{"id":29066,"date":"2012-07-20T12:09:28","date_gmt":"2012-07-20T17:09:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=29066"},"modified":"2012-07-20T13:57:57","modified_gmt":"2012-07-20T18:57:57","slug":"observations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=29066","title":{"rendered":"Observations"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For starters &#8211; my thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends of the victims of last night&#8217;s outbreak of senseless, cowardly violence.<\/p>\n<p>Not that I have a lot to offer in re this story, but here are some observations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>As many people died in that theatre as died in the previous week and half in &#8220;gun-free&#8221; Chicago. And the week and half\u00a0before that. \u00a0And the week and half\u00a0before that. \u00a0So far this year, they&#8217;ve been almost 300 firearms homicides in Chicago, and many many hundreds maimed. \u00a0And there is no end in sight.<\/li>\n<li>I say that for the benefit of the <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/piersmorgan\/status\/226272175596904448\">liberal orcs who are already coming out of the woodwork demanding big changes<\/a> to American gun laws.<\/li>\n<li>Notwithstanding the occasional headline-grabbing spree killing, violent crime <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtontimes.com\/news\/2012\/jun\/18\/gun-ownership-up-crime-down\/\">has been dropping steadily in the US<\/a>, even as (or, I believe, because) the number of Americans owning guns has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=28586\">skyrocketed <\/a>in the past decade. \u00a043 states have either shall-issue permitting laws &#8211; which have been shown, all other things being equal, <a href=\"http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Technology\/WhosCounting\/story?id=98678&amp;page=1#.UAmIQ7RfHmN\">to reduce violent crime <\/a>&#8211; and about half the states have some variety of &#8220;Stand your Ground&#8221; laws, all of them successful outside the media&#8217;s rarified sampling of high-profile politicized cases (like the Zimmerman case). \u00a0No state has even considered repeating a shall-issue law in the nearly thirty years that the laws have been on the ascendant.<\/li>\n<li>One of the arguments is &#8220;what if someone with a carry permit brought their piece to the theatre?&#8221; \u00a0On the one hand, liberals &#8211; expressing the deep intellectual rigor for which the liberal anti-gun argument is so famous &#8211; respond &#8220;Oh, yeah, just what they needed &#8211; a bunch of wannabe Dirty Harries&#8221;. To which the conservatives respond &#8220;Yeah, good thing nobody in the theatre fought back. It might have gotten <em>dangerous<\/em>!<em>&#8220;<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So pray first for the victims, their families and friends, the doctors who are treating them, and the people of Aurora.<\/p>\n<p>And then, when all that&#8217;s done, pray for the liberal hamsters who come out calling for more moronic gun control laws.<\/p>\n<p>Pray they get God&#8217;s mercy, because rhetorically speaking, I will show them none.<\/p>\n<p>UPDATES: \u00a0I am at the moment thankful that both <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mediaite.com\/tv\/president-obama-addresses-tragic-aurora-movie-theater-shooting\/\">b the President <\/a>\u00a0and even the folks at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/Mediamatters\/posts\/10150924234936167\">iMedia Matters<\/a>\u00a0seem to be taking the high road so far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For starters &#8211; my thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends of the victims of last night&#8217;s outbreak of senseless, cowardly violence. Not that I have a lot to offer in re this story, but here are some observations: As many people died in that theatre as died in the previous week [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gun-free-zones","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29066"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29066\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29069,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29066\/revisions\/29069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}