There’s been a shooting at the Washington Navy Yard – headquarters for the US Navy’s procurement bureaucracy.  Recent experience shows us that nearly every first report on these sorts of things is wrong – but current reports indicate 4-6 13 dead.

And nobody remotely close to being an “authority” has even begun to speculate on who the shooter/s were and why they did it; one dead shooter is apparently a former Navy employee (Nope, NBC retracted that) 

I urge everyone to direct your prayers, or whatever thoughts your worldview admits, toward the victims, their families, and everyone involved in this tragedy. 

Now:  It’s time to place your bets.  We’re taking bets in several categories:

The Obama Pool:  How long until The One tries to link this shooting to the defeat of his gun-grab agenda? 

Bobblehead Roulette:  At what time will the first Twin Cities leftyblogger issue a post blaming the shootings on the NRA?

The Martens Parlay:  At what time will Representative Heather Martens (DFL-67A) release a statement blaming the shooting on the failure of the Paymar gun grab bills and/or the Colorado recall?  (UPDATE 6PM:  She did it!)

Black Gun Bingo:  At least one initial report says “assault weapons” were used in the shooting.  Who will be the first lefty pundit to claim that if only “assault weapons” were banned, this (apparently) multi-party, coordinated assault would not have taken place?

The Elephant In The Room Pool:  How many mainstream and left-leaning alt-media outlets will mention that a) the Navy Yard is in Washington DC, which retains among the most draconian anti-gun laws in the country, and that in addition b) the Navy Yard, like all military facilities, is a “gun free zone?”  (Note:  “Zero” is already taken.  Pick a different number).  Bonus question:  how many will blame the shooting on Virginia’s more liberal gun laws, without asking why the atrocity didn’t take place in Virginia? 

UPDATES:  Adding a few as I go here:

Tea For Three:  Current reporting says there may have been three gunmen  (Nope.  Just one gunman).  Which media outlet will be the first to blame the Tea Party?

Numb3rs:  How many reports will the major media have to retract about names of victims (1 so far), shooters (UPDATE 6PM:  At least once), number of shooters (UPDATE: Twice!) , motives, number of victims (UPDATE 6PM:  Many times)…

The “T” Word:  Some early reports claim this might be a workplace shooting – as in “disgruntled workers”.  But if there are indeed multiple shooters?  The idea of a “team of disgruntled workers” doesn’t pass the sniff test, does it? 

Place your bets!

The official media narrative about the martyrdom – er, wait, that should be murder  – of Matthew Shepard has become part of the nation’s media folklore:

On the night of October 6, Shepard met “two strangers” in the Fireside Lounge in Laramie. The two men offered Shepard a ride home but instead drove him to a remote area, robbed him, beat him with pistols, and left him splayed on a fence.

Cops found the bloody gun along with Shepard’s shoes and wallet in the truck of the two men — Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson.

McKinney and Henderson claimed the “gay panic” defense, that they freaked out when Shepard came onto them sexually and killed him in a rage. They made other claims, too, but were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Almost immediately Shepard became a secular saint, and his killing became a kind of gay Passion Play where he suffered and died for the cause of homosexuality against the growing homophobia and hatred of gay America.

Indeed, a Mathew Shepard industry grew rapidly with plays and foundations along with state and even national hate crimes legislation named for him. Rock stars wrote songs about him, including Elton John and Melissa Etheridge. Lady Gaga performed John Lennon’s “Imagine” and changed the lyrics to include Shepard.

But like many narratives, there’s more there than meets the eye:

But what really happened to Matthew Shepard?

He was beaten, tortured, and killed by one or both of the men now serving life sentences. But it turns out, according to Jiminez, that Shepard was a meth dealer himself and he was friends and sex partners with the man who led in his killing. Indeed, his killer may have killed him because Shepard allegedly came into possession of a large amount of methamphetamine and refused to give it up.

The book also shows that Shepard’s killer was on a five-day meth binge at the time of the killing.

Murder is bad, whether it’s a hate crime, a crime of passion, or just business.

And that should be the point; to a big chunk of our society, Shepard’s murder is worth less – his value as a human is less – if his demise can’t be chalked up to hate.

His worth as a human – to some people – is worth less than his weight as a cudgel

By the way, as a tax-paying Minnesotan I have to hope that nobody in the Messinger Dayton Administration was reading the WaPo piece about the Mexican townspeople that are resisting the narcotraficantes with their illegal firearms; they might start getting ideas:

The area’s lime growers, for example, were taxed by metrics that included acreage, limes harvested and crates packed. The meager wages of the lime pickers were also taxed, along with the bus fares that they paid to get to the groves. Gang members taxed sacks of corn and the tortillas made from them. A man installing a floor in his house soon had a gang member at his door, demanding a fee. A man who ran a restaurant said the cartel began taking a cut of the coins in his jukebox.

“The DFL Majority:  Like cartel sicarios, in Priuses!”

It was a year ago yesterday that a depraved lefty walked into the national Family Research Council headquarters a a pistol, 100 rounds of ammo, and the intention to kill every person in the office. 

He was stopped by a building manager and acting security guard, Leo Johnson, who, although shot twice, subdued the leftist gunman, who had walked into the lobby claiming to be a new intern.  Johnson asked for ID. 

After Corkins takes a suspiciously long time rummaging through his bag to produce identification, Johnson cannily stands up and walks around the desk to get a closer look at what Corkins is doing. Corkins bolts upright, gun in hand. Without the slightest hesitation, Johnson rushes Corkins, who fires twice. A bullet shatters Johnson’s left forearm. “And I just couldn’t hear anything, my arm just kind of blew back. So at that point I was thinking: ‘I have to get this gun,’ ” Johnson told The Weekly Standard. “That was my sole focus—I have to get this gun—this guy’s gonna kill me and kill everybody here.”

From there, Johnson somehow manages to push Corkins across the lobby and pin him against the wall with his bad arm. “I just started punching him as hard as I could, until I could feel his grip loosen,” recalled Johnson. Eventually he takes the gun from Corkins with his wounded arm. Before long, Corkins is subdued on the ground. Corkins now admits that it was his intention to shoot everyone in the building. There’s no question Johnson saved a lot of lives.

This was a genuine hate crime; the shooter, Floyd Lee Corkins, had a backpack full of Chick-Fil-A sandwiches he intended to smear into his victims’ faces after shooting them, apperently to suffocate the wounded. 

Johnson was a hero.  And you’ve heard scarcely a word about it in the mainstream media, who spent most of the past 18 months trying in vain to pound the utterly-non-bias-related Martin-Zimmerman case into a “hate crime”, and the past couple of years trying unsuccessfully to politicize the Giffords, Aurora and Newtown shootings.

And yet here was the real thing (and by no means for the first time).  And…

(crickets)

There are some illuminating contrasts between the media’s handling of the political dimensions of the Family Research Council shooting and the shooting of Representative Giffords. In the latter case, the media rushed to assume political motivations and were quick to blame, of all people, Sarah Palin…there is no evidence whatsoever Loughner saw this map or that allegedly violent political rhetoric—even “campaign” is a term borrowed from war—was in any way a cause of the Giffords shooting. That didn’t stop serious news organizations from lending institutional credibility to the irresponsible allegations…though Giffords was shot in January 2011, as recently as this year in an article on gun violence the New York Times saw fit to remind readers that “many criticized Sarah Palin, the former vice-presidential nominee, for using cross hairs on her Web site to identify Democrats like Ms. Giffords.”

 And NBC news fairly raced to blame the Aurora shooting on the Tea Party. 

By contrast, the media handled awkwardly the revelation that Corkins admitted to plotting mass murder as a means of furthering a popular liberal cause. “A detail sure to reignite the culture wars that erupted around the shooting is the fact that Corkins told FBI agents that he identified the Family Research Council as anti-gay on the Web site of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” wrote the Washington Post during Corkins’s trial in February. It’s a little unseemly for a newspaper, when finally forced to confront actual politically motivated violence, to worry about the shooting’s impact on the metaphorical “culture war.” Particularly when irresponsible actors in that culture war continue to get a free pass from the media.

The SPLC – cited with grave solemnity as an authority by rafts of lefty bobbleheads – has become a bit of a hate group in its own right:

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was once a laudable civil rights organization that sued racists and violent extremists. Now it regularly demonizes anyone who runs afoul of its knee-jerk liberal politics, and despite this it is still regularly cited by the media as a “nonpartisan” watchdog. Some of the SPLC’s newly targeted “hate groups,” such as pickup artists, are merely kooky or distasteful. Others singled out by the SPLC, including Catholics who go to Latin mass or Christian organizations similar to the Family Research Council, are well within the mainstream. Tellingly, the SPLC doesn’t just name the Family Research Council on its website—it posts the council’s address on a “hate map.” That map is still on SPLC’s website, and the organization refused calls to take it down after the Family Research Council shooting.

But they won’t. 

I bring it up because we’re seeing the same thing with the Widstrand beating in Saint Paul.  Now, to be clear, there’s no evidence that it was a “hate crime”, per se; in other words, there’s no evidence that any of the youths stood on a soapbox and bellowed “I’m doing this because I Hate Whitey”.  And for purposes of charging that brutal assault, evidence is what is needed.

But you can see, feel and hear the nervousness in official Saint Paul and Minneapolis government circles; as crime as dropped in most parts of the Twin Cities, it’s stayed steadily well above average on the East Side, the North End, the North Side, Phillips.  Parts of the East Side have been deteriorating before our eyes over the past decade, in a city that is generally mostly just stagnant. 

And yet nobody in offical Twin Cities circles will call the elephant what it is.  They hold official observances for the “Mayors Against Illegal Guns” misery-exploitation caravan – which exists to protest the deaths of children who look like the children of NPR executives – and studiously ignore the fact that black on black crime in the Twin Cities is astronomically higher than any other rate in the state.

The left-leaning media – meaning “most of the media” – is tittering and cavorting about the sparks that’ve been flying between New Jersey governor Chris Christie and Kentucky Senator Rand Paul. “GOP CIVIL WAR”, they bellow, as if it’s something new.

It’s not.

There are three different definitions of “Conservative” in American political life:

• Northeastern Conservatives: Comfortable with big government, socially moderate-to-liberal on social issues (defined broadly; it refers to education, welfare and immigration as much as abortion and gay marriage), assertive on defense, tolerant of massive intrusions in the interest of internal security. Their focus is less on shrinking government than on getting the best value for the tax dollar. Think Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney and Chris Christie – or for that matter Norm Coleman. Don’t think Michael Bloomberg; he’s not a conservative in any way, shape or form.
• Western Conservatives: Favor aggressively limiting government. Generally socially libertarian (at least on a policy level; they may or may not be personally conservative), frequently vague on defense, favor law and order but opposing massive law-enforcement overreach. Favors shrinking government intrusions in the economy and personal life. Think the Tea Party and the pols that are aligned with it, including Rand Paul and, largely, Rick Perry.
• Southern Conservatives: Comfortable with big government, conservative on social issues, hawkish on defense and law-and-order. There aren’t many major contenders from the Southern school in this campaign.  Huckabee’s a southern-con.  You could make a case Dubya was one, too. 

So the Christie/Paul kerfuffle isn’t just a battle between candidates; it’s a battle between fundamentally different schools of American conservatism.

And after reading both of them, it’s clear; they’re both right.

Christie Was Right – Libertarians, when it comes to national security, frequently are lost in la-la land. I’ve long since lost count of the Ron Paul supporters who sincerely believe that Iran would be a great friend of the US if we just acted nice to them (and left the Israelis to their own devices with no further ado). Not a few libertarians are just as lost in the fog as Vietnam-era anti-war liberals when it comes to one of history’s great facts; societies that practice war eat societies that would eschew it for breakfast.

Sure – the relatively peaceful, relatively liberal democracies of the West did in fact eventually defeat the warmongering totalitarian Nazis, to pick an example – but only at staggering cost and dislocation.

If you accept that war happens, and that sometimes those wars come to us against our national will, and that it’s better to win them than lose them, then some form of effort to gain intelligence about ones’ enemies’ intentions is one of those things that one trades for, among other things, casualties. And don’t kid yourself – intelligence-gathering has been an incredibly intrusive force in Americans’ lives in the pasts; FDR ordered his intelligence and counter-intelligence services to read every single piece of snail-mail, every telegraph, and eavesdrop on every single phone conversation entering and leaving the United States during WWII.

And like winning wars, staying a jump ahead of your enemies is an ugly, messy thing; it’s the sausage you really don’t want to see getting made. Like fighting crime – there’s a trade-off between liberty and effectiveness. A perfect police state might, hypothetically, be crime-free (at the cost of being, in essence, a criminal state itself); a pure libertarian state might be “Crime-free” in that, having no government, it recognizes no crime.

Say what you will about libertarian purism; if you stop short of anarchy, then defending your society from those who’d harm you is the most direct justification to have a government in the first place. It’s one of the few really good reasons to have a government; without defense (and courts to enforce contracts), really, what truly useful purpose do they serve that the private sector doesn’t do better?  If government can’t keep the people safe from foreign aggression, why have it in the first place?  Even libertarians that aren’t anarchists largely agree on this, right?

If you think you prevent airplans from crashing into skyscrapers, or underwear bombers from blowing your kids out of the sky as they come home from London, happens by just squirting good-will at the world, you are completely nuts. 

But Wait – Rand Paul Is Also Right! – But then you’re also nuts if you believe that government doesn’t take a mile for every inch you give it, or that “Defending the Nation” is a static, unchanging thing. 

All of you national-security hawks who say “The FISA Courts, into which was have no visibiliity and into which there is exceptionally limited oversight, are ample protection of due process for Americans” have apparently forgotten the IRS scandal.  Or Fast and Furious.  Or the trampling of the Fourth Amendment, or the growing militarization of the police. 

In short, law and order conservatives who are pollyannaish about government are no less addled than those who are pollyannaish about the role of unilateral good-will in keeping the world at peace. 

“We’re from the government and we’re here to help” is no less a joke coming from the NSA than it is from the Fish and Wildlife Service.   Just as liberals would suspend the Bill of Rights to cut CO2 emissions, some conservatives – especially the ones that are comfortable with “the System”, and there is nobody who can grow more comfortable with “The System” than a federal prosecutor like Christie – are perfectly fine saying “would you trade the Fourth Amendment for getting that drug dealer out of your neighborhood?”

As to defense?  The libertarians are wrong, we need a strong one.  But the definition of “a strong defense” changes, and changes radically, over time.  Is it the right time to engage the American military in an endless counterinsurgency that might be better suited to intelligence and proxies to carry out (uh oh, now the Libertarians and Liberals will get upset) when the Russians and the Chicoms are taking the world in a much more convention direction again?

The point being that re-assessing what the nation’s strategy actually is, and how the military forwards it, and what kind of military we need to do the job isn’t “anti-military”. 

Above all?  Due process needs to be more than just an inconvenient speed bump for the authorities – or what’s the point of pretending to be a “representative Republic” anyway?

On the one hand, correlation doesn’t equal causation.

So I’ll restrain my end-zone happy dance at the news that gun crime in Virginia has plummeted as gun sales boomed:

Firearms sales rose 16 percent to a record 490,119 guns purchased from licensed gun dealers in 2012, according to sales estimates obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch.
During the same period, major crimes committed with firearms dropped 5 percent to 4,378.
“This appears to be additional evidence that more guns don’t necessarily lead to more crime,” said Thomas R. Baker, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs who specializes in research methods and criminology theory.

See also: the rest of the freaking country.

Bit remember – correlation isn’t causation. Knowing that people who live near Mosquitos are prone to getting malaria doesn’t mean Mosquitos cause malaria. But that knowledge can help lead you to the cause. Mosquitos carry malaria.

Do more guns decrease crime? Not necessarily. But there’s enough patterns in enough places to give you an idea that there’s something to investigate that has to do with the availability of guns to the law-abiding.

Guns save the lives of real Americans.

Story first.  Then a quiz:

It was an extremely scary situation when a female bank teller and her husband were kidnapped from their home and forced to drive to the bank where the wife worked to help the thieves steal money from a safe after hours.
According to KHOU, the couple was at home, when two armed men, who knew the wife was a bank teller, forced their way in and held the couple at gunpoint.

The suspects forced the couple into their own car, made them drive to the bank, and had the wife remove money from the safe.

Afterwards, the robbers told the husband to drive away – in a completely different direction.  To the dreaded “Secondary Crime Scene”, where anyone with a brain knows your odds of survival are in the single digits. 

At some point during that drive, the husband was able to gain access to his personal firearm, which was in the vehicle. 

He opened fire on the suspects, hitting both of them. One of the suspects died of his injuries and the other is in serious condition.

The suspects are described as brothers, aged 20 and 21, who live in the community.

By the way, one of the self-defense questions I get most often is “is there a site that chronicles self-defense cases?”  Clayton Cramer retired his excellent “Armed Self-Defense” site a few years ago – but the site posting this piece, Guns Save Lives, is stepping in to fill the void. 

Now, the quiz.  It’s aimed at all you leftybloggers out there who, in the absence of any knowledge or intellectual curiosity on the subject, labeled the “stand your ground” as “Shoot First” laws. 

The gentleman in this storyshot first.

What do you think would have happend if he’d shot second?

Answers please.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

A 22-year-old Black man was shot by White police officers. “Community activists” in Minneapolis point out similarities to Trayvon.

Black, White, gun. Yep, sounds the same. News reports say Minneapolis police shot him with Heckler and Koch MP5’s, full-auto 9mm submachine guns. Same thing you’d see a German cop carrying. Here’s a sample photo from another law enforcement agency:

More details here.

Police dog, submachine gun, car chase . . . yep, just exactly like Trayvon. No further analysis needed. Clear case of Black child killed by gun violence. So how do we prevent this tragedy from happening again?

Universal background checks. Mayors Against Illegal Guns were in town Wednesday to read off the names of people killed by gun violence. The sister of the school principal who died in Newtown spoke. A relative of someone who died at Accent Signage spoke. Sensible, reasonable, background checks for all firearms transfers, that’s all it would have taken to prevent every single one of those deaths.

It does strike me as odd that the Minneapolis Police Department doesn’t do background checks on its own officers every time they check a fully-automatic assault weapon out of the firearms locker to go shoot some Black children but no doubt that’s due to Bush tax cuts or the Koch Brothers war on women. We could pay for all background checks by taxing the rich. And we should. For the 22-year-old Children.

Joe Doakes

To the hard left, facts are whatever they say they are.

…that if we voted for Mitt Romney, media demigogues would so poison race relations that violence would break out in the street.

And they were right:

According the victim, one of the attackers yelled, “This is for Trayvon,” during the assault. The victim suffered lacerations to the face from the attack.

Police said the suspects took the man’s wallet and iPhone. The police report lists the incident as robbery force violence, hate bias incident.

And if the victim had shot in self-defense, we could go through it all over again.

In the his frankly bizarre speech in re the Martin/Zimmermaas case last week, President Obama asked:

And for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these “stand your ground” laws, I’d just ask people to consider, if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr. Zimmerman who had followed him in a car because he felt threatened?

Of course, the hypothetical question is a stupid one. Obama’s not a stupid man, of course; he knows thatbeing followedisn’t, in and of itself, not enough to convince a reasonable person that one legitimately and immediately fears death or great bodily harm.

The three key words are…:

• Reasonable: would a jury buy the idea that being followed constituted a threat that was…
• Legitimately lethal, not eventually, but…
• Immediately?

“Feeling” threatened – notwithstanding the bleatings of liberal bloggers and politicians – is not reasonably a legitimate, immediate threat of death or great bodily harm. Had ZImmerman, say, jumped out of his truck, tackled Martin, and started beating his head against the sidewalk? That’s another story – as the jury affirmed last week.

But as a literal answer to an immediate, current social question? It’s a good question.

And the answer is “Yes, black people can and do “stand their ground” when under attack, and do so successfully”. Indeed, twice as often per capita (in Florida) as white people:

But approximately one third of Florida “Stand Your Ground” claims in fatal cases have been made by black defendants, and they have used the defense successfully 55 percent of the time, at the same rate as the population at large and at a higher rate than white defendants, according to a Daily Caller analysis of a database maintained by the Tampa Bay Times. Additionally, the majority of victims in Florida “Stand Your Ground” cases have been white.

African Americans used “Stand Your Ground” defenses at nearly twice the rate of their presence in the Florida population, which was listed at 16.6 percent in 2012.

One hundred thirty three people in the state of Florida have used a “Stand Your Ground” defense. Of these claims, 73 were considered “justified” (55 percent), while 39 resulted in criminal convictions and 21 cases are still pending.

Forty four African Americans in the state of Florida have claimed a “Stand Your Ground” defense. Of these claims, 24 were considered “justified” (55 percent), while 11 resulted in convictions and nine cases are still pending.

Now, for a racist law, it seems to be pretty darned color-blind.

Maybe the Administration should stick with trying to find all the guns they gave to the narcotraficantes.

SCENE:  MITCH is sitting on the light rail, heading from the Mall of American downtown to a Twins game. 

At Bloomington Station stop, Avery LIBRELLE, Cat SCAT and Gutterball GARY get on the train.  MITCH turns toward the window and dons sunglasses, but LIBRELLE notices him.  The three amble to him, stumbling awkwardly as the train starts moving, and sit surrounding him even though the car is otherwise empty. 

LIBRELLE:  Hey, Mitch.  You racists won.  Hope you’re proud of yourself. 

MITCH:  Um…if I ask “what are you talking about?”, would that imply I actually want to know?  Because I’m not sure…

SCAT:  George Zimmerman was acquitted.  It proves the system is racist. 

MITCH:  Um…huh?

LIBRELLE:  The case was entirely about race!

GARY:  Yeah!  Yeah!  All about race!

MITCH:  Neither the prosecutors nor the defense ever mentioned race during the case. 

SCAT:  Well, the 911 call proved that Zimmerman attacked in a racist fury. 

GARY:  Yeah!  Yeah!  Fury!

MITCH:  Listen to the audio yourself.  He sounded disgusted, depressed and dejected.  All of the pique came from the prosecution and media’s slanted reading of the transcript. 

LIBRELLE:  Zimmerman called Martin a “f****ng coon”

GARY: Yeah!  Yeah!  Rage!  Ragey wingnut!

MITCH:   No, he said it was “f****ng cold”. 

GARY:  Yeah, “right”. 

SCAT:  Zimmerman contradicted his own story. 

GARY:  Yeah!  Yeah!  Counterdicted! 

MITCH: Not according to the Sanford police chief, who said his story held up entirely through multiple rounds of questioning. 

LIBRELLE:  Yeah, well, he was a wannabe cop who disobeyed a police order not to follow Martin. 

GARY: Hah!  Yeah!  Police order, stupid Right-wing nut job!

MITCH:  There was no police order.  A dispatcher is not a cop, and can’t give orders. 
When Zimmerman said he was going to follow Martin, the dispatcher said “we don’t need you to do that”.  It was vague, and it was utterly non-binding. 

SCAT:  Martin had every right to be on the street.

GARY:  Yeah! Yeah!  Yeah!  Yeah!

MITCH:  Right.  So did Zimmerman. 

LIBRELLE:  Huh? 

MITCH: Zimmerman had a right to be on the street, too. 

LIBRELLE:  Not if he was stalking Martin. 

GARY:  Yeah !  Stalker!

MITCH:  “Stalking” is a pretty loaded term.  He was following.  Advisable?  Maybe, maybe not, but not remotely illegal. 

SCAT:  But he was acting like a wannabe cop. 

GARY:  Wannabe!  Wannabe!

MITCH: That’s a pejorative interpretation of Zimmerman’s long-past behavior.  There’s no law in wanting to act like a cop, in any case.  And, er, how someone “acts” doesn’t justify being assaulted and having ones head bashed into the ground like some kind of MMA fight.

LIBRELLE:  He had a round in his chamber, the hammer cocked and the safety off!

GARY: Yeah!  Yeah!  Yeah!  Round off and safety in the chamber!

MITCH: Um, just about everyone who carries a firearm carries a round in the chamber.  Including every single person with a revolver.  And let me ask you – who told you the “safety was off and the hammer was cocked”?

SCAT:  It’s just facts!

GARY:  Yeah ! Yeah!  Yeah!  Stupid wingnut!  Facts!

MITCH:  Right, the KelTec 9mm that Zimmerman carried has no cockable hammer, and no safety catch.  It’s a “double action only” pistol; the hammer only cocks when you squeeze the trigger.  There’s no need for a safety, so there is none.   I know this from years of familiarity with KelTec pistols. 

LIBRELLE:  The injuries Zimmerman suffered aren’t consistent with being punched.

GARY:  Yeah!   Yeah!  Yeah!

MITCH:  Right, but they are consistent with being beaten against a cement sidewalk. 

SCAT:  This case is proof that “Stand your Ground” laws are racist. 

GARY:  Yeah!  Racisss!  Yeah!

MITCH:  “Stand your Ground” was never at issue, since the Defense showed that retreat was never an option; they didn’t even opt to go for a “Stand your Ground” hearing, since the law didn’t apply to this case.  Not even a little bit. 

LIBRELLE: …

SCAT: …

GARY:  …

MITCH: How about those Twins?

(TRAIN stops at Franklin Avenue.  SCAT, LIBRELLE and GARY abruptly get up and climb off the train, which pulls away as the three’s eyes all go wide with fear). 

LIBRELLE (receding into distance as train pulls away) Hey!  Where’s the 331 Club? 

And SCENE

A man intervenes when a teenage boy was acting illegally in his neighborhood.  The boy charges the man.  The man shoots in self-defense.  The man is acquitted.

Oh, yeah – the man, Roderick Scott, is black, the teenager, Christopher Cervini, was white. 

That’d be why you’ve never heard of the case:

Not guilty: The verdict in the manslaughter trial of Roderick Scott. After more than 19 hours of deliberations over two days, a jury acquitted the Greece man in the shooting death of Christopher Cervini, 17, last April.

“I just want to say thank you to the people who believed in me, who stood by me,” Scott said following the verdict. “I still have my regrets for the Cervini family; it’s still an unfortunate situation for them. I am happy that at least this chapter is over.”

And both sides in this case in suburban Rochester, NY should be thankful that their gawdawful tragedy didn’t become a stage prop for anyone’s re-election bid.

If you’re a conservative who’s spent the past decade or two assailing theStar Tribune’srigorous editorial pro-DFL, pro-“progressive”, pro-leftist bias, there’s some good news.  

Sorta.

But we’ll get back to that later.   

Jay Larson of Saint Bonifacius t is apparently upset about the Zimmerman verdict, and has apparently seen enough episodes of Law and Order that he feels himself quite the Monday Morning county attorney, in an op-ed that the Strib opted to run in preference to goodness knows how many intelligent pieces they could have run:

In response to the July 15 editorial “Due process plays out in Zimmerman case”: Really?

It is a given that the state of Florida was dragged into the Zimmerman case kicking and screaming because of public pressure from the black community.

Now, I’m sure to Mr. Larson that means something different than it does to people who actually care about justice.

For most of us, the fact that the State of Florida – which is never shy about prosecuting people they believe to have committed crimes, and carrying out sentences with frothy abandon (from a large, full prison system to a legendarily-busy electric chair) didn’t opt to press charges was pretty clear evidence that there was no there there; that the homicide, tragic as it is, was justified on its face under the laws on the books in the sovereign state of Florida. 

To Jay Larson – who apparently believes Sam Waterson was a real lawyer – it means the “justice” system does, and should, respond to whomever cheers or jeers the loudest.   

Due process? What due process? I was appalled at the lack of zeal with which the prosecution tried this case. It allowed the key witness, a young uneducated black girl, to testify without being properly prepared — a girl for whom English was her third language and who was quite evidently intimidated.

“English was her third language?”

Does that sound racist to anyone but me?

And to paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you go to trial with the witnesses you have, not the witnesses you want.  While Mr. Larson would apparently have preferred the prosectors hire Halle Berry to play the role of Ms. Jeantel, it would seem to be an irreducible fact that the “uneducated” Ms. Jeantel was the best the prosecution could find on one years’ notice. 

Next, the prosecution brought the lead detective, who was supposedly there to bolster the prosecution’s case. He testified that he was certain that George Zimmerman was telling the truth. Why did he say that as a prosecution witness?

Offhand, I’d say “that he felt committing perjury would be a bad career move?”

I’ll give Mr. Larson of Saint Freaking Bonnie this much; he apparently watches a broad range of TV.  In addition to the diet of Law and Order that apparently qualifies him to back-seat-drive the prosecutors’ office, he also apparently watches enough CSI or NCIS to fancy himself quite the investigator:  

There were so many inconsistencies in George Zimmerman’s story of the events that night it was absurd to think that he was telling the truth. For instance, Zimmerman said that Trayvon Martin punched him 25 times and slammed his head against the sidewalk an additional 25 times.

If someone has been hit in the face 25 times, that person is going to exhibit a lot of bruising and swelling around the lips and eyes. Zimmerman had none. If his head had been slammed against the sidewalk 25 times, where is the concussion, where is the blood, where is the swelling?

Well, he doesn’t look quite curb-ready in these crime-time photos:

I’m neither a doctor nor Jay Larson, but this looks painful.

And I suspect when you’re getting your head slammed against a cement sidewalk ones count might not be utterly accurate.  Adrenaline makes detailed actions like “keeping running totals of how many times you’ve been punched and slammed to the pavement” difficult; also.  And I know this not just because the slamming illogic and assumption of Mr. Larson’s piece is making it difficult to think – it is, but it’s not from adrenaline, trust me – but because it’s one of those things they teach you in carry permit training, if nowhere else.   

How could Zimmerman have been constantly screaming if his mouth was covered by Trayvon’s hand and blood was running down his throat from his broken nose?

Question.  Perhaps because his mouth wasn’t constantly covered, perhaps?

 Where was the blood that should have been on Martin’s hands?

If he was slamming the head on the ground rather than punching it – as, by the way, the prosecution said he did?  There’d be no blood. 

How exactly did Zimmerman pull out his gun from his interior holster if he was laying on it? (Additionally, it would have been covered by Martin’s legs if Zimmerman was truly on the bottom as he claimed.)

Good point.  Clearly Zimmerman had his gun drawn as he walked onto the scene, pointing it where he was looking like a wanna-be cop, and waited until he’d been pummeled into near-submission before shooting. 

Alternately; the holster was accessible enough – which isn’t that hard to believe if Mr. Martin had normal legs, or was sitting facing Martin rather than away from himn, pinning the gun to Zimmerman’s stomach with his butt.

As to this next bit (in which I’ll add emphasis)…:

There was no due process in that courtroom. The only process exhibited there was the Jim Crow process of the old South. Granted, this wasn’t the lynching of a black man after a quicky trial. Rather it was the unlynching of a white man who murdered a black child.

I’m wondering if Mr. Larson is even a capable enough writer to know that he’s tacitly admitting that the malicious prosecution and mob-rule attack on Zimmerman was a “lynching”. 

Oh, yeah – the “good news” I talked about at the top?  Here it is:

For years, I’ve believed that the Strib editorial board would cherry-pick the letters and op-eds they’d print.  Now, that’s their right – but I’ve believed (not without justification) that they did it to slant the perception of their reading public by printing letters and op-eds from well-spoken, thoughtful (if usually wrong) liberals, along with a distortedly-pejorative sample of conservatives that sounded like cranks, crackpots and stereotypes.

And the “good” news would seem to be that the Strib, by printing the likes of Mr. Larson, is now giving the left at least a little of the same short, dismal shrift. 

It’s fairer, I suppose.  But is it really progress?

Whatever you thought about the Martin/Zimmerman case, the big loser was the American media. They – and their leftyblog camp followers – did, almost to a fault, an unforgiveably bad job of covering the case – from NBC’s editing Zimmerman’s 911 call to try to make him sound racist to their seeming unwillingness to get even the most basic facts straigth. (Classic example: how many of you read media accounts that said Zimmerman has “a round in the chamber, his hammer cocked and his safety off?” For starters, virtually every person who carries a firearm for self-defense, including every cop you see on the street, has a “round in the chamber”. Beyond that, Zimmerman’s pistol was a KelTec 9mm, a type I’m intimately familiar with; it’s what’s called a “double action only” pistol; there is no safety, and you can’t “cock” the hammer except by squeezing the trigger.

I know. Technicalities. But it’s not just the gun-geek stuff that the media bobbles.

In the wake of the Zimmerman verdict over the weekend, an insufficiently bright liberal on Twitter issued a tweet that included a link to this deeply ignorant hit piece from CBS last year.

It’s just as wrong this year as it was last; I’ll emphasize the :

(CBSMiami.com) – As some state lawmakers are calling for a re-thinking of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, which allows people to defend themselves from danger without the need to first try to get away, an analysis of state data shows deaths due to self defense are up over 200 percent since the law took effect.

“Up over 200 percent”. 

That sounds like a big number.  Especially as against the fact that murder in general, nationwide, is down nearly half in the past 20 years. 

Seems like a…disconnect?

We’ll come back to that.

The shooting death of Trayvon Martin by an armed, self-appointed Central Florida crime watch volunteer who claimed he shot in self defense has sparked a national debate about Florida’s law, technically known as the Castle doctrine.

No.  No, it is not “technically known” as “Castle Doctrine”, which relates to removing the “duty to retreat”while you’re in your home.  Which was the law in Minnesota until the mid-2000s, by the way, but no longer. 

Until 2005, it was generally considered self defense if someone tried to get into your home or invade your property, so long as you could show deadly force was the last resort. In 2005, the “Stand your Ground” law removed the need to retreat before using force, even in public.

And there you go.  One of the reasons people on the left are so ignorant about Second Amendment issues is that the people they get their information from are, in fact, crushingly ignorant on the subject. 

“Castle” referred to  in your home.  “Stand your Ground” was elsewhere. 

According to state crime stats, Florida averaged 12 “justifiable homicide” deaths a year from 2000-2004. After “Stand your Ground” was passed in 2005, the number of “justifiable” deaths has almost tripled to an average of 35 a year, an increase of 283% from 2005-2010.

So what? 

If all of those shootings – 12 or 35 – were people shooting because they were in legitimate fear of death or great bodily harm, and where lethal force was appropriate, and the intended victim wasn’t a willing participant, then that means there are 35 rapists, stalkers, robbers and thugs off the street.

Each death is a tragedy, sure.  But so would be the deaths of those shooting in self-defense – and in every case, as a matter of law , that was the alternative with all 35 of those shootings; death, mutilation, kidnapping, rape. 

Don’t they matter?

Minnesota needs a Stand your Ground law.

Both times I went through Minnesota carry permit training, I had to absorb a massive amount of information, much of it potentially life-or-death. 

One of the big ones, both times?  Using a firearm in self-defense, even if it’s utterly justified in every way, is the second-worst possible outcome to a bad situation, at best.  The worst, maybe, is that you die – and if you shoot an innocent person while trying to defend yourself, that’s even worse.  Armed self-defense is incredibly fraught – legally and morally. 

And that’s if you do absolutely everything right. 

There was little to cheer about Saturday night at 9PM Central, as the jury announced its “not guilty” verdict. 

For Trayvon Martin’s family?  Having your child come to grief for no good reason is one of every parent’s worst nightmares.  I’ve spent many a sleepless night wracked with worry about my own teenage kids.  There but for the grace of God go many of us. 

And that’s even if you leave the racial element out of it.  Which I will do – because so did the prosecution in the Zimmerman trial.  If it never came up at trial, it’s not an issue.  It’s a mind-warping tragedy – but not a racial incident. 

As to George Zimmerman?  Even if you leave out all the threats against his life – most of which can be discounted as easily as testosterone-driven chest-pounding, but by no means all of it – his life is never going to be the same.  It’s a rare, sick person that doesn’t feel some intense remorse over ending another human life, even if they did everything right.

As, as the court acknowledged, he did. 

So I’ll pray for both Zimmerman’s and Martin’s families, and Zimmerman himself; the horror of this incident likely isn’t done spreading its destruction and misery.  I urge you do to do the same via whatever means your worldview acknowledges. 

If you believe the court verdict – and in our system, we are supposed to – then Trayvon Martin made a very bad choice, resolving whatever issues he had with being followed by attacking Zimmerman, who in turn chose to defend himself, because it was reasonable to assume that had he not, he’d be the dead one today (unlamented in the media).  This fear he proved reasonable to a jury.  You can second-guess it, but it’s all wind in sails. 

Other people and institutions made choices – none of them of direct life or death import, but with implications that bear more directly on most of the rest of us who weren’t party to that shooting a year ago last spring. 

Never Waste A Dead Kid:  Barack Obama and his administration distinguished themselves by the depths of their cynicism.  They politicized this case before the blood was dry – and they did it entirely to cement black support in the 2012 election.  Is there a worse word than “cynicism?”

The Media:  The mainstream media did, almost universally, an unforgiveable job in “covering” the case.  They served as vehicles for the Administration’s narrative (NBC’s editing of Zimmerman’s 911 call to falsely make it sound racist), the prosecution’s disinformation (reading Zimmerman’s 911 call text as an angry outburst, where it was in real life more a resigned head-shake of disgust), and were universally as incurious about telling an accurate story as they were eager to exploit the tragedy into ratings (and political brownie points). 

Ask yourself this; how many media and leftyblog sources did you see refer to Zimmerman carrying his firearm with the “hammer cocked and the safety off?”   Zimmerman’s pistol had no safety; either does any revolver, or any of the Glocks your local police probably carry.  And there’s no hammer to cock.  And yet many media reports included that bit of tough-sounding but meaningless reporting.

Too gun-geeky?  OK – how many times have you seen the media refer to this trial as a racial incident?  Ask them – where in the case did the prosecution introduce race into the case?

They never did.  Either, naturally, did the defense.  It was a non-factor.

But that’s not sexy enough for the media. 

The Entire American Left, Especially The Media And Political Classes, And That Means You Reading This, Whomever You Are: Also unsufficiently media-sexy, apparently, were the 11,106 other African-Americans killed since Martin’s death – 93% of them shot by other African-Americans.  Be honest; if you can name one of their names, it’s because you follow North Minneapolis news (or whatever the blighted neigbhorhood near you might be).  Most of them are teenage boys, a few years older or younger than Martin. 

None of of those thousands of dead African-Americans was a sufficiently compelling stage prop for the Administration and the Media – pardon, as always, the redundancy – to exploit.

Leftyblogs:  Virtually all of them had their minds made up the moment Media Matters told them what to think.  The leftyblogs’ usual repetition of groupthink was the worst I’ve ever seen.  And I thought I’d seen it all.

George Zimmerman was declared not guilty at 10pm Eastern Time.

Let the demigogueing begin.

UPDATE: Let’s watch the media work to delegitimize the trial, even though judge Nelson seemed to be taking orders from Eric Holder.

UPDATE 2: Well, this was inevitable, wasn’t didn’t it?

A shooter friend of mine posted this on Facebook:

LOGICAL GUN CONTROL
In 1863 a Democrat shot and killed Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States .

In 1881 a left wing radical Democrat shot James Garfield, President of the United States who later died from the wound.

In 1963 a radical left wing socialist shot and killed John F. Kennedy, President of the United States .

In 1975 a left wing radical Democrat fired shots at Gerald Ford, President of the United States .

In 1983 a registered Democrat shot and wounded Ronald Reagan.

In 1984 James Huberty a disgruntled Democrat shot and killed 22 people in a McDonalds restaurant.

In 1986 Patrick Sherril a disgruntled Democrat shot and killed 15 people in an Oklahoma post office.

In 1990 James Pough a disgruntled Democrat shot and killed 10 people at a GMAC office

In 1991 George Hennard a disgruntled Democrat shot and killed 23 people in a Luby’s cafeteria

In 1995 James Daniel Simpson a disgruntled Democrat shot and killed 5 coworkers in a Texas laboratory

In 1999 Larry Asbrook a disgruntled Democrat shot and killed 8 people at a church service.

In 2001 a left wing radical Democrat fired shots at the White House in a failed attempt to kill George W. Bush President of the United States

In 2003 Douglas Williams a disgruntled Democrat shot and killed 7 people at a Lockheed Martin plant.

In 2007 a registered Democrat named Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32  people in Virginia Tech.

In 2009 a registered Democrat named Nidal Malik Hasan shot and killed 13 and injured 32 at Ft. Hood, Texas

In 2010 a mentally ill registered Democrat named Jared Lee Loughner shot Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and killed 6 others.

In 2011 a registered Democrat named James Holmes went into a movie theater and shot and killed 12 people.

In 2012 Andrew Engeldinger a disgruntled Democrat shot and killed 7 people in Minneapolis

In 2013 a registered Democrat named Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people in a school.

One could go on, but you get the point, even if the media does not.
Clearly, there is a problem with Democrats and guns.

SOLUTION: It should simply be illegal for Democrats to own guns.

I don’t entirely endorse the data – I’m  not sure we can ascribe politics to dementees like Ho, Loughner or Holmes.  Or alleged jihadis like Hassan, for that matter; by that logic, the 9/11 hijackers were Democrats, too. 

And I’m extremely leery about junk psychology “studies” that ascribe defects or pathologies to other peoples’ politics – especially politics I disagree with – it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to notice that Democrats are very frequently much angrier than the rest of us; the farther left they are, the more out there they seem. 

So may be the conclusion is “keep guns out of the hands of rabid statists”. 

I can live with that.

There were ten dead and 55 wounded in gun-free Chicago over the weekend.

The carnage impelled one Chicagoan to wonder (with emphasis added by me):

“It’s crazy,” said Rashauda Tolbert, a niece of [one of the weekend’s victims]. “Kids can’t play outside. People can’t sit on their porches.

“The shooting has been going on for days,” said Tolbert, who she was on her way to her security job when she heard about what happened and rushed back to her family. “Why we gotta be prisoners in our homes?”

It’s simple, Ms. Tolbert.  Because you live in a city where the government fears the law-abiding citizen more than the gang-bangers that are destroying your neighborhood.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

This is hilarious. During the Zimmerman trial, a cop called to testify wore her uniform with all her ribbons. Some sharp-eyed blogger recognized the ribbons and posted about it, resulting in this revelation.

She’s not authorized to wear those ribbons.

Why didn’t they come up with their own, or adopt those used by other law enforcement agencies like NYPD or LAPD? Is this a symptom of the over-militarization of police, along with armored vehicles and assault rifles?

Why does the police department NEED to award ribbons to cops? I don’t get any ribbons at my job. And yes, now I wonder if I should be getting ribbons. And medals. And special days of honor and parades. On a related note it always annoys me when a cop or fireman funeral is excuse to tie up traffic for miles around. And excuse to tie up resources, burn up gas sending cops/firemen from anywhere within a 1000 miles or more. What would be the cop response to a parade of garbage trucks for a funeral, tying up traffic, blocking intersections for a half day or more, etc? I’m guessing that then special permits would be needed and non-available.

Joe Doakes

I don’t mind the police funerals.

The militarization of the police, on the other hand, is a huge danger to our society. More later.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Registered sex offenders to live on Charles Avenue [A street a few block north of University, through the Midway, Frogtown and the North End of Saint Paul – Ed]. On the new bike-and-pedestrian-friendly part of the street.

 

Seems odd to be slowing down potential victims just in front of the predator’s house but then, I‘m not an urban planner.

 

Joe Doakes

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Hillary’s State Department is offering millions of dollars in rewards for information leading to the arrest and capture of terrorists who blew up stuff . . . in Africa.

I don’t give a crap about Africans blowing up Africans. Give ME the seven million dollars.

Joe Doakes

Remember when liberals complained about the US being “the world’s policeman?”

Them either.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Bush put tracking devices in assault weapons and let them go to Mexico so we could track down drug cartels. Obama gave assault weapons to drug cartels to up the body count to justify gun controls in the US.

Bush tracked a few international calls to find terrorists. Obama tracked all of Verizon’s domestic calls to find terrorists.

Obama supporters are quick to remind us Bush Did It First and when Bush did it, it was illegal but now, it’s not. But there is a qualitative and quantitative difference between the two administrations’ actions. And Bush didn’t specifically run on a platform promising never to do that again.

The Democrats’ logic is: My brother stepped on an ant so I blew up a school bus full of nuns. Because he started it. And while I’m no better than he – in fact, I’m worse – he started it. So what I did was okay.

“Only a little worse than Bush,” that’s the Democrats’ new defense.

Joe Doakes

This is the sort of thing that makes a parent ground their kids.

How do we ground a government, again?

Especially one that is actively suppressing any attempt to ground it?

Arizona man arrested for DUI – with a blood alcohol level of 0.00:

Jessie Thorton, a 61-year-old retiree, was arrested and charged with DUI in Arizona despite having a blood alcohol level of 0.00. The reason the arresting officer gave to Thorton: “I can tell you’re driving drunk by the look in your eyes.”

Thorton, a retired firefighter who, because of his wife’s schedule as an ER nurse, often sleeps during the day, was pulled over at 11 pm in Surprise, Arizona after police officers say they witnessed him crossing the white line in his lane.

“He (the officer) walked up and he said ‘I can tell you’re driving DUI by looking in your eyes,'” Thorton told ABC 15 in Arizona.

Thorton, who had been working out at a nearby LA Fitness, told the officer his eyes were bloodshot because he’d been swimming at the gym’s pool.

One of several lessons for the day follows:

“He (the officer) goes, ‘Well we’re going to do a sobriety test.’ I said, ‘OK, but I got bad knees and a bad hip with surgery in two days.'”

The officer then made Thorton take a sobriety test.

“At one point, one of the officers shined the light in my eye and said, ‘Oh, sorry,’ and asked the other officer if he was doing it right,'” said Thornton.

Talk to your lawyer – or any lawyer – about the advisability of refusing to take the field sobriety test (there are those who say refuse it, period; I’m no lawyer, so don’t take my word for it), but the fact is that “field sobriety tests” are not about determining if you’re sober.  They’re about supporting the officer’s case against you in court.  They are not designed to make you look sober; they are, in fact, not designed to be passed at all.  Go ahead – recite the alphabet backwards right now, assuming you’re sober.

The “war on drunk driving” has slopped across the lane into absurdity.

Read the whole thing.  It gets worse.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes about this piece (which started as a monologue on the NARN a few days before the blog post was published).

———-

Your end-of-show reading of Rep. Paymar’s column got me to thinking: we know background checks won’t work, but saying so doesn’t make it so. Can we better explain to Low Information Voters WHY they won’t work? Some thoughts for your future columns:

Background checks stop people from committing violence with guns, but only if (a) the shooter submits to the background check and (b) the database is accurate.

There are at least five kinds of gun violence. They occur for different reasons so they have different solutions.

Enterprise Violence is a business decision. When Al Capone found Bugs Moran taking over saloons to sell bootleg liquor in Capone’s territory, Capone didn’t have the option of bringing a lawsuit to restrain his competitor, as Microsoft might do today. He didn’t have the option of buying a city council members to grant him a city-wide franchise, as the cable company might do today. Capone was left with “alternative dispute resolution” to handle competitors: he shot them. Drug dealers today have the same business problem – illegal product, no recourse to courts – so when they have problems with competitors, they use the same business model that has proven so effective for the last 100 years: they shoot them.

Drug dealers by definition routinely import, manufacture, transport, buy and sell illegal items. If they’re successful, it’s because they have learned how to avoid law enforcement. Buying illegal guns presents no different logistical problems from buying illegal drugs.

The employee who pulls the trigger won’t be the guy who submits to the background check. Instead, the gang will use a person with a clean record – a new hire, or perhaps a wife or girlfriend – who can pass the background check to buy the weapon then hand the weapon to the eventual shooter. These “straw man” purchases will look completely legal on paper and even if law enforcement catches them, they’re just little fish, quickly replaced.

One solution to Enterprise Violence committed by dealers in illegal drugs may be the same as the solution to illegal liquor: repeal Prohibition. Background checks is not a solution.

Idiot Violence. Nizzel George was a 5-year old boy in North Minneapolis. He was sleeping on his grandmother’s couch when 17-year-old Stephon Shannon and 16-year-old Julian Anderson walked up the sidewalk and fired 10 shots from .40 caliber handguns at the house. One of the bullets punched through the siding and hit the sleeping child in the back. Shannon said he was a gang member and that he shot at the house in retaliation for the earlier shooting of a fellow gang member. He didn’t mean to kill Nizzel, didn’t even know he was in the house.

Hadiya Pendleton was a 15-year old girl from Chicago. She was an honor student and majorette who performed for President Obama’s inauguration. She was chatting with friends in Harsh Park on January 29, 2013 when she was struck by bullets fired by Michael Ward, age 18, also of Chicago. Ward and his getaway driver, Kenneth Williams, age 20 of Chicago, told police the shooting was in retaliation for earlier gang violence but Hadiya’s group was not the intended victims, her group was mistaken for other people.

President Obama mentioned Nizzel George and Hadiya Pendleton as reasons why new gun control laws are needed, including universal background checks but that makes no logical sense.

You must be 21 years old to buy a handgun. None of these shooters should have had one. Plainly, they didn’t submit to a background check. They most likely obtained their weapons the same way the Enterprise does – theft or straw purchase. They used guns to redress insults because that’s how things are done in their violent little sub-culture.

The solution to Idiot Violence may require massive social change to eliminate that violent sub-culture. Certainly, background checks alone won’t make any difference.

Mental Illness Violence. The Aurora Theater, Newtown School and Accent Signage shooters had histories of mental health problems but had not been formally committed. You cannot commit someone to a mental institution based on gossip or rumor or even the parent’s concerns because being committed for mental illness means the patient is locked up as securely as if he were being sent to prison. The law requires a judge to rule that the person is a danger to himself or others at that moment, based on admissible evidence from the patient’s history. Fear that the patient might someday snap is not admissible evidence. This sets a high standard of proof to deprive a person of his liberty and makes civil commitment difficult.

The background check database includes people who already have been committed for mental illness but these shooters hadn’t been committed so they wouldn’t be in the system. A background check would not have stopped them from buying weapons.

The solution to Mental Illness violence involves an overhaul of the mental health treatment system and re-evaluation of commitment law, none of which was included in Rep. Paymar’s proposal.

Suicide By Gun. There has been an increase in rates of suicide committed by middle-aged White men who are not drug dealers or gang members and had no prior history of mental illness. Nobody knows why although armchair psychologists speculate losing their life savings in the housing crash or job in the Recession make that generation of men feel like failures, or perhaps something unique to Baby Boomers (who already have higher rates of depression than earlier generations), or maybe a “tough-it-out” cultural reluctance to seeking mental health treatment. Since guns are the tool used, gun control advocates seek to control guns to reduce suicide rates.

The background check database does not include people who lost money or jobs. It does not include people who are depressed and decline treatment. Most middle-aged White men who commit suicide by firearm have owned their guns for years. The solution to Suicide By Gun might be similar to that for Mental Illness, but background checks won’t help.

Government Violence. Andrea Rebello, a 21-year old Hofstra University student, was being held hostage by a man who broke into her home when she was shot in the head by a cop, killing her instead of the man holding her. Ibragim Todashev was shot dead by an FBI agent in Orlando just as he was about to confess to helping the Boston Bomber commit murder.

Jeff Johnson, a laid-off employee, shot Steven Ercolino, the vice-president of the company, outside the Empire State Building. Police pursued Johnson and shot at him 16 times, killing Johnson and also wounding 9 innocent bystanders when bullets ricocheted off the stone building.

After Chris Dorner shot an off-duty cop in Los Angeles, police officers fired approximately 100 shots at a blue Toyota pickup truck in which Margie Carranza and her 71-year-old mother, Emma Hernandez, were delivering newspapers. The officers mistook their truck for the gray Nissan Titan Dorner was believed to be driving. Hernandez was hit and Carranza suffered injuries from flying glass. On the same morning, Torrance police opened fire on the truck of a surfer headed for the beach.

Vang Khang’s family counted 22 bullet holes when police raided the wrong home in Minneapolis in 2008. Roberto Franco’s family lost their dog and nearly a daughter to a diabetic reaction when police raided the wrong house in St. Paul in 2012, shot the family pet, handcuffed the children and denied the diabetic girl her medicine. When Alden Anderson killed a police dog named Toby earlier this year, St. Paul police shot Anderson to death.

Rodney Balko at Cato Institute has an interactive map online showing botched paramilitary raids are an epidemic and innocent deaths are frequent. If it were occurring in any other country, we’d be aghast at the level of violence government directs at its own people.

The solution to Government Violence probably involves de-militarizing ordinary police, ending the War on Drugs and extending personal liability to careless police officers, but none of these shootings would have been prevented by background checks.

I’m sure you can think of more categories and examples but perhaps the mental exercise of breaking gun violence into small units will make it easier to explain why a universal blanket solution not only won’t solve the problem, it will divert attention from real solutions.

Cuomo ratchets up gun control.

Bloomberg leads a group of mayors in a battle against the Second Amendment (when they can spare time from their own criminal defenses).

New York, mostly placid since the Giuliani years, erupts in gun violence:

Violence surged like the mercury Sunday, with three more fatalities from gun violence — and eight others wounded in shootings — bringing the total number of bullet-riddled in the city to 25 in less than 48 hours.

Only Staten Island was safe from the wide-ranging spray of gunfire and sickening weekend bloodshed. At least 12 people were blasted in Brooklyn, eight in the Bronx and another four in Queens. The sole person shot in Manhattan took several slugs to the chest and perished in broad daylight.

Of course, Chicago has the “toughest” gun laws in the country, and is a cesspool of violence.  Washington DC is right up there on both counts.  Connecticut had “tough” gun laws before Sandy Hook, and has ratcheted them up since – but in what state did Sandy Hook happen, again (all notwithstanding the fact that guns are absolutely illegal in schools to begin with)?

I know – correlation doesn’t equal causation.

But there’s just so much correlation.