Lie First, Lie Always: Non-Sequitur Violence

My theory:  the Democrats, and left-leaning groups in general, are turning their focus to making big, broad, platitudinous statements designed to sound good to people who don’t really think about issues all that hard.

Last week was a case in point; the Strib was pimping a piece purporting to show the costs of “gun violence”, as well as some proposed “solutions”.

The piece – an “analytical report” by Americans for Responsible Solutions, which is the Gabby Giffords checkbook advocacy group – claims to run down the costs of “gun violence”.

And it starts off with a local example:

One recent tragedy at a small law firm in the Cathedral Hill area of St. Paul illustrates this all too well. On April 7, 2016, a disgruntled former client, Ryan David Petersen, entered the offices of North Star Criminal Defense, located on the second floor of the historic Dacotah Building, intending to kill either Dan Adkins, one of the firm’s managing partners, or Chase Passauer, the firm’s office manager. Petersen arrived at the office before Dan did and directed his focus on Chase—shooting him eight times with a .40 caliber handgun. The 23-year-old died in his office chair.3 Chase, a recent graduate of the University of Minnesota, had wanted to become a lawyer to help others before his life was cut short by…

Let’s stop right there.

Who killed Chase Passauer?  Was Ryan Peterson:

  1. A pedestrian who found a loaded gun unattended on the street, and stopped into the law office to seek help?
  2. A Quaker missionary who found himself drawn to a gun at Cabela’s and, hypnotized by its dangerous allure, decided he just had to kill someone?
  3. A DFL activist practicing for the post-Trump revolution?

We’ll come back to that.

Wait!  You Ignored Change Under Bus Seats!:  The report goes into some depth on the costs of single incidents of “gun violence” – noting that the medical costs of even a single episode of “gun violence” are astronomical; the average cost of a fatal shooting is over $40K; of non-fatal shootings, over $60,000.

Well, yeah – the cost of healthcare is pretty high for everyone.   It’s been in all the papers.

It also notes that the cost of investigating the crimes, trying to cases, and incarcerating offenders is way, way up there:

According to estimates by PIRE, the average cost of a police  investigation and related criminal justice expenses for a  fatal shooting is $439,217.13 Criminal justice expenses include salaries and benefits for public officials such as judges, prosecutors, and public defenders, as well as the cost of incarceration, which in a federal facility averages more than $30,000 per year for each inmate.14 Minnesota taxpayers  spend approximately $45,688 per year incarcerating each inmate in state prisons

Yep.  Lawyers, judges and prisons don’t come cheap.

So the alternative is…what?

Does harassing the law-abiding gun owner in any way address this?  Other than creating more felons?

The report also goes through costs to employers – like Mr. Passauer’s – as well as, incredibly, lost wages.  Not only those of the victim…:

According to data derived from the PIRE cost of injury model, the average value of lost work for a single fatal shooting is $1,742,722, while for a nonfatal shooting requiring hospitalization, the figure is $81,559.
When a gunshot victim…

…but also the perp:

…or incarcerated perpetrator is an income earner for his or her family—especially the primary breadwinner—the impact of lost wages on the family can be severe.

Ah.  Clearly the answer is to not send murderers to jail.

Well, no.  That’s not what the report suggests.

Where Have We Seen This?:  The report does suggest “solutions”.

Any guesses?

The Economic Cost of Gun Violence in Minnesota identifies three sets of solutions, each addressing a specific risk factor:  universal background checks for gun sales, neighborhood revitalization programs, and hospital-based violence intervention strategies. The investment required to implement these lifesaving solutions is minuscule compared to the yearly cost of gun violence in our state.

“Hospital based violence intervention strategies” – trying to talk victims and perpetrators out of lives of violence – might be less stupid.  As the report rather un-PC-ly notes:

 “Interpersonal shootings disproportionately involve young men of color living in underserved neighborhoods, so any effective violence intervention strategy must focus attention on this at-risk population.

…where “underserved neighborhoods” is PC code for “crime-ridden cesspool in a city ruined by decades of Democrat rule”, dealing with those actually involved in the vast majority of criminal shootings might actually make sense.

On the other hand, we’ve been trying “neighborhood revitalization” for decades.  It turns out that prosperity – organic, market prosperity, not government subsidy – and law and order, and lots of both, is the only real neighborhood revitalization program that works – and that doesn’t happen in inner cities run by Democrats.

Ever.

Of course, that could happen.

But as to “universal background checks?”

I’d love to ask the people who wrote this report:  “So tell me how the people who are committing the vast majority of the crime today – who overwhelmingly use guns that are stolen, purchased by straw buyers, or, in the world of gangs, often shared among gang members in multiple crimes – who aren’t currently getting background checks, are supposed to start getting them?

Which takes us back to Chase Passauer.

A Minor Technicality:  In re the murder of Mr. Passauer, the report notes that Ryan Peterson was, in fact…

a convicted felon who was legally  prohibited from possessing a gun.

Who would not have taken a background check.

Whether his neighborhood was revitalized, and whether a social worker talked with him at a hospital, or not.

11 thoughts on “Lie First, Lie Always: Non-Sequitur Violence

  1. How many hours have been spent, and how much money has been wasted, by “Moms Demand Action” and the other gun control astroturf groups?
    How much better off would the nation be if those people spent their time feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, etc.?
    There ought to be a law.

  2. I wonder if the people that donated the hundreds of millions that Hillary promptly flushed down the toilet will get a clue about the completely inept gun grabbing campaign.

    I mean, they haven’t come up with a new angle, and it’s obvious the current papspew isn’t working.

    I guess having reprobates waste their money isn’t such a bad thing, and if this is the best they’ve got, we have no worries in the absence of a moonbat in the White House.

  3. I always like when they fret: “the cost of the police, other emergency personnel and crime scene investigators for the crime was “X” (where “X” equals some ridiculous 6 or 7 figure amount of money). As if these people work on a contracted services basis and aren’t otherwise being paid whether they are investigating this crime, another crime or my favorite – the ‘cold’ case. Related is when people claim the cost of trying someone will cost the courts “X”. I can only imagine these are people who – lucky for them – haven’t spent much time in a court house.

  4. I smell desperation, they are down to arguing about the economic impact of gun violence. They have literally lost every other battle and this is their Custers Last Stand.

  5. They are pulling tortured numbers to fit their narrative. It does not make sense, nor is it supposed to. It is political brainwashing and opiate for the proletariat. Nothing else, nothing more.

  6. It could be desperation, or it could be simply because they’ve learned that, within their favored circles, they can fling poo against the wall without anyone noting that it’s not sticking. The question, then, is whether enough voters are in that room to make the whole deal work.

    Failure of the government schools seems to be a critical part of the calculation, too. Obvious implications are ignored, etc.. Start teaching logic, watch the left go away?

    One can dream at least. :^)

  7. Background checks are so unfair to 104-year-old African American nuns who were born in poor southern counties that didn’t record births of anyone who wasn’t white and middle class or above. You need ID for a background check, among other things.

  8. Failure of the government schools

    An aside and an example: My son in taking chemistry. He can recite Avogadro’s number to the 9th digit and knows how to use it. But he was never taught it IS an Avogadro’s number! There is no teaching of history in anything!

  9. Of course they don’t teach about Avogadro, he’s a dead white male. He only gets credit in the books because he stole the idea from his housekeeper, a left-handed Black Muslim lesbian, who discovered the science but was ruthlessly oppressed for it. The infuriating part is they still use his name when it ought to be changed to Zir’s Number.

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