Oh, yeah – I didin’t much care for synth-pop.

No, I did not.  Not much at all.

Part of it was that synthesizer-based pop tended to sound like an electronics class experiment:

OK, so that’s the artsy, German, “now is ze time on Schprockets when ve dance!” strain of the form.

But let’s be frank; even synth-pop that emphasized the “pop” largely sounded like it’d traded in what passed for “souls” for circuit boards.

Now, of course there was synth-pop that sounded like it was written and performed by humans, that used all the cool electronic beeps and squawks as vehicles for the sorts of emotional stimuli that music, left alone and in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing, actually elicits a human response.

But it was all largely academic, because I just didn’t care that much.  While the late seventies and early eighties were the heyday of synth pop, they were also the glory days of a lot of genres that I unabashedly liked:  Eddie Van Halen and Randy Rhodes were ushering in the air of the guitar hero with panache; post-punks like Big Country, the Alarm and U2 were showing the world that a couple of guitars, a bass and drums and a singer with some balls could still rip the roof off of any room in the place.  Prince and a lot of his compatriots and imitators put rock and pop and funk and electronics into a big blender and hit “puree”, with glorious results.

And so it came to pass that I didn’t listen to Berlin a whole lot.  Oh, I heard them, of course; you couldn’t escape “Take My Breath Away”, when Top Gun was the biggest movie in the world.  They had a few other songs that mostly came and went in my consciousness, mostly in college or working one bar or another back in the day.

And I’m not exactly sure what it was that caused me to listen again.  But it occurred to me  – unlike the vast, vast, va-ha-ha-haaast majority of synthesizer pop, Berlin at its best had that immutable, utterly subjective quality that makes music migrate from my frontal lobe, where I appreciate music on an intellectual, techical, logical level, as a musician (or, more often, don’t appreciate it, to be perfectly honest) and migrate back to a deeper level; to my hypothalamus, or medulla, or heart, or liver for all I know; the part of me that says “this music has soul“.

And at their best, they did:

I’ve seen a few synth-pop bands over the years – I mean, I was in the Minneapolis music scene in the eighties, right?   And the thing most of them had in common was that they’d bury their noses in their electronics, and treat the act of creating music – the most evocative of art forms – like they were playing a video game.  Being tied to a keyboard, generally, implies being more or less stationary (Jerry Lee Lewis notwithstanding) and, at least in a sense, hiding behind an instrument; it’s a very different stance than playing the guitar.

And in terms of performing music live?  Most synth-pop bands were hapless, stiff, dismal.  On the other hand, at the height of their game, Berlin could take synth-pop and make it sizzle live:

Most of it had to do with the lead singer, Terri Nunn, who had a knack for throwing in little asides into her performances that filled what could have been dry, soulless electronic beeping and squawking with blood and flesh and passion; she was no Levi Stubbs, but her knack for the loaded interjection filled the same role in Berlin’s very different medium as Stubbs’ did for the Four Seasons.  A better comparison, perhaps?  Terri Nunn and Chrissy Hynde could do each other’s stuff at Karaoke night and have one of those “OMG, we sound just alike!” moments, and the comparison is about a lot more than just vocal timbre.

And it took me – kid you not – 33 years to discover it.

Because I was just too damn cool for it.

Speaking of too damn cool – it was exactly that, discovering (in this 2003-vintage VH1 epi of “Bands Reunited” – that Berlin grew up to be…

…pretty much a bunch of workadaddy, hugamommy schlubs like the rest of us:

Well, most of them did.  Not Terri Nunn.

I think it’d be useful to document, from an almost anthropological standpoint, what happens in a “progressive’s” mind when they talk about “common sense gun laws”.

For example, when Virginia attorney-general Mark Herring – a Democrat, natch – says “let’s implement a common-sense measure ending reciprocity in carry permits with other states”, what he really means is “let’s make sure that people from other states who have documented histories of being reliably law-abiding citizens can’t carry their guns legally in Virginia“.

Criminals remain free to carry whatever they want, as always.

Seems commonsensical to me.

You know what else sounds like common sense?  Minnesota should refuse to honor Virginia driver’s licenses until they honor our carry permits.

Because we wouldn’t want dumbass Virginians on our roads, now, would we?

Just so we make sure that I am either very clear, or very unclear – I fully support welcoming refugees to United States. I even more fully support being very very careful about the ones we admit.

What I would like to ask ISIS is, instead of wasting perfectly good passive aggression on the docile, bovine Swedish Lutherans, that they try this little stunt with some of the people in America who are getting so very, very smug and self-righteous about their sense of tolerance.

Thanks in advance.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Driving SUVs burns fossil fuels gives off carbon, which causes a greenhouse effect, which heats the planet, causing global warming.

Except the planet isn’t getting warmer, according to temperature measurements.

Ah, but that’s because driving SUVs burning fossil fuels also gives off sulfate aerosols which cool the local area where they’re generated and therefore causes artificially low temperature readings, masking the extent of heating elsewhere around the world.

End result: global warming is worse than we thought because it’s hidden.  Secret Global Warming.  So hand over your money, quick!

I preferred “epicycles,” that was a more elegant solution to explain why the theory was correct in spite of the evidence.

Joe Doakes

I have a hunch Hunter S. Thompson’s legendary Samoan Lawyer is behind it all.  “It’s not necessary for you to understand the theory, or even that it be legitimate.  Merely that you keep the checks coming”.

I rarely if ever endorse candidates, per se.  I figure it’s not my job – who am I, after all?   I inform; you decide.

But I live in Saint Paul.  The Fourth Congressional District; Senate District 65; House 65A.  I’m “represented” by Betty McCollum, Sandy Pappas and Rena Moran.   And while I do my best to get involved in politics in my own neighborhood, let’s be honest; I probably have a greater  impact elsewhere.

Of course, Andy Aplikowski is a longtime friend of this blog.  And of mine, for that matter.  One of the co-founders of True North, one of the smartest political numbers guys I know, half of one of the genuinely nicest couples I know.  Andy’s running to replace Brandon Petersen in the Senate.  And I hope he wins.

Andy’s got the endorsement of the SD35 party apparatus.  But he’s gotta get through a primary against long-time former rep. Jim Abeler.

Now, I’ve interviewed Abeler a few times.  He’s a great guy; there are those who choose to demonize those they disagree with, and neither Abeler nor I are them.  And in his interviews, Abeler makes a solid case for some of the votes he’s taken.  Not solid enough to convince me, but nothing to brush aside, either.

But one vote that concerned me, as someone who’s gone around and around with the public school system, is a vote he took that ended up denying vouchers to students in Minneapolis and Saint Paul schools. Did Abeler have his reasons?  I’m sure he did – but they pale against the opportunity that arises when you allow the free market, personified by giving the parents the fiscal clout to say “no” to the district system, to have its effect.

So while I’m not sure what Abeler’s policy reasons are, I know that the vote did earn him some powerful friends. No, I mean some very powerful friends, friends with deep pockets and heavy-duty outsized clout in Minnesota politics.

Anyway – if you’re in SD35, or have friends there, by all means let ’em know where the School Choice vote goes.

Steve Harvey announces the wrong Miss Universe, and had to move the crown from runner-up to winner as the crowd jeered.

Next move up for Brad?

I’m not sure why I bother with Heather Martens anymore.  I mean, she was never a worthy opponent – for lil’ ol’ me, much less the Human Rights activists that actually matter – and she has yet, in all her years of plumping for gun control, to utter a single, substantive, original true fact.

And she’s on her way out over at “Protect” Minnesota!

But Heather Martens is a little like Nick Coleman; beating up on her has become so ingrained, it’s hard to know when to stop.

Anyway – this is what’s currently on “Protect” MN’s homepage.  Good luck.

Dear Friend,

Protect Minnesota board president Joan Peterson testified against legalizing silencers in Minnesota in 2015. Men openly carrying guns heckled Protect Minnesota representatives during their testimony. Click here to donate. 

Lie #1.  No, they didn’t.  Ask the Capitol Police, who constantly commend the state’s Freedom activists’ impeccable behavior.

Fact:  Joan Peterson has a long, grotty history engaging in perfectly civil conversations with perfectly civil freedom advocates – and then turning around and telling people the freedom advocates were abusive or nasty.  There are witnesses.

Now, back to Heather:

The recent gun tragedies underscore how essential it is to work for a future where our kids won’t live in fear of gun violence. In 2015, we made progress toward that future, and with your support, we can build on our momentum in 2016.

Lie #2:  Well, sure – “we” did.  But not “Protect” MN or the “Gun safety movement.  Oh, crime dropped fast, as millions of new firearms entered circulation.  But the gun grabbers lost every legislative battle in Minnesota, even with Michael Bloomberg’s millions lavishly backing them.  And “Protect” Minnesota was so impotent, even the Bloombergs cut them loose, and whomever calls the shots is in the process of cutting Heather loose after years of ineptitude.

Please make a year-end donation today to help us continue our work.

In 2015, we held off efforts to allow people to carry loaded guns in public without first having to get a permit and background check.

Lie #3;  No, they didn’t.  While a “constitutional carry” bill was submitted, “Protect” MN had virtually nothing to do with its death in committee.   The push for it was largely symbolic, since with a DFL governor and Senate it was never going to pass anyway.

We successfully advocated for a state law prohibiting the “straw” purchase of guns, in which a person with a clean record buys a gun for a prohibited person.

Lie #4:  Right.  They did.  With the full cooperation of all the gun rights organizations that matter in this state.  The existing law was inadequate.  And it was the gun rights groups – not the hapless Martens and her impotent organization – that did the heavy lifting.

In 2016, a critical election year, we need your support to get the word out about the extremism of the gun lobby,

Lie #5:  The human rights movement, as shown in recent polls, is the mainstream.  The grabbers are the extreme, supported only by a thin residue of crazies and a bunch of money from “progressives” with deep pockets.

and about the effectiveness of gun safety policies — such as background checks before all gun sales. 

Lie #6:  While “gun safety” policies like putting criminals in jail work wonders, nothing “Protect” MN advocates, least of all “universal background checks”, will.

Next year, we can expect the gun lobby to propose:

1) A Minnesota constitutional amendment to nullify all gun laws by declaring guns, and carrying them everywhere, a “fundamental” right.

Lie #7;  While “Consitutional Carry” is a fine idea, and works wonders in most places it’s been tried (currently five states), not to mention in Minnesota before 1974, it’s not really on the agenda while we have a DFL Senator or Governor.

2) Repealing Minnesota’s background check law,

Lie #8:  Huh?

arming teachers,

Lie #9:  While there’s no rational reason that teachers who are legally entitled to carry firearms shouldn’t be able to in school, nobody can seem to find where “arming teachers” is on anyone’s agenda.

and allowing any permit holder from anywhere to carry a loaded gun in MInnesota.

Not So Much A “Lie” as Really Stupid:  If someone has a permit to carry in another state, why should they not be recognized here?

But with your support, we are here to raise our voices for common sense at the Capitol and beyond.

Lie #10:  Nothing about “Protect” MN is “common sense”.   They’re calling for a return to the policies in effect when crime was double what it is today.

We spread the word about what the gun industry is doing, and how we can stop them. We appear regularly in the Minnesota media to push back against extremists.

Lie #11:  Well, no – “Protect” MN doesn’t appear “regularly”.  They may come out of hiding when they can control the agenda, or when they know a reporter or interviewer is utterly uninformed or just doesn’t care that much.  If they don’t, they – meaning Heather and Joan Peterson, usually – invariably look like idiots.

They don’t appear with media figures who won’t promise to paint Heather’s toenails on the air.

Protect Minnesota is the only Minnesota-based non-profit organization dedicated to ending gun violence.

Mostly A Lie #12:  They are, by default – Michael Bloomberg’s “Everytown”, after swallowing up the local chapter of “Moms Want Action”, closed up shop after the last session.  They’ll be back – and they’re the dangerous ones – but they’re saving money during the off-session.

We have been here since 1991 to advocate for better gun policy, organize our communities, and educate the public on gun issues.

Lie #13:  As Heather Martens, again, has never made a single original, substantial, true statement about the issue, it’d be more accurate to say they’ve been here to “miseducate” the public.

We envision a future in which our kids are safe to play and learn in every community.

Lie #14: No, they don’t.  Gun control kills – and is rooted in the sort of racism that the better elements in this country strives to cast off.

We reject the world view promoted by the gun industry that exploits fear to boost profits — no matter what the human cost.

Lie #15:  Heather is putting the cart before the horse.  But to be fair, it’s just a chanting point she’s been given by her superiors.

We don’t have the deep pockets of the gun industry, but we have you.Thank you for all you do,

Lie #16:  They have the deep pockets of some of the biggest “progressive” donors out there; the Joyce Foundation and other liberals with deep pockets.  They fund “Protect” MN to the tune of $300K.   GOCRA, which eats “P”Ms lunch every year, operates on a fraction of that budget, almost every penny of it in nickels and times from real people.

Lie #17:   When she says “We have you”, she may mean it in the singular sense of the term.  “Protect” MN’s membership would fit in a booth at Perkins, if they ever met.

Heather Martens

Executive Director

Not So Much A Lie As Pointless:  She’s kinda a lame duck.

17 lies, and that wasn’t even a very long press release.

…when it really, really matters and makes a difference.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

These are the people the Obama Administration wants Israelis to reason with: people who buy their kids terrorist dolls so they grow up hating Jews.

Joe Doakes

One of liberals’ great handicaps is that they always act like everyone is “like us”, as if all humans have the same motives as MPR-listening, Subaru-driving, Whole-Foods-shopping Carleton grads do.

Here’s the site for “Between Lambs And Lions”  Mark Sutherland is the producer.

And of course, ♫ today’s music playlist

Special Programming Note:  Salem Twin Cities’ business station, with King Banaians show, is now at 1440 AM.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air! I will be on live from 1-3PM today!

Today on the show,

• I’ll be talking with Mark Sutherland, producer of the film Between Lambs and Lions.

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson has “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 1-3PM.

So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via my UStream video and chat channel.
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

Jon Gabriel:

.@exjon @instapundit Cruel Prank: Area Man Dresses In Pig Costume To Mock Islam pic.twitter.com/Wz7SDGTN55

— John Rivers (@JohnRiversToo) December 17, 2015

The president of Oklahoma Wesleyan says what’s needed to be said:

“This is not a day care,” Everett Piper, president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, wrote in a fiery blog post on the school’s website last week.

“This is a university!”

His critics will no doubt home in on the fact that OWU is an evangelical school, and that Piper has spoken out in favor of Kim Davis, against transgender activism and gay marriage.

To which I reply “put on a helmet, bucko – that’s the point.  In real life, you’re going to encounter things and people you disagree with, and – scariest of all – who disagree with you.  And some of them are going to be smart – even smarter than you, maybe.  And you will have to learn how to deal with this cognitive dissonance.  Or – if you’re one of the students that’s whinging about “safe spaces” these days, I guess not to learn to deal with dissonance – like, for example, pretty much every liberal in the Twin Cities under the age of 70″.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

There’s always a lunatic fringe, people who refuse to believe the official story.  The CIA killed JFK.  The moon landing was faked.  Fire can’t melt steel.  Obama was born in Kenya.

Now there’s a fringe who suspect the existence of a small, fanatically dedicated team – possibly mercenaries – that President Obama calls upon when he needs to whip up support for gun control measures he can’t get passed by calm logic (and also to distract voters from his foreign policy and economic disasters).  The very notion would be ludicrous . . . except that it looks as if this administration has been caught red-handed doing it before.

Candidate Obama campaigned in 2008 on banning assault rifles but there weren’t enough crimes committed with assault rifles to convince the public. The administration intentionally let a bunch of assault rifles walk across the border into Mexico during Fast and Furious, eventually finding their way back to the US to kill a border patrol agent and who knows how many others?  The plot was discovered and the outrage fizzled but the suspicion remains that this President was willing to give assault rifles to narco-terrorists to pump up the body count so he could panic the public into banning guns.

President Obama ran for reelection in 2012 again on his standard campaign to ban assault rifles.  December 12, Adam Lanza shoots up Sandy Hook school in Newtown using assault rifles but the initial reports are contradictory and the photos are sealed, which creates suspicion Team Obama has done it again.   Public outcry and lots of energy to ban guns except by 2013 there were more Republicans in Congress and the ban couldn’t pass.

2017 is Obama’s last year in office, his last chance to get guns banned.  Also, Paris makes a mockery of his foreign policy.  He needs outrage and distraction.  Viola!  A shooting in California whips Democrats into a frenzy for gun control, the suspects conveniently dead.  More frenzy, more demands . . . but questions about the Third Shooter remain and thus suspicion lingers.  When will the next attack come?  And who will benefit?

Joe Doakes

 

Mitch BERG is walking through a pet food store.  He rounds a corner and runs into Avery LIBRELLE, who is plastering “Simulated Meat Is Murder!” stickers on bags of dog food.   Although BERG tries to evade, LIBRELLE sees him.  

LIBRELLE:  Merg!

BERG:  Aaaagh.  Er…hi, Avery.

LIBRELLE:  It’s time to institute universal background checks, ban clips that shoot thirty assault bullets a second, and get rid of assault AR47s.

BERG:  Two of those things don’t exist, and one of them will have no effect on crime but burden the law-abiding citizen exclusively.

LIBRELLE:  But if we save just one life, it’ll be worth it.

BERG:  So saving “just one life”, no matter how improbably, should be the basis for policy?

LIBRELLE:  Yep.  Human life is sacred.

BERG:  So then we should shut down the Green and Blue lines – about ten dead?  Or perhaps get rid of Obamacare?  Or for that matter, shutting down Planned Parenthood?

LIBRELLE:  Nooooo!  Some things are more important than human life!

(LIBRELLE puts bags of dog food around ears, runs from the store)

(And SCENE)

The Salvation Army is in the midst of their annual holiday fundraising drive.

Brad Carlson, my NARN co-host, and I have our own virtual Salvation Army “bucket” this year.  It’s right here.  For a lot of reasons, I’m a huge SA supporter.  I’m going to be pitching in, and I hope you will doo.

A Brief Bit Of Background:  Whenever I sit down in a large room with a bunch of co-workers to “meet” a new manager, and that manangers starts their presentation with “I’m a ‘process person'”, I tell my co-workers “Well, time to get our resumes polished up.  This department is screwed blue”.

And I’ve never been wrong.

Another Bit Of Personal Background:  Whenever I decry some miscarriage of justice, and some twerp – often a liberal, Ivy-League law-school grad – smugly intones “the process was met!”, I’m kept from strangling Ivyleaguer with his own intestines only with great difficulty, and sometimes only by other people.

Paging Petty Tyrants: There’s an old cliche; “state and local goverment are the laboratories of Democracy”.  Perhaps it’s true – but Pageville, Missouri is conducting an experiment in democracy’s extinction.

Faced with a court ruling that capped how much the city could earn in traffic fines, they decided to add fines for…

…well, pretty much everything, according to George Will:

Pagedale residents are subject to fines if they walk on the left side of a crosswalk; if they have a hedge more than three feet high, a weed more than seven inches high, or any dead vegetation on their property; or if they park a car at night more than 500 feet from a street lamp or other source of illumination; or if windows facing a street do not have drapes or blinds that are “neatly hung, in a presentable appearance, properly maintained and in a state of good repair”; or if their houses have unpainted foundations or chipped or aging layers of paint (even on gutters); or if there are cracks in their driveways; or if on a national holiday — the only time a barbeque may be conducted in a front yard — more than two people are gathered at the grill or there are alcoholic beverages visible within 150 feet of the grill.

Upshot; it’s pretty much impossible not to violate some sort of law or another in Pageville, MO.

But the city’s pecuniary interest in particular judicial outcomes, which creates an appearance of bias, is not the crux of the argument that the city is violating the 14th Amendment guarantee that Americans shall not be deprived of life, liberty, or property without “due process of law.” The entire nation should hope that this small city’s pettiness will be stopped by a court that says this: The Due Process Clause, properly construed, prohibits arbitrary government action, particularly that which unjustifiably restricts individuals’ liberties.

That is, the Due Process Clause is not purely about process.

And if this case were a step toward enshrining, Heller-like, the idea that government isn’t about sanctifying process, but upholding the freedom of the citizen, it would be a huge start.

Because the sooner the idea that government exists to protect process is rhetorically loaded into a train and sent to a camp in Idaho to smash metaphorical rocks for a few decades, the better this country will be.

A couple weeks ago, we noted that retiring representative Kim Norton who has pledged to carry a clot of gun-grabbing bills through the legislature this next session, has  asked for “a conversation about guns” on social media.

And then blocked everyone that disagreed with her, instantly and comprehensively (as have with all other Minnesota gun grab activists).

I asked her to appear on the NARN; she begged off, claiming to have not really thought about the issue all that hard (notwithstanding the fact that her proposals in various mainstream and social media have been pretty detailed).

Well, l’ll keep on trying.

But until then, we’ve got a hint as to her sympathies, via Twitter:

Rep. Norton: celebrating passive victimhood for way too long.

I have a hunch she’s going to book a week in Costa Rica during “Minnesota Gun Owners Lobbying Day” (MN-GOLD).

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Another poor yute, raised in grinding poverty on the mean streets of Eagan, a barren desert laid waste by climate change, turning to terrorism as a desperate cry for help.

Joe Doakes

If it saves just one life…

On Friday, we talked about comparing the US murder rate to the rest of the world.

Monday, the subject was what’d happen if we excluded America’s top forty highest-crime cities from the average.

Yesterday, we talked about what’d happen if we left the Old South, with its centuries of relatively violent Scots-Irish heritage, out of the nation’s murder rate.

In every case, the results were big.

Now, let’s go bigger.

The Math:  Here’s what it comes down to.

If you take the US’s 319 million people and 12,000-odd homicides (about 8,000 of which involve guns), and subtract:

• murders in the states of the Old South, the former Confederate and Border states (with population and murders from from Southern cities among “Top Fifty” cities’ overlapping murder rates removed, since they’re counted in the next bullet, and we wouldn’t want to deduct them twice)
• murders in the fifty US cities with the highest murder rates

And what does that leave?

Peace And Tranquility:  Incredibly, of the roughly 12,000 murders in the US in 2014, around 8,700 took place in either the Top Fifty crime cities, or the former slave states.

That’s 71% of the homicides for the entire US.

In other words, just a little over a quarter of all murders in the US happen outside the Old South and the fifty cities  and the slightly over a third of the population, with the highest murder rates.

The homicide rate for rest of the US – including many of its largest cities, and all of its urban and suburban areas outside Dixie –  falls to…1.8 per 100,000.   That’s the same as Israel – and it’s tied for #163 in the world.  It’s about 20% lower than Norway’s murder rate.   It’s not a lot higher, statistically, than Belgium, Canada, or Finland.

It’s about the same as North Dakota’s was, before the oil boom. Or Vermont today.

Or, as a matter of fact, almost identical to that of…

…wait for it…

…no, wait for it…

Peaceful, placid, passive-aggressive Minnesota.  North Minneapolis included.

And firearm crimes are more like 1.1-1.2/100,000.  Not “vanishingly low”, but pretty low.   About the same a Croatia, Macedonia, or Israel.

So…What?:  One of the Second Amendment movement’s oldest, most successful aphorisms is “guns don’t kill people; people do”.

And people do evil, or stupid, things for as many reasons as there are people.

But there are some overarching patterns that drive violence in the US; a violence-prone urban culture, with its gangs and black-marketeering and deeply dysfunctional justice system, and a deep south with a tolerance for petty and major violence that far exceeds the rest of the country.

And with those controlled for, the level of violence in the US, by world standards, is to say the least, low.

• Last Friday: Intro
• Monday:  The effect urban crime has on America’s murder rate.
• Yesterday:  The murder rate in the Deep South.
• Today:  What the US’ murder rate would be without its biggest social pathologies.

(more…)

A friend sends this passage from Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman, on KSTP news last night:

Today’s crime tips from Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman:

“If you’re going to rob or burglered (sic) you know, the burgluring you can do in an unoccupied home and take the stuff and get out of there. If you’re going to rob a person you knock them down, take their money, and go. You don’t kill them.” – KSTP News at 6:30

i’m sure that will help.

“Gun Safety” activists who are trying to appear reasonable will claim that they support “Common Sense” reforms to gun laws.

One of their common fallbacks is “universal background checks” – in other words, running a background check for every single transfer of a gun, whether sold at Cabela’s, or handed down from Grandpa to grandchild, or a friend lending a friend a rifle for a hunting trip.

Of course, these background checks – which add $50-100 to the cost of every firearm sold, further driving them out of the reach of poor people – have been the law of the land in California for years.  And from the investigation into the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, we see how well they work:

On Thursday, one of the federal government sources told The Times that Farook asked his friend and neighbor, Enrique Marquez, to buy two military-style rifles used in the attacksbecause he feared he “wouldn’t pass a background check” if he attempted to acquire the weapons on his own. The rifles were bought at a local gun store, the source said.

So – we’ve got a “Straw Purchase” – a legal buyer making a purchase in the stead of an illegal one, which is illegal under federal law – followed by…:

There was no paperwork transferring ownership of the assault rifles from Marquez to Farook, as required by California law, government officials told The Times.

But wait!  They broke the law, even though it requires a background check for private transfers!

Surely there must be some mistake!

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails about the erosion of civil liberty in the UK:

And yet, if the homeowner had shot them breaking in, the homeowner would be the one in trouble.

They know the real problem.

Just like Barack Obama and Kim Norton do.

Friday, we noted that gun grabbers try their darnedest to keep discussions of murder rates to “western, industrialized” countries – because of course brown people in the third world only matter if you can get them to vote Democrat.

And yesterday, we discussed both the murder rate in America’s 50 cities with the highest murder rates, and how subtracting their population and murders from the US rates drops the US overall murder rate by over a quarter.

Still Smelling The Gunpowder:  But cities don’t have a monopoly on criminal pathologies.  But they share some reasons.

In the immediate wake of the 2008 elections, a wave of pundits and scholars, including the U of M’s Eric Ostermeier, noted a factoid; states that voted for John McCain had higher crime rates than states that voted for Obama.

In response, I pointed out a couple of things:

• state by state comparisons were meaningless, since the real breaking point in crime numbers occurs when comparing urban, suburban and rural counties
• If you left out the McCain states that were members of the Confederacy, McCain’s states had extremely low murder and violent crime rates.

Let’s look a little further.

Of Trash And Accent:  The states that became the Confederacy were most notably marked by the presence of slavery – and African-America still suffers from some of the aftereffects of slavery and post-slavery discrimination – but there was more to it than that.

The Old South brought with it some of the worst features of the post-feudal European society that it sprang from – including a fairly rigid class structure.  At the top were the aristocratic, largely British plantationers.  At the bottom, of course, were the slaves

Not far up from the slaves were the masses of what in Europe would have been called peasants; white, largely Scots-Irish people, mostly poor, many of whom came to the US under indentured conditions not much better than slavery.  They lived, until well after the Civil War, under a caste system that didn’t stress upward mobility, or any of the things – education, civil behavior and the like – that led to it.  That, combined with the Scots-Irish heritage of a level of tolerance for violence far above and beyond that of most European transplants, with honor killings, duels, violent family feuds and other shenanigans a part of the background until fairly recently, helped lead to an ambient level of violence far higher than the rest of what became the US, even before there was a US.

You want it spelled out in more detail?  See a sociologist specializing in southern Scots-Irish culture.

What it boils doen to is that even today, in the states that made up the Confederacy (I included the former “Border States” of Missouri, Kentucky, West Virginia and Maryland, by the way – they weren’t in the Confederacy, but they kept slaves and had plantation systems, which is what led to the sociological pathologies in the first place), the roughly 113 million residents have an overall murder rate of 5.8 per 100,000.  By themselves, the states of the old Confederacy alone had a murder rate of 6.1/100/000.

The Math:  So let’s leave the population, and murder rate, of the Old South out of the picture.  With their population and murders dropped out of the population, but still including the population and murders of every city outside the Old South, all of the Detroits and Newarks and Oaklands, the US’s murder rate drops to 2.99 per 100,000.  That’s a drop of a little over a quarter.

It’s a murder rate comparable with that in Taiwan, or Nepal.

So what happens when we leave America’s two greatest concentrations of violent pathology out of the nation’s murder rate?

We’ll talk about that tomorrow.

• Last Friday: Intro
• Yesterday:  The effect urban crime has on America’s murder rate.
• Today:  The murder rate in the Deep South.
• Tomorrow:  We’ll see what the US’ murder rate would be without its biggest social pathologies..

(more…)

The “gun safety” movement’s latest bright idea is “No Fly, No Buy”; people on one of the various government no-fly/terrorist watch lists would be disqualified from buying guns.

Second Amendment human rights activists oppose the idea, to the deep confusion of anti-gunners, who just don’t understand why it’s a bad idea.

The answer?  It’s a bad idea because government can’t be trusted with lists of people built without due process.  Ever!

I’ve added emphasis:

The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.
Police Superintendent Terrence B. Sheridan revealed at a legislative hearing that the surveillance operation, which targeted opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war, was far more extensive than was known when its existence was disclosed in July.

You gotta break eggs to make an omelet.