Tag: gun control

Race and guns: part 1

David Cole of the New York Times argues that young urban blacks pay the cost for the right to bear arms:

Gun rights defenders argue that gun laws don’t reduce violence, noting
that many cities with high gun violence already have strict gun laws.
But this ignores the ease with which urban residents can evade local
laws by obtaining guns from dealers outside their cities or states.
Effective gun regulation requires a nationally coordinated response. 
A cynic might propose resurrecting the Black Panthers to heighten white
anxiety as the swiftest route to breaking the logjam on gun reform. I
hope we are better than that. If the nation were to view the everyday
tragedies that befall young black and Latino men in the inner cities
with the same sympathy that it has shown for the Newtown victims, there
would be a groundswell of support not just for gun law reform, but for
much broader measures. 
If we are to reduce the inequitable costs of gun rights, it’s not enough
to tighten licensing requirements, expand background checks to private
gun sales or ban assault weapons. In addition to such national measures,
meaningful reform must include initiatives directed to where gun
violence is worst: the inner cities. Aggressive interventions by police
and social workers focused on gang gun violence, coupled with economic
investment, better schools and more after-school and job training
programs, are all necessary if we are to reduce the violence that gun
rights entail. 
To tweak the National Rifle Association’s refrain, “guns don’t kill
people; indifference to poverty kills people.” We can’t in good
conscience keep making young black men pay the cost of our right to bear
arms. 
However, Cole assumes a causation that simply is not supported by the facts at hand.  Below is a chart I prepared based on the state-by-state offense rates, per 100k population, comparing black homicide to non-black homicide.  The source was the commenter Silver’s comment on a recent Steve Sailer post, derived from a 2009 FBI report.  The average state homicide rate is 17.3 per 100k for the black population and 2.5 per 100k for the non-black population.

As Silver notes, the FBI information cannot be used to directly compare black and white homicide rates, since the non-black rate combines the white, Hispanic, Asian, and American Indian rates.  I will attempt to sort out some of those rates in the next post on this subject, but even a casual glance will suffice to show that the states with the highest non-black homicide rates, the District of Columbia (9.1), Nevada (5.2), Arizona (4.4), and California (4.3) tends to coincide with higher levels of Hispanic population.

If Cole’s thesis was correct, we would have to find that gun ownership and poverty are vastly higher among the black population than among the other U.S. populations.  But this is clearly not the case with regards to gun ownership, since 44% of whites own guns compared to 27% of blacks, and the Hispanic poverty rate is 26.6%, nearly equal to the black poverty rate of 27.4%.  Therefore, we can not only refute his argument that gun rights entail violence by comparing international crime statistics, but also conclusively show that his “necessary” recommendations for reducing violence are unrelated to the causal problem at hand, and as a result, extremely unlikely to reduce it in any substantive manner.

Unintended consequences

Ex-burglars see public disclosure problems:

“That was the most asinine article I’ve ever seen,” said Walter T. Shaw,
65, a former burglar and jewel thief who the FBI blames for more than
3,000 break-ins that netted some $70 million in the 1960s and 1970s.
“Having a list of who has a gun is like gold – why rob that house when
you can hit the one next door, where there are no guns?

I think there could potentially be some positive effects from the  Journal-News’s identification of legal local gun owners.  A few home invasions taking place in homes known to be gunless should suffice to make the point concerning the importance of gun ownership in modern society.

More questions at Sandy Hook

Lanza didn’t even have an assault rifle:

After two weeks of media reports that a .223 AR-15
Bushmaster was found in the trunk of Lanza’s car, gun aficionados point
out that the rifle is not a Bushmaster, nor even an AR-class assault
weapon. Gun experts say that the weapon shown in an NBC News report is some kind of shotgun. 
Another interesting aspect of the news report pointed out by law
enforcement commenters is that the officer seems to be completely
mishandling evidence, possibly destroying valuable fingerprints and
other clues. Law enforcement commenters have indicated that proper
procedure might call for the trunk being sealed with evidence tape and
the entire car transported to a main crime lab for examination and
evidence gathering, such as dusting for prints.
This follows a bewildering change of story from the authorities as to what weapons were actually used in the shooting.
At
this point, I think it is perfectly reasonable to question if Lanza had
anything to do with the shootings beyond being one of the victims of
the real shooters.  But what about those grief-stricken parents? 
And why is the media still going on about assault rifles when they have
nothing to do with what supposedly happened at Sandy Hook?

I
was entirely willing to reserve judgment, but the inexplicable
anomalies are rapidly piling up again.  The pattern is readily apparent
and given the facts at hand, Occam’s Razor increasingly suggests a false
flag.  I don’t understand why anyone finds it hard to believe there are
elements in the US government who don’t hesitate to murder US citizens,
given that the Obama administration openly asserts its legal right to kill citizens at will without due process.

Let’s engage in a little outlandish legal conjecture and assume that the shootings were real.  What, one wonders, would have prevented the administration from legally placing the
children of Sandy Hook elementary school on its secret kill list and then ordering their assassination?

Perceptive to a point

Sam Harris writes what is a surprisingly good article on guns and gun control, at least for the first three-quarters of the article:

Coverage of the Newtown tragedy and its aftermath has been generally
abysmal. In fact, I have never seen the “liberal media” conform to
right-wing caricatures of itself with such alacrity. I have read
articles in which literally everything said about firearms and
ballistics has been wrong. I have heard major newscasters mispronounce
the names of every weapon and weapons manufacturer more challenging than
“Colt.” I can only imagine the mirth it has brought gun-rights zealots
to see “automatic” and “semi-automatic” routinely confused, or to hear a
major news anchor ominously declare that the shooter had been armed
with a “Sig Sauzer” pistol. This has been more than embarrassing. It has
offered a thousand points of proof that “liberal elites” don’t know
anything about what matters when bullets start flying….

Most liberals responded derisively to the NRA’s suggestion that having
armed and vetted men and women in our schools could save lives.  Some
pointed to a public-service announcement put out by the city of Houston
(funded by the Department of Homeland Security), in which the
possibility of having guns on the scene was never discussed. Several
commentators held up this training video in support of the creed “More
guns are not the answer.” Please take a few minutes to watch this footage. Then try to imagine how a few armed civilians could respond during an attack of this kind. To help your imagination along, watch this short video,
in which a motel clerk carrying a concealed weapon shoots an armed
robber. The situation isn’t perfectly analogous—the wisdom of using
deadly force in what might be only a robbery is at least debatable. But
is it really so difficult to believe that the shooter might have been
helpful during an incident of the sort depicted in Houston?

Unfortunately, after that very good start, he then hits the home stretch and goes badly awry with regards to the Second Amendment:

One of the greatest impediments to actually solving the riddle of guns
in our society is the pious concern that many people have about the
intent of the Second Amendment. It should hardly need to be said that
despite its brilliance and utility, the Constitution of the United
States was written by men who could not possibly have foreseen every
change that would occur in American society in the ensuing centuries.
Even if the Second Amendment guaranteed everyone the right to possess
whatever weapon he or she desired (it doesn’t), we have since invented
weapons that no civilian should be allowed to own. In fact, it can be
easily argued that original intent of the Second Amendment had nothing
to do with the right of self-defense—which remains the ethical case to
be made for owning a firearm. The amendment seems to have been written
to allow the states to check the power of the federal government by
maintaining their militias. Given the changes that have occurred in our
military, and even in our politics, the idea that a few pistols and an
AR 15 in every home constitutes a necessary bulwark against
totalitarianism is fairly ridiculous. If you believe that the armed
forces of the United States might one day come for you—and you think
your cache of small arms will suffice to defend you if they do—I’ve got a
black helicopter to sell you.

It never ceases to astonish me that a document written by a group of individuals who successfully engaged in an armed rebellion against their own government is so often interpreted to mean literally everything but what it quite clearly means. Harris reveals his customary ignorance of history here; I would recommend that he consider more closely the complete inability of the US military to confiscate the weaponry of the Afghan people and its relative vulnerability in the USA compared to its bases in Afghanistan.

I’d also recommend that he think hard about the obvious lesson of Oslo.  The hundreds of thousands of caches of small arms throughout America will not suffice to defend any one individual from the armed forces of the United States, but then, what is defending the armed forces of the United States from millions of armed individuals?

More fun with Twitter

This exchange resulted from my tweet in response to Piers Morgan’s statement concerning his view of the constitutionality of Congressional arms bans.

voxday: Yes, Piers, wanting America to ban assault weapons & high-capacity magazines is ‘anti-constitutional’. #GunControlNow #AdiosPiersMorgan

DonaldJChump: So is trying to punish somebody who is using his/her right to free speech, more so even #hypocrisy

voxday: He’s not an American. He’s British. He has no right to free speech or any other freedom guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

DonaldJChump: So free speech is a right reserved only for Americans? And we wonder why the rest of the world us as ignorant

voxday: Do you believe Piers Morgan has the right to vote, bear arms, or run for the Senate? Do you think the UK has free speech?

DonaldJChump: Rights are imaginary, as the internment camps & that petition prove. Cause of Americans like you they are privileges & nothing more

voxday: If rights are imaginary, then why are you appealing to them? Your argument is totally incoherent.

DonaldJChump: more incoherent than the petition. It’s fighting for a right while while taking another one, showing that rights aren’t rights

voxday: You’re still missing the point. The British don’t have US Constitution-guaranteed rights. Neither do the Chinese.

Five lessons of the Newton shootings

Glenn Reynolds lays them out in USA Today.  The first one is particularly important.

1. When Twenty Minutes Is Forever.

According to the CNN timeline for
the Sandy Hook tragedy, “Police and other first responders arrived on
scene about 20 minutes after the first calls.” Twenty minutes. Five
minutes is forever when violence is underway, but 20 minutes — a third
of an hour — means that the “first responders” aren’t likely to do much
more than clean up the mess. 

When seconds count, the police are minutes away.  Lots of minutes away.  That’s the primary lesson one should take away from the Newtown massacre.  Self-defense is no different than nearly everything else, if you want it done right – or at all – then you have to do it yourself.

This is #GunControlNow

If you’re not already following me on Twitter, this extremely illuminating discussion of gun control is the sort of thing you are missing.  Gun control advocates, note that this is what often passes for your ‘reason’ and ‘common sense’. Colleen aka @mushadamama is a perfect example of the dialectically challenged individual Aristotle described as being incapable of following a chain of reasoning and therefore ineducable by reason.  As you will see, it is literally impossible to reason with them.

Note that I did not expect to convince the woman that she was wrong.  Telling a stupid person precisely how stupid they are is seldom a successful rhetorical device. But I wanted to see how far she would go before retreating into her rhetorical tortoise shell.  As it happens, she was willing to not only defy reason, but deny math itself, rather than even consider the possibility – or in this case, the undisputed statistical and mathematical reality – that her position on #GunControlNow was wrong.

voxday: Those who reject their own God-given and unalienable right to bear arms reject their own status as adult human beings.

fmudd101: I know right! Those child-like Europeans and Japanese with their low gun crime and murder rates.

voxday: Europeans have higher rates of gun ownership and much lower rates of gun crime and murder than African and Latin countries.

mushadamama: You can not compare their gun laws to ours. They are MUCH more restrictive. Wikipedia link.

voxday: The gun laws in Brazil and South Africa are even more restrictive. Yet they have far more gun deaths per capita.

mushadamama: Is that where you want to be? US is not first, so it’s ok? Link to murders with firearms by country.

voxday: Don’t be stupid. You can’t compare absolute numbers between nations of vastly different sizes. Look at per capita.

voxday: Also, the nations ahead of the USA HAVE STRICTER GUN CONTROL LAWS. The problem is racial, as I’ve already shown. 

mushadamama: The numbers I’ve given ARE per 100k population. Perhaps the stupid one is one who doesn’t read fine print.

mushadamama: Stricter gun control=less gun crimes. #fact

mushadamama: You’ve shown nothing. 

voxday: No, you stupid, stupid woman, they are not. The USA is #4 in absolute terms, #27 per capita.  Link to gun homicides and gun ownership by country.

voxday: That’s not a fact, you stupid, stupid woman. That is absolutely and provably false. 

voxday: You’re either lying or stupid, Colleen. White US rate=0.32/100k. Black US rate=12.5/100k. Link to US firearms homicide rate by race.

mushadamama: Yes, my chart is total gun murders @ 9369. Does not count accidents or suicides. US ranks 4th! My crime rate chart was per 100k.

mushadamama: Your chart, however, uses some kind of fuzzy math to come up with that
ridiculous #. I can only assume it is more of a probability.

mushadamama: Of which, I am not interested. We’re not playing lotto. People are dying. Your comments on race, I’ve tried to ignore…

mushadamama: Are we supposed to be relieved or delighted to know more black people are killed by guns than white people? I don’t understand.

voxday: NO! The math is 9,369 gun murders divided by 310 million pop, multiplied by 100,000. That is the correct per capita number.

voxday: You are supposed to understand legal guns are not the problem. So banning them, as they are banned elsewhere, WILL NOT WORK!

mushadamama: You’re a fool. If manipulating numbers makes you feel better, fine. But, it’s not the truth.

mushadamama: We are not going away this time. Those babies did not die for nothing. We’re going to stay loud until something changes.

voxday: Excellent. The more you talk, the less credible your position is. Everyone should read this exchange. #GunControlNow