David Gregory.

Michael Bloomberg and the Victim Disarmament movement are going to make as much hay as they can on the issue this year…

…because  their highest profile group is fading away as we speak:

 As it has broadened its attacks on lawmakers and Second Amendment groups like the National Rifle Association, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s aggressive “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” group has experienced a sharp 15-percent drop in mayor-members.

According to a new count, the group’s membership has gone from a high of 1,046 following the shootings at Newtown, Conn.’s Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012 to a low today of 885.

That’s a fast drop of 161 members.

Watching what happened in Colorado and, yes, Minnesota has given a lot of mayors a reality check; support for Victim Disarmament is a half a mile wide and two inches deep.  The Second Amendment movement is half a mile wide and 200 feet deep and has a current that’ll pull stumps. 

Although some of the mayors are attributing it to Bloomberg’s greedy scope creep:

As they’ve left MAIG, many of the mayors have publicly assailed Bloomberg’s group, suggesting that it has gone from a group targeting “illegal” guns to one simply against guns.

The “original mission swayed,” said Rockford, Ill., Mayor Larry Morrissey as he exited. He even explained that he planned to get a concealed carry permit because his family has been threatened.

Just this week, Poughkeepsie Mayor John Tkazyik bailed. He wrote a letter about in the Poughkeepsie Journal. “I’m no longer a member of MAIG. Why? Just as Ronald Reagan said of the Democratic Party, it left me. And I’m not alone: Nearly 50 pro-Second Amendment mayors have left the organization. They left for the same reason I did. MAIG became a vehicle for Bloomberg to promote his personal gun-control agenda — violating the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens and taking resources away from initiatives that could actually work to protect our neighborhoods and save precious lives. Gun control will actually make a bad situation worse.”

Bloomberg’s offensive this year is going to be like the final banzai charge at Iwo Jima; furious, and deadly, but a dying gasp.

At least for this cycle.   

(By the way, all you Victim Disarmament activists?  We’re all against illegal guns.  Unlike Bloomberg, we Real Americans actually have done something about keeping them out of the hands of illegal people).

SCENE: Mitch BERG is walking through a leafy, green park in the south suburbs of Chicago.

Turning a corner, he runs into three Chicago-area school administators:  Hanna PFLUG-NICHOLS, Nicole PRYMM, and Morghaine EFFENBERGER-BRONKOWSKI-GAIA-BEVINS.  They are standing astride the path. 

EFFENBERGER-BRONKOWSKI-GAIA-BEVINS:  Wait!  You are Mitch Berg.  You are one of those gun nuts. 

BERG: Er, I’m a Second Amendment activist.  I may or may not own or carry a firearm…

ALL THREE WOMEN:  Aaaaaaaagh!

PRYMM:  Don’t say it!

BERG:  Say what?

PFLUG-NICHOLS: That word!

PRYMM:  The “G” or “F” or “P” word.

BERG:  Er…”gun?”

ALL THREE WOMEN:  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

EFFENBERGER-BRONKOWSKI-GAIA-BEVINS:  Why do you hate womynandchyldren?

BERG: Er, I’m sorry – but what brought this on?

PFLUG-NICHOLS: Um – because of the change in what we call “concealed killer” laws, we are being forced to put stickers on our schools. 

BERG:  You mean like this sticker here?:

ALL THREE WOMEN: Aaaaaaaaagh!

PRYMM:  That…shape!

EFFENBERGER-BRONKOWSKI-GAIA-BEVINS:  It looks like a Pop-tart!

BERG:  Those are stickers that your new concealed carry law requires buildings to have at their entrances if it’s illegal to carry inside. 

PFLUG-NICHOLS:  It’s disgusting.  To have theshapeof a…

PRYMM:  …a…

EFFENBERGER-BRONKOWSKI-GAIA-BEVINS: …er…

BERG:  Gun?

ALL THREE WOMEN:  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!

BERG:   Look – Illinois put so many places off-limits to gun owners that it’s only fair that you warn them before they unwittingly become a felon. 

PFLUG-NICHOLS:  But theyshouldbe felons!

PRYMM:  I think they should all be in jail 

BERG:  Be that as it may, they are two orders of magnitude more law-abiding than the general public, and they generally work pretty hard to stay that way.  So why entrap them into a cheap arrest based on a technicality?

EFFENBERGER-BRONKOWSKI-GAIA-BEVINS:  Because I hate them.

BERG:  It’s a warning sticker. 

PFLUG-NICHOLS:  But it may cause people to think that since there’s a sticker saying that they can’t bring one into the school now, maybe they could have in the past? 

BERG:  You honestly expect school children to think that? 

PRYMM:  We expect what to think that?

EFFENBERGER-BRONKOWSKI-GAIA-BEVINS:  Those little pseudo-people that are all over all our buildings. 

PRYMM:  Huh.  Are you sure? 

EFFENBERGER-BRONKOWSKI-GAIA-BEVINS:  I think so. 

BERG:  Look – you are less likely to be wrongfully shot by a carry permit holder than you are to be hit by lightning. 

PFLUG-NICHOLS:  By what? 

EFFENBERGER-BRONKOWSKI-GAIA-BEVINS:  Goddess-farts.

PFLUG-NICHOLS:  Ah. 

BERG:  As in, 5-6 times as likely to be hit by, er, “goddess farts” as by a law-abiding citizen with a legal firearm (flinches, realizing his mistake)

ALL THREE WOMEN: Aaaaaaaaaagh!

BERG:  Sorry….hey, I’m hungry…

(Pulls pop-tart from backpack.  Chews it into the shape of a volume of Shakespeare. 

PFLUG-NICHOLS:  Dead white European male!

PRYMM:  Fascist!

(And SCENE).

Michael Bloomberg and the Joyce Foundation are pouring ever-more money into the gun grab debate.  They are going long on the idea that upper-middle-class white liberal guilt (for which all gun control events serve as, for lack of a better term, anti-pep rallies) will become an electoral force in the next election.

But over the past few years, according to Gallup, Real Americans have made their case pretty convincingly to the people:

The Gallup poll shows that “55 percent of Americans… are dissatisfied overall with American gun laws and policies.” Among the dissatisfied, 16 percent are Americans who believe gun control laws should be rolled back.

Gallup notes that this is a change from a historical trend in which the dissatisfied usually want stricter gun laws. But in January 2014, the 16 percent of dissatisfied Americans who actually think gun control is too strict is up more than three times what it was in January 2013, while the number of those who want more gun control has fallen from 38 percent to 31.

Read the whole thing.  The upshot is, the popular case for strangling the civil right of self-defense is dying the big death, outside the circles of the plutocrat liberal elite and their media and non-profit waitstaff.

It’s “Super Bowl” Sunday.

Just a reminder, as you watch a couple of teams of overpaid thugs gambol and prance about a stadium owned by a couple of modern-day robber barons who’ve built their stadiums at the expense of the cities and states where they do their dirty business, playing a mobbed-up game; this is the ad that the NFL thought didn’t serve their image properly:

Sorry, NFL. I’ve watched my last Super Bowl…

(more…)

What “gun safety” law would have prevented this?

Donquarius Davon Copeland, 19, acknowledged that he fired the .357 semiautomatic pistol that killed Rayjon Gomez and said he knew he’d hit somebody.

“I shot two times,” Copeland said under questioning by his defense attorney, Eric Hawkins.

Copeland’s admission Thursday came in a plea bargain in the Aug. 24, 2011, death of Gomez, whose death shocked Minneapolis. The victim was riding piggyback on a friend’s bicycle when he was shot.

Remember that?  A completely random killing of a kid, for no reason whatsoever.   It was a “revenge” shooting, done by people too stupid to know that “revenge” is supposed to mean “against the people who supposedly wronged you in the first place”.

They were cruising around in a van registered to a church pastored by the Taylors’ father.

“We were going to go down there and shoot at people,” Copeland responded to Hawkins when asked why they were driving around.

Just “shoot at people”.

Now, here’s the part I’d like to bring to the attention of all of you ‘gun safety” advocates.  I’ll add some emphasis:

Prosecutors said that as Taylor drove, Copeland and Catchings passed a .357 SIG semi-automatic handgun back and forth.

“Taylor suggested that Catchings and Copeland stop ‘talking’ about shooting someone and ‘just do it,’ ” Mabley wrote in an order last year.

Now, all you “gun safety” advocates; “.357 SIG” is a type of ammo, not a gun.  But it is, generally, found in higher-end firearms.   Not your cheapo guns.  Not the kind of firearm a typical 19 year old can buy – at a gun show, anyway.   The article is silent on where the gun came from – but I’m going to go out on a limb and say a couple of 19 year olds playing with a gun that probably didn’t go for less than $600 probably had a stolen firearm.

Pick any one of Michael Paymar, Ron Latz or Alice Hausman’s proposals from the last session; which one would have prevented this?

I’ll give you a hint.  None.

There must be a legislative session coming up; the MinnPost – a local group-blog funded by liberals with deep pockets employing a rogue’s gallery of recycled local big-media people – is back on the gun beat.

Last week, Susan Perry – their “consumer health reporter”, whose sloppy reporting on this subject we’ve repeatedly, even routinely, beaten up in this space – wrote a fluff piece about a metastudy (a repackaging of the data in other studies) appearing in the Annals of Internal Medicine that shows that having a gun in the home doubles chance of a murder, and triples the chance of suicide.

And it reminded me of an episode from twenty years ago.

Let’s flash back, shall we?

The Gullible, Biased Hack Beat:  Back in the early nineties, the anti-gun media (which was most of them, back then) breathlessly recited a factoid; a study in the New England Journal of Medicine had showed, we were told, that a gun in the home was 43 times as likely to kill the owner, or someone the owner knew, than it was to kill a criminal.

The media reported this uncritically, without question, much less the faintest pretense of analysis of the data that led to that very specific number.

Of course, some Real Americans in the Second Amendment movement did dig into the study, back when “the internet” was still “Usenet” for most people.

They found that the data came from King County, Washington, during a period of several years in the late eighties.  And the “43:1” ratio actually broke out, over the period of time, to nine justifiable deaths of criminals that the shooter didn’t know, against something like 380-odd other firearms deaths.

And of those 380-odd firearm deaths, the vast majority were suicides – enough to account for 36-37 of the “43”.  Of the remaining 6 from the “43” – 50-odd firearms deaths – there were a few accidents; the rest were murders or manslaughters of one kind or another.  And note that it only counted the presence of a gun in the home, not whether it was used; if someone broke into your home and shot you as you were peeling potatoes at your kitchen counter, but there was a gun in the house, it went into the “43”.

Suicide is obviously a problem – but it doesn’t depend on firearms.  Japan, where guns are unobtainable, has double the US’ suicide rate.   But leaving out suicides, the rate dropped to more like six to one.

But there were other clinkers in the way the “43:1”, or even the 6:1, figures were generated, and related to the public by a media that, at best, didn’t know what it was talking about and, at worst, didn’t care.

Walt White Knew Jack Welker!:  The phrase “gun owner or someone they know” was the first problem.

Someone who shoots himself, obviously, is “killing themselves or someone they know”.  But then so is a drug dealer shooting a rival, or a customer that owes them money, is “killing someone they know”, as is a gang-banger shooting a long-time rival So is a woman shooting an ex-husband that’s been stalking and threatening her.  So is someone killing a robber that they had met, even once, ever.

The NEJM study didn’t distinguish between those types of killings.  The “1” in the “43:1” ratio only included justifiable homicides where the shooter had never met the victim.

Why So Bloodthirsty?:  Did you notice that the only “good” results in the New England Journal study – the “1” in “43:1” – were the nine justifiable killings of complete strangers?

Leaving aside the likelihood (indeed, fact) that some of the homicides of acquaintances were justifiable – why is a justifiable killing of a complete, malevolent stranger the only legitimate use of a firearm?

The study didn’t account for deterrences of other crimes.  A gun used to scare away a burglar or a stalker doesn’t have to kill anyone to have a beneficial effect – deterring a felony without a shot being fired.

The Real Results?:  So when you take the numbers from the “43:1” ratio, and then…:

• factor out suicides (which are a problem, and were the vast majority of the deaths in the study, but are entirely different than crimes committed with malice against others)
• move the justifiable homicides of “acquaintances” – ex-spouses and the like – into the “good” column”
• Account for the “bad” shootings that involved someone who was drunk or high, or had a criminal record
• Add in estimates of the number of crimes that would have been deterred by law-abiding citizens with guns in the same area during the same period

…then the original New England Journal of Medicine study’s numbers came out more like this:

• A gun in a home in which one or more residents had a criminal record, drinking or drug problem was equally likely to be involved in a murder or unjustified killing as it was to deter a crime.
• A gun in a home without any of those problems was dozens or hundreds of times as likely to deter a crime (depending on the estimate of deterrences you accepted – from the conservative FBI estimate to the much more expansive estimate by Gary Kleck, which by the way tracks pretty well with the Centers for Disease Control’s recent work on the subject) as to be involved in an unjustifiable homicide.  That’s dozens at least, hundreds at most. 

So How About Sue Perry’s Article?:  A quick scan of the metastudy in Annals shows that it (or, more proximately, the studies it mines for data) does not, in fact, control for…:

• drug abuse
• Alcohol abuse
• criminal records

…among the subjects in the “study”.

Like the reporting on the NEJM study twenty-odd years ago, it considers firearms in a vacuum, without accounting for any of the human factors – criminal activity of the owner, sustance abuse issues, or mental illness.

Neither does it distinguish between justifiable homicide – which accounts for 2-3% of all firearms deaths in America in a given year – and murder, manslaughter or accidental deaths. 

It’s junk science…

…well, no.  It’s junk social science, which is the worst kind.

Susan Perry is doing junk reporting of junk non-science, to report a meaningless, junk conclusion. 

Why?

Remember:  The MinnPost operates with the assistance of a large annual grant from the Joyce Foundation.

Follow the money. Journos do it – when it’s not Alida Messinger or Michael Bloomberg’s money, anyway.

The Joyce Foundation also funds…

•  “ProtectMN”, the closest Minnesota gets to an actual gun control “organization”,
• “TakeActionMN”, which essentially serves as an unregulated “progressive” political party whose mission is to drive the DFL to the left.  It may be the most successful political party in Minnesota today – precisely because the laws that apply to the GOP and (to some extent) DFL don’t apply to it. 

All “journalism” about guns – and politics and general – from the MinnPost must be considered with that in mind.

So why would the MinnPost publish a continuous chain of stories about Second Amendment issues that range from bad science to bad history to bad scholarship to really, really bad reporting? 

Because, I suggest, it’s what they’re being paid to do.   

There was a time when “journalists” would have recoiled at any suggestion that their coverage was bought and paid for to secure some special interest’s narrative. 

Those days are long past us – to everyone who pays attention.

It made the news  last year – a number of ghastly gang rapes in India that outraged the parts of the nation that were capable of outrage. 

The BBC reports that some Indian women are taking the sensible approach – within the bounds of India’s patriarchical and confusing gun laws, anyway – and arming themselves.

There are really two stories, here:

Parallels:  It’s interesting to see that India – which is behind only the US in numbers of private guns in circulaation, mostly unregistered –  has some of the same battle lines as the US does. 

On the one hand, the hysterical gun-grabbers, with their downright delusional views on what “security” means.  Their anti-gunners are as big a pack of ninnies as ours are (with emphasis added by me):

“I am horrified, shocked and angered,” says Binalakshmi Nepram, founder of the Women Gun Survivors Network in the north-eastern state of Manipur, who says it’s the government’s responsibility to ensure the security of its citizens.

“It’s ridiculous that the state is talking about arming women… The authorities saying, ‘Hey woman, come there’s a new gun for you which will make you safer,’ is an admission of failure on their part.”…Nepram, whose organisation has been studying gun violence in eight Indian states for a number of years, says having a gun doesn’t “make you safer, it actually enhances your risk”.

“Our research shows that a person is 12 times more likely to be shot dead if they are carrying a gun when attacked,” she says.

And on the other, smart people who know what’s really up – like this Indian top cop who echoes the opinion of Detroit’s chief of police:

Ram Krishna Chaturvedi, the chief of police for Kanpur and several nearby districts, thinks it does.

“It is definitely a good idea. If you have a licensed weapon, it increases your self-confidence and creates fear in the minds of criminals,” she says

Now, we live in the US.  As the media reminds us, there are a lot of guns out there – almost all of them in the hands of law-abiding citizens.  And there are private firearms companies that are more than happy to fill the demand, which has been unprecedented for the past five years (even as crime rates plummet). 

Design By Government Committee:  The BBC piece leads with the introduction of a “pistol for women”, by the Indian Ordnance Factory (a state-run gun works in the city of Kanpur).

The “Nirbheek”. 1.1 pounds, .32 caliber.

The plant’s spokesman says:

“It’s small, it’s lightweight, it weighs only 500g [1.1lb], and it can easily fit into a lady’s purse.”

[Plant manager Abdul] Hameed speaks enthusiastically about the .32-calibre revolver, praising the “special titanium alloy body, the pleasing-to-the-eye wooden handle”.

“The six-shot gun is easy to handle and it can hit its target accurately up to 15m [50ft],” he explains, pointing out the word “Nirbheek” engraved on the barrel.

If you’re a gun geek, the profile looks familiar. 

A Webley .455 revolver – a veteran of the Boer War and World War 1, designed in 1887.

In other words, the Indian government has scaled down a 125-year-old design, replacing the docile but effective .455 cartidge with the .32 popgun round – itself barely more powerful than a .22 caliber plinking gun. And it scaled “down” to a little over a pound.

Oh, yeah – and it costs $1,900, brand new. 

In comparison, a typical little .380 caliber pocket pistol weights in around 10 ounces unloaded, and fires a round with almost double the hitting power of the puny .32.

A Kahr .380 pocket pistol; 2/3 the weight of the Indian gun, double the hitting power, and holds an extra round in the bargain.

And you can buy almost five of the Kahrs for the price of one of the Indian pieces.

Just saying – yay, free enterprise.

And I want to set up a SIG sales territory in Mumbai.

After rumors swept the Twin Cities that the shooting outside a Hudson, Wisconsin liquor store was the work of legal carry permittees, it’s perhaps a shock to see that the shooting…

…is believe to be the work of gang members…

While investigators can’t say with certainty that the two groups of people knew each other, it’s beginning to appear the shooting may have been gang related.

… Who don’t qualify for carry permits, because they’re criminals:

The three victims have all been in trouble before, including aggravated robbery, assault, burglary and disorderly conduct.

“I don’t want to say it was a drug deal or not, but I could say it might be gang related,” Chief Jensen said.

Further evidence of the Republican war on womyn.

A few months back, we talked about a group – Minnesota Gun Rights (MGR) – which has been trying to make inroads into the Minnesota second amendment market.  MGR is run by Chris Dorr, brother of Aaron Dorr, who runs “Iowa Gun Owners” (IGO), and was closely involved in the Ted Sorenson scandal in Iowa.   IGO has a reputation of cutting off gun owners’ political noses to spite their faces.  They are closely aligned with the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR),  has an extremely spotty record of accomplishment, and that is very likely being charitable; to say the least, their grasp of Minnesota politics is spotty.  Oh, yeah – and the website for both the IGO and MGR are hosted in Iowa.

Today’s installment?  Probably not quite as earth-shaking – but worth a look.

It’s a petition to restore “Constitutional Carry” – carry by law-abiding citizens without need for a permit, as in Alaska, Arizona and Vermont – to Minnesota.  They say “restore” because until 1974, anyone in Minnesota who had the legal right to own a firearm at all could carry it, concealed, without a permit of any kind.

I forget – was crime lower in Minnesota back in 1973?  Or higher?

Anyway – that’s all to the good.  It’s also pie in the sky, in a state with a DFL governor and legislature.

But the petition has one other minor, more proximate flaw:

And while it’s just a typo on a petition, we’ve noted in the past the political problems caused by the IGO’s uncompromising push for pie-in-the-sky.  The way to get to “Constitutional Carry” is by electing a conservative legislature and governor.

UPDATE:  A correspendent sends me another, er, Minnesota Gun Rights emailer:

I love that second paragraph. Would a “true grassroots movement” maybe get it’s state correct?

For years, I’ve been pointing out potemkin gun-grab groups – “Sportsmen for Gun Control” and the like.

As Michelle Malkin notes, this is part of a larger strategy of t creating and/or funding “moderate” groups trying to create an impression of “moderate” “grass-roots” groundswell. 

Of course we’ve seen this in Minnesota; in addition to the phony “sportsmens'” groups (not to mention buying instant media), the entire Tom Horner campaign was floated (or, more accurately, funded) by the left to try to sap votes from Tom Emmer. 

Lesson:  Check every “group’s” pedigree.  Odds are they’ll turn out no more substantial than, say, “Protect” MN

Horner

IP

The Ventura Trolley has its tenth victim:

Spokesman John Siqveland said the gate arms were down, an alarm was sounding and lights were flashing at the intersection when the accident happened. The sidewalk is adjacent to the gate arms, but is not covered by the gate arms. The southbound train stopped just a few feet beyond the intersection after the accident.

Several passengers were on the train at the time. They were questioned by Metro Transit police and put on a bus to continue their ­journeys, Siqveland said.

No word yet if Rep. Michael Paymar feels “intimidated” by trying to cross the tracks; the Ventura Trolley is, statistically, infinitely more dangerous than a citizen with a carry permit. 

(No, not to make light of the death; my condolences to the victim’s loved ones.   This isn’t about mocking the dead; it’s about mocking the priorites of the vacuous hamsters some parts of this state keep sending to office). 

…when the DFL trots out a bunch of “reasonable”, “responsible’ ELCA pastors and Highland Park rabbis and suburban police chiefs to demand a “reasonable, responsible” entree to gun-grabbing, give them this in return; Detroit’s police chief.

Supporting armed citizens and the positive effect they have on crime.

Here’s the MN Gun Owners PAC website.

Here’s the site for Stewart Mills for Congress.

As Minnesota’s anti-civil-rights movement ramps up for a lavishly-funded effort to try to paint infringing Minnesotans’ civil rights around the edges as “reasonable” and “responsible”, it’s worth noting that this past few weeks and months have seen a bit of a surge in actual evidence that we Real Americans have the stronger factual hand.

For starters, the Centers for Disease Control, in a metastudy commissioned by the Administration earlier this year, noted that…well, basically everything the Second Amendment Movement has said on every corner of the issue is right.

Then the National Institute for Justice – the part of the Department of Justice that does surveys and research and other hard stuff – concluded that assault weapons bans do nothing but make the banners feel good, and that closing the “gun show loophole” is more or less irrelevant since 71 percent of guns used in crimes currently come from straw purchases or theft.

And finally, a new study by Mark Gius at Quinnipiac released past few weeks shows (from the abstract) that…

… states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murder rates than other states. It was also found that assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level. These results suggest that restrictive concealed weapons laws may cause an increase in gun-related murders at the state level. The results of this study are consistent with some prior research in this area, most notably Lott and Mustard (1997).

When you’ve lost the Obama CDC, you’re really in trouble.

So it looks as if Richard Carlbom, the Illegal Mayors Against Guns, and “Protect” Minnesota are going to have to fight the emotional case, since the factual case is even more against them that it was before.

In other words; same as it ever was.

It’ll just be a slicker emotional campaign.