Michael R. Weisser's Blog, page 11
August 19, 2019
Active Shooter Drills Don’t Belong In Schools.
There’s a
guy out in Davis, CA named Bryan Malte, who runs an organization
called the Hope and Heal Fund. Bryan has
been in and around the gun-control movement for almost 30 years, and after a
long stint with Brady, he and his wife moved back to California where he runs
this important effort to help reduce gun violence in California, although what
he does obviously has application just about everywhere else.
Last week
Bryan published a very significant column on his website and on Medium about
active shooting drills in schools. Since you already have a link to his
website, here’s a link to the Medium piece as well. You might want to read his
column on the Medium website, because if it gets enough traffic then it might
become a featured piece which would get even more people to read what Bryan has
to say.
What he
has to say is that a whole industry has now grown up around the idea of ‘hardening’
our schools to protect the teachers and children from someone entering the
building with the intention of shooting the whole place up. The active shooting
industry’s target customer base goes far beyond education – hospitals,
workplaces – anywhere that might attract some jerk with a gun will sooner or
later get solicited by a salesperson selling them a program to help them get
prepared. Or as one of the leading companies
calls it, moving the customer from a ‘passive to proactive response.’
This is
all pure, unadulterated crap and like the gun industry itself, what is being
promoted is a response to fear. Bryan hits this one right out of the park when
he notes that not only are schools about the safest places for kids and adults,
but the active-shooter drills are themselves likely to cause fear. How do you
think a bunch of schoolchildren are going to react when they witness a staged
shooting “replete with
fake blood and student-actors’ ‘bodies’ on the hallway floors?”
Were it
the case that merchandising the fear of schoolchildren was only being done by a
cadre of fast-buck private outfits I wouldn’t be so concerned. After all, since
when has American ingenuity not found a way to make money off of fear? I don’t know if he’s still peddling freeze-dried
food for your backyard bunker, but Glenn Beck has been touting moving your
savings into gold and silver for at least the last ten years.
On the
other hand, when the huckstering is done by the one professional group whom he would
like to believe only gives us advice on what we really need, then something is seriously
wrong. I am referring to a program
called ‘Stop the Bleed,’ run by the American College of Surgeons with a shopping
cart on their website where you can purchase anything from a Personal Bleeding Control
Kit for $69, up to a wall-mounted Bleeding Control Station for $800, the latter
product can probably be attached to the hooks which used to hold the fire
extinguisher in the hall.
Along with
the medical supplies a school district can also opt for training, which gives
kids an opportunity to develop the same traumatic fears that might occur after
they get done with the active shooting drill.
Come to think of it, why not give the kids a dose of both? In the morning they can learn how to stand on
a toilet seat so that the shooter won’t know if anyone’s in the john; after
lunch they can see some pictures of how a person might bleed out unless they
wrap a bandage around the injured arm.
In 2018,
the American College of Surgeons donated $841,780
to Congressional candidates, with members of the GOP getting almost 60%
of the total. So far for the 2020 election, the GOP candidates are again
slightly ahead. Every, single one of these GOP recipients shamelessly
votes the NRA line. And these surgeons want us to believe that selling
their crummy, little medical kits to schoolkids will make a difference when
someone walks into the classroom with an AR15?
August 15, 2019
Sorry, But The AR-15 Isn’t Just Another ‘Sporting’ Gun.
Back in 2016 the Massachusetts Attorney General, Maura Healey, issued an order which effectively made the Bay State assault-rifle rein. Not only did her ukase extend the state’s continued adherence to the extension of the Clinton assault-rifle ban, but it expressly prohibited the sale of assault-style guns which were jimmied around one way or another to circumvent the Clinton ban.
The problem with the Clinton approach (which was
actually copied from an earlier assault-rifle ban enacted in California) was that
the definition of an ‘assault rifle’ was based largely on whether the gun had
certain design features (folding stock, flash-hider, hand grip, etc.) which
made it look like a military gun, but didn’t really make the gun any
more lethal than many other semi-automatic guns. Which made it both easy and
plausible foe Gun-nut Nation to attack the ban since, according to those savants,
law-abiding gun owners would be deprived of owning what was just another
‘sporting’ gun.
I happen to own a bunch of assault rifles, an AR,
an AK and a couple of Mini-14s, and they are all fun to shoot. Set up
some tin cans (or better yet some pumpkins) at the range, go prancing around
blasting away a la Colion Noir and have a good time. But whenever I refer to
these guns as ‘adult toys,’ which is what they are, I get all kinds of angry
responses from my gun-nut friends who tell me in no uncertain terms that I’ve
become a Judas Goat because I don’t understand that Americans need these guns
to guarantee their sacred right to self-defense.
Last week I received my annual dues notice from the
local gun group which asked me to make an additional donation so that they can
petition the Supreme Court to “take up our challenge of AG Maura
Healey’s 2016 gun ban.” And why do they want to challenge the ban? Because
according to them, “self-defense is a human right.” By the way,
Maura’s ban was upheld
by the First Circuit and I can’t imagine that in the current climate the SCOTUS
would even consider hearing the case.
The problem for Gun-nut Nation in fighting against an
assault-weapon ban is that they are trying to have it both ways. On the one
hand, they argue that since the AR is a semi-auto gun it is no different
from any other semi-auto ‘sporting’ gun, which would make a ban on such a
product clearly a violation of 2nd-Amendment ‘rights.’ On the other
hand, they have also been promoting these guns as necessary for self-defense, and
like the gun-nut brigade in Massachusetts claims, self-defense is a human
right.
Both arguments happen to be total and complete crap.
The AR is designed to do one thing and one thing only, which is to
deliver massive amounts of man-killing ordnance in a brief period of time. And
even with my cold, not-yet-dead hands (to paraphrase Charlton Heston), I can
get off 30 rounds with my AR is 15 seconds or less. As for self-defense,
the idea that I need to protect myself with 30 rounds of military-grade ammo
when that ‘street thug’ breaks down my back door is, if anything, an invitation
to commit more harm than good. The round from an AR is lethal out to 500
yards or more; a shotgun blast travels 40 or 50 yards. Which gun would be safer
to use if my house is located across the street from someone else?
I understand why my gun-nut friends view the attempt to ban assault rifles with a mixture of fear and alarm. I don’t disagree with the idea that once you ban this kind of gun, it’s easier to ban another type of gun next time around. But sooner or later we must confront the fact that some guns are simply too lethal to be in anyone’s hands, law-abiding hands or not. And anyone who thinks that an AR-15 is no different from the 22-caliber Sears Roebuck shooter that used to go under the Christmas tree, doesn’t know anything about guns.
August 14, 2019
We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ 2nd Amendment.
I bought my first, real gun in 1956 from some swamp rat
at a tag show in the Florida Glades. From then until 2008, when my friend Tony
Scalia told me I had a Constitutional ‘right’ to own a gun, as long as it was a
handgun and I kept it in my home, I probably bought and sold at least 500 guns.
At an average of 10 guns a year, for a gun nut that’s no big deal.
One of those guns was a Colt Single Action Army
manufactured in 1886. Another was a beautiful, pristine Colt 1911 built in
1919. There was also a Walther P5 that I bought from a Lufthansa crew member one night when we were all
sitting around drinking in some Hofbrau Haus on East 86th Street in
New York. At some point, I think I traded those guns and some others for a
Harley Low Ryder. I then rebuilt my gun stash when I sold the Harley the
following year.
Not one of those transactions had any Constitutional
protection at all. In not one instance when I either bought or sold a gun was I
exercising any kind of Constitutional ‘right.’ Know what? As far as the Feds
were concerned, there wasn’t a single one of those transfers that was against
the law. Well, maybe I wasn’t old enough to buy that beautiful Smith &
Wesson K-38 when I was twelve years old, but you get my point. Americans bought
and sold millions of personally-owned guns, probably hundreds of millions
before the 2008 Heller decision, and nobody cared.
I have been writing about guns and gun violence since
2012, there are now nearly 1,400 columns on my blog, 10 books in print,
profiles in The New Yorker and The (failing) New York Times. I have been
consistent in my argument from first to last, namely, that guns should be owned
for hunting and sport. Anyone who thinks they should be walking around
defending the neighborhood with a gun in his pocket is concocting an argument
that has no basis in reality at all. Unless, of course, he also happens to be
wearing a shield, because that’s what he’s being paid to do.
Every time I say the above in print I receive emails and Facebook posts from my friends in Gun-nut Nation accusing me of being a Bloomberg stooge, a liberal jerk pretending to be a ‘gun guy,’ or worse. When I first started writing I received some threats, but those seem to have stopped appearing since the internet has become somewhat patrolled. I never took the threats seriously, by the way, although our friend Shannon Watts is still obliged to hire protective services when she appears.
The truth is that all this talk about 2nd-Amendment
‘rights’ ramping up again as even Trump says something about supporting
background checks, is nothing more than sturm und drang nonsense that has
nothing to do with guns or gun ownership at all. The government is never (read:
never) going to ‘take away’ everyone’s guns; the slide into Fascism that was
accompanied by a restrictive gun law passed by Hitler isn’t going to happen
here.
Notwithstanding last week’s mass shootings and Trump’s
encouragement of racist (‘send ’em back’) screeds, we happen to live in a
remarkably law-abiding country, something which is often forgotten on both
sides of the debate about guns. Most of the folks fervently supporting more gun
laws happen to live in neighborhoods where gun violence rarely, if ever occurs.
For that matter, all those armed vigilantes who fantasize going around and
protecting their neighborhoods also happen to live in peaceful, quiet zones.
So why is there such a big deal about 2nd-Amendment
‘rights?’ Because that’s how the narrative has been framed over the last ten
years, and most folks find it easy and convenient to repeat what they hear from
someone else without taking the trouble to think it through on their own.
Remember ‘make love not war?’ Now we can say ‘make
noise not war.’
August 13, 2019
When We Talk About Gun Violence, Aren’t We Talking About Crimes?
For all the talk about a new gun law which is sweeping across both sides of the Congressional aisle following the mass shootings of last week, there seems to be one response to the problem of gun violence which somehow never gets said. And this response would take into account the fact that more than 75% of all gun injuries happen to be crimes. That’s right – crimes.
Here are
the numbers from 2017, rounded off a bit: Unintentional injuries – 15,000;
suicides – 21,000; homicides and aggravated assaults – 90,000. Oops, that’s
only 72% but it’s close enough.
I know all the reasons why so many guns wind up in the ‘wrong hands.’ I also know all the reasons why so many shootings occur in inner-city, what we politely refer to as ‘disadvantaged’ zones. The latter topic may not be as popular for trade books as why America is quickly becoming a Fascist state, but a new book on this subject has a way of appearing every year.
Our most eminent gun researchers, Philip Cook and Jens Ludwig, have begun developing a different approach to this whole problem which my friends in Gun-control Nation should spend some time thinking about instead of always promoting the ‘public health approach.’ According to Cook and Ludwig, the average arrest rate for aggravated assaults in major cities is somewhere around five percent. In other words, if I’m walking down Blackstone Avenue in Chicago and I decide to yank out my Glock and shoot someone else in the head, even if I miss and only hit him in the shoulder, the odds that I’ll get away with the assault are better than nine out of ten.
The good
news for my intended victim is that like most people walking around with a
legal or illegal gun, I don’t practice enough to hit what I’m trying to hit. So
even using a very lethal round like a 9mm or an S&W 40, chances are my
intended target will survive. The better news for me is that when the cops show
up and ask the three or four people who witnessed the assault to give them a
description of what I look like, what they’ll be able to broadcast over the
radio is that they are looking for someone who ‘I didn’t see nuttin’ at all,’ is
the way I’ll probably be described.
Know why
so many street-corner shootings appear to be just random, drive-by events?
Because the nabe knows that if they go to the cops to complain that someone
dissed them or someone assaulted them or someone’s just being a pain, the
chances are better than even that the cops won’t do anything at all. Yea, yea,
I know all about community policing – tell that one to communities of color in
Baltimore or Washington, D.C., where the gun-violence rates in both cities have
lately increased by more than 30 percent!
Let me
make it clear. Believe it or not, I’m very pro-cop. I earn my living doing lethal-force
certifications for local, state and federal law enforcement agencies, and I
appreciate the fact that when police show up at a home that is burning down
they will rush right in to make sure that all the occupants are safely outside,
including the family cat. So the purpose of this column is not (read: not) to
dump on the cops.
On the other hand, I don’t understand why anyone who shoots someone else isn’t charged with attempted murder, since the only reason it was attempted and not completed was because the shooter didn’t shoot straight. Unfortunately, according to Cook and Ludwig, that even when someone actually aims accurately enough to leave a dead body in the street, the arrest rate for capital gun crimes is less than 20 percent.
My
friends who promote the idea of a ‘public health approach’ to gun violence
might take some time to consider the implications of the Cook-Ludwig research.
Somehow I just don’t buy the argument that crimes as serious as gun assaults
should go unpunished because we don’t want to be ‘judgemental’ about life on
inner-city streets.
August 12, 2019
Move Over Obama. There’s A New Gun-Grabber In The White House.
Back in April, 2016 when Trump the Shlump showed up at the NRA show to be anointed as the spear-carrier for America’s gun-nut contingent, I thought (and said) that the boys at the Fairfax home office were making a big mistake. America’s ‘first civil rights organization’ always endorsed the GOP Presidential candidate, but they waited until October to get the word out. By tying the organization to a guy who had never previously run for any political office of any kind, particularly this guy, Wayne-o and his buddies made a deal which bound them to someone over whom they would have no control.
Whatever else you want to say about him, Trump’s a through-and-through
New York guy. Which means that he’s about as connected to guns and gun culture
as the man in the moon. For all his bluster and bull about 2nd-Amendment ‘rights, he’ll say
anything to consolidate his alt-right base. And if it ever suited his political
fancy to throw the NRA leadership under a bus, get out the broom and
start sweeping the street because that’s exactly what happened last week.
Of course the minute bullets started flying around the Wal
Mart in El Paso and then inside a Dayton bar, Trump yanked out the old ‘thoughts
and prayers’ even though he thought the Dayton bar was actually located in
Toledo. Not that his putative challenger, Joe Biden, did any better, because
he got up and told everyone at a San Diego fundraiser how sorry he was about two
mass shootings that occurred in Houston and Michigan.
Meanwhile, by the middle of last week it began to
appear that we may have hit some kind of critical turning-point in the argument
about guns. One of the Fox News anchors, Shepard Smith, delivered an
impassioned commentary
which could have been written for him by Everytown, and by week’s end Trump was
openly promoting the idea of ‘intelligent’ background checks. He also made a
point of saying
that he had talked to both Pelosi and Schumer about going forward with a
background-check bill, those two names being at the top of the most-hated list
for Gun-nut Nation, no questions asked.
Trump may be President but he’s also a 2020
Presidential candidate, and in that respect his support of a background-check
bill makes him probably the 20th candidate to come up with some kind
of gun-control scheme. There’s Booker
with his national ID card, Biden wants a national gun buy-back,
Buttigieg wants an AR ban, Kamala wants dealers to be regulated more
strictly, blah, blah, blah and blah. But the biggest and best plan was just unveiled
by Pocahontas, except it’s not really a plan. It’s a pledge to reduce gun
violence by 80 percent, although she admits she doesn’t have the faintest idea
of how to make this actually work.
All of this Democratic yapping clearly reflects the
degree to which an energized and organized Gun-control Nation may have been an
important factor in turning
a number of red Congressional districts blue in 2018. And if anything, the public
response to California, Texas and Ohio may well presage an even stronger
Democratic result built around gun violence next year.
Except there’s one little problem, a problem named Donald Trump. Because when all is said and done, his quick pivot on gun control and the reaction of Gun-nut Nation to his new-found gun concerns reminds me of what happened when Nixon went to China in 1972. If you were a Congressional Democrat after 1949 and so much as quietly hinted that we couldn’t ignore one-quarter of the world’s population, it was Nixon who stood up and called you a ‘pinko stooge’ or worse. If gun control becomes a political lightning-rod for next year, Trump’s fervent support of gun-nuttery gives him all the protection he needs.
What’s the NRA going to do if Trump signs a background-check bill? Tell their membership to vote for some Socialist who will take away all their guns?
August 8, 2019
When It Comes To A New Gun Law, Here’s How To Get It Done.
Now that the momentum appears to be building for a new federal gun law, my Gun-control Nation friends will no doubt get busy trying to figure out: a) what would be the best law to try and get passed; and b) how to go about getting it passed. The GOP has suddenly begun warming up to the idea of a ‘red flag’ law because such a measure would basically hand the gun-control problem over to the cops, which means that the NRA-toadies on the right side of the aisle can say support ‘common-sense’ gun laws and Blue Lives Matter at the same time.
Last year the Parkland kids spearheaded an event, March For Our Lives, which brought as many as 2 million people to DC and may have been one of the largest, mass protests of all time. Which was exactly the problem with the event, namely, that it was a protest against gun violence rather than a guide to what needed to get done.
Want to know how to figure out what could or might get done? My advice is to heed the experiences and words of a woman who, when a definitive history of gun control finally appears, deserves to be considered as the Susan B. Anthony of the gun-control movement (we’ll make Shannon Watts the Elizabeth Cady Stanton), a.k.a., Donna Dees Thomases, who put together the first, national gun-control event in 2000 known as the Million Mom March.
Donna got going after she saw a news report about a shooting in a Jewish Community Center in California which wounded two adults and three children, although luckily nobody was killed. I want to pause my narrative for a moment and give a big shout-out to two women, Donna Finkelstein and Loren Lieb, whose children were wounded in the attack and who remain active in the local Brady chapter to this day. I just sent a contribution to Brady in their names and I urge you to do the same. Now back to Donna.
Last year following March for our Lives, Donna published a piece in which she uses her own activist experiences of the past two decades to state both some concerns and hopes for what Gun-control Nation might possibly achieve. Her biggest concern, and I share this with her in spades, is that the gun-control movement continues to be splintered into a multiplicity of groups which makes the whole issue of branding difficult to achieve. And in the age of instant media known as the internet, branding is not only essential, but it’s particularly important when you go up against Gun-nut Nation that gathers just about everyone under one brand – the NRA – which has been around for more than 140 years.
Now the fact that the NRA is at the moment having problems keeping its brand from coming apart at the seams shouldn’t lull any gun-control activist into some kind of dream-like fantasy that America’s ‘first civil rights organization’ is about to dry up and go away. The boys in Fairfax will wait until things quiet down, they’ll give Wayne-o and his team a graceful good-bye, and back they’ll come to continue the rhetorical shoot-out over gun ‘rights.’
Donna’s
concern about the plethora of organizational efforts on the gun-control side is
balanced by the fact that between herself, Shannon, Sarah Brady and others,
women have played a leading role in the gun-control fight. And she makes a
point of the fact that one of the strengths of Moms Demand Action is the red
t-shirt which is easily identifiable at public events. Just imagine what it would
look like if a million people showed up for another gun-control rally on the
Mall and everyone was wearing the same shirt (hint, hint.)
Last but
not least, and here I couldn’t agree more with what Donna says, which is that nothing
happens overnight. Advocacy is always a long, difficult and often frustrating
struggle so be forewarned and prepared. On the other hand, who ever said that
important issues like human life don’t deserve a serious fight?
And you can also read an interview I gave yesterday about the attempt to put an assault-weapon ban on the 2020 Florida ballot – another tough, long fight.
August 7, 2019
Do Guns Protect Us From Crime?
Now that the reaction to last week’s mass shootings has
become yet another Twitter battle between Trump and the Democrats, the real
issue behind the gun-control debate has receded into the background but I’ll
try to put it front and center again. The real issue is not whether Americans
should be able to own guns. The real issue is what kinds of guns should they be
able to own.
We suffer more than 125,000 fatal and non-fatal gun injuries
each year because we are the only country with a gun-regulatory system which
allows people to own weapons which were designed to do one thing and one thing
only – kill human beings. You don’t shoot a bird out of a tree with a Glock.
You don’t shoot Bambi with an AR. But
the guy who comes into my gun shop and buys some rusted, old shotgun to shoot a
squirrel that’s eating his tomato plants jumps through the same legal hoops as
the guy who walks in and buys a Glock 19 and a couple of high-capacity mags. And
if he also buys an AR with some 30-round mags, we still do only one, 30-second
background check.
The reason that this absurd regulatory system continues
to be seen as the cornerstone upon which we can somehow create policies that
will reduce gun violence is because a majority of Americans are convinced that
they need to own one of these man-killing guns in order to protect themselves
from something, whatever that something happens to be. Is your home safer with
or without a gun? The public opinion surveys indicate that the most frequent
answer to that question will be ‘yes.’
Another indication of the consensus about the value of
gun ownership has been the growth of concealed-carry licenses, as well as the
number of states which let people walk around with a gun without having to
undergo any licensing procedure at all. There are now 15 states where anyone
who can pass the FBI-NICS background check can walk around with a
concealed gun. As for concealed-carry licenses, or what is usually referred to
as CCW (concealed-carry weapon), the number is now somewhere above 17 million,
and if we assume that there are (for the sake of argument) that there are at
least 20 million gun owners in the ‘Constitutional-carry’ states, this means
that probably somewhere around 40 million Americans can wander the highways and
byways toting a gun.
Our friend John Lott has calculated the per-capita number of CCW
licenses and you can see a list of the 13 states where at least one out of
every 10 adult residents has a license to carry a gun. I have compared the
per-capita number of CCW-holders in those 13 states with the
gun-homicide rate in those same 13 states and the results are here:
[image error]
Note that of the 13 states with the highest per-capita
rate of CCW, seven of them also
have a gun-violence rate which is higher than the national gun-violence rate of
4.46. With the exception of Washington and Iowa, the states with lower
gun-violence than the national average are all Western states whose CCW
numbers obviously reflect a long history and tradition of personal gun
ownership. On the other hand, the high rates of gun violence in states like
Alabama, Indiana, Pennsylvania, etc., all reflect the overwhelming incidence of
gun violence in inner-city zones within those states.
To me, these numbers may indicate that Americans who
consider owning a gun for personal protection may not just be buying into some clever
marketing scheme (read: scam) of the gun industry. Many live in states where
gun violence is more of a daily event than what is covered in the national
media, and the opinions of these folks might be more sensitive to local news reports
that hit closer to home.
Thinking about guns as a response to fear may strike
some as odd but we need to understand those fears if we are really committed to
talking about gun violence with people who own guns.
August 6, 2019
Who Says Guns Can’t Protect Us From Mass Shooters?
There’s a story going around the alt-white/right network
that el Shlump-o is going to propose a national registry of all AR owners that
will be managed by the FBI. I’m hardly surprised that Newsmax and other venues
which push their content to the paranoids amongst us would trot that one out,
but it may also be the work of some clever guy who does marketing for the gun
industry since the events of the past weekend will surely result in a spike of assault
rifle sales.
It’s no secret that whenever the tenant at 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue is a Democrat, gun sales go up, just as when the tenant is
a Republican, gun sales go down. And the reason is very simple, namely, that both
political parties depend on support from groups and individuals who either do,
or do not like guns. In this respect, I have to say that the pro-gun gang is
more honest in their intentions and beliefs, because they make no secret about
the fact that they really do want to hold onto their toys. On the other hand, I
cringe every time that some gun-control proponent starts off by saying that he
or she ‘supports’ the 2nd Amendment because that just happens to be
a load of crap.
Yesterday the Very Rev. Randolph Marshall Hollerith, Dean
of Washington’s National Cathedral, issued a statement in which he asked,
“How long will we tolerate this epidemic of gun violence?” He then
went on to note that he grew up hunting birds and target shooting with family
and friends, so he was addressing his letter to all his fellow gun owners,
since he claims a kinship with them.
The National Cathedral has an active gun-control group.
I am privileged to work with this group and have appeared at one of the public
conferences on gun violence which they hold from time to time. Let me break it
to the Very Rev. Hollerith as gently as I can: The Cathedral has never asked a
bone-fide gun nut to show up and explain why he loves his guns and why he is
opposed to every ‘reasonable’ gun-control measure that the Cathedral leadership
supports.
Yesterday our friend John Lott was informed that his
Twitter account had been closed down because it was decided that an op-ed he
wrote for The New York Daily News somehow violated the guidelines of what
Twitter believes is proper content for their site. Lott’s op-ed was a comment about
a manifesto published by a mass shooter in New Zealand which somehow tied his
anti-Muslim feelings to support for environmentalism – go figure that one out.
Let me say the following as directly and bluntly as I
can, okay? I am opposed to censorship of
any kind. As far as I’m concerned, anyone who censors the writings, statements
or public appearances of anyone else forfeits their right to exist (rhetorically
speaking) in the public space. Frankly, my liberal friends who decry gun
violence on the one hand but applaud attempts to muzzle someone like John Lott on
the other should be ashamed of themselves, no matter what.
Whether we like it or not, people who really believe
that the Democrats, the liberals and the gun-grabbers of all stripes just can’t
wait to take away their guns aren’t just a bunch of paranoid nuts. They are
reacting to real fears, even if those fears are then exploited by the paranoia
hucksters on the alt/white-right. If nothing else, these mass shootings will
make the gun argument more toxic on both sides.
A week after the 2008 election, I walked into a gun
shop in Houston and the place was mobbed. I asked someone why there were so many
people trying to buy guns and he replied in a completely serious tone, “Haven’t
you heard? Armageddon’s coming, we have to be prepared.”
The guy in the Houston gun shop wasn’t buying a gun to go
out and shoot up the town. To the contrary, he really believed that he needed a
gun to protect himself from some nut. Was he so wrong?
August 5, 2019
Mass Shootings Are Now The Norm.
I bought my first assault rifle in 1978 – a Colt
Sporter AR-15 with a ten-round clip. Since I lived near the big army base in
South Carolina, Fort Jackson, I was able to get my hands on plenty of.223 ammo.
So from time to time I would take a sack of ammunition and go down to a sand
pit with the gun to have some fun.
I also owned two lever-action rifles, a Winchester
30-30 and a Marlin in 44 mag. These were
the guns which knocked down deer aplenty, the 30-30 probably bring the most
versatile hunting caliber ever devised.
Anyone who tries to pass off an assault rifle as a hunting
gun has drunk too much kool-aid to have a serious discussion about guns or
anything else. On the other hand, the AR-15 is lots of fun to shoot. And the
reason it’s so much fun is precisely the reason it has now been used in three
mass shooting rampages in just over a week.
The AR loads its ammo magazine from beneath the gun,
which means that no matter how big a magazine or how many rounds it holds, it
won’t get in the way of the shooter looking through the sights and aiming the
gun. Most AR rifles come with a 20-round magazine, 30 round mags are commonly
found, and if you tape two 30-round mags together, you can get off 60 rounds
with an AR in a minute or less. The kid who shot up the Sandy Hook Elementary
School popped off more than 90 rounds in five minutes, most of that time spent
moving from room to room.
Shooting an AR with a hi-cap magazine is like playing
with a shooting video game. Except all of a sudden it’s not a game if the
targets are real people rather than some cartoon figure on a screen.
Of course the minute Trump got done demonstrating once
again his leadership by schlepping out the old ‘thoughts and prayers,’ he then
went back to the other standard narrative about how mass shootings are the work
of the mentally ill. I’m surprised that
the mental health network hasn’t yet made their usual noise about how mentally
ill people shouldn’t be castigated for violent behavior, but that messaging
will no doubt come before the day is out.
As for the physicians who deal with physical, as
opposed to mental health issues, this morning’s CBS broadcast
of their ‘Sunday Morning Show’ brought seven docs together to talk about their
reactions to this weekend’s events, and they all agreed that physicians need to
do a better job figuring out who is capable of committing this kind of carnage
before the event occurs. The fact that the shooters in Texas, Ohio and
California all purchased their guns from licensed dealers was somehow ignored.
What all these mass shooters have in common is that most
of them planned their events in a very deliberate and painstaking way. They
built up their arsenals over time, they practiced at the range, they checked
out various locations and escape routes. All of this behavior was and is very
different from the impulsive and immediate way in which a street guy yanks out
his Glock and goes – bang!.
The point is, that if anything, people who want to
commit mass carnage go out of their way to appear ‘normal’ to other folks
precisely so that they can make their plans in an organized and efficient way.
To deny that such people are not mentally ill is really silly unless you
want to define mental illness as being totally and completely deranged.
I would love physicians to develop some kind of
evaluation profile that would allow them to identify people at risk for committing
mass murder with guns. But in the absence of such research, I simply don’t
understand why the medical community has so much difficulty responding to gun
risk by saying clearly and loudly that the one way to end gun violence is to
get rid of the guns.
You really don’t need more CDC research funding to
figure that one out.
August 2, 2019
8 Ways The Electric Hunting Bike Is Changing The Way We Hunt.
Electric bikes are becoming increasingly popular.
Indeed, 40 million e-bikes are expected to be sold around the world by 2023. Clearly, the demand for powered bikes is growing by the day.
One particular niche market that’s gained traction in recent years is the electric hunting bike.
Hunting has been around since the dawn of time. Each new age has heralded novel technology that has changed the way it’s done. E-bikes are the latest invention to be impacting the way people hunt.
Are you interested in learning exactly how
it’s making a difference? We wanted to help.
Keep reading to discover 8 ways electric
hunting bikes are changing the way we hunt.
1. Go Further, Quicker
The best hunting spots are usually far out of
the way.
They’re a long distance off the beaten track,
away from civilization and in amongst the bush.
Getting to these locations is rarely
straight-forward! It can be a tough slog on two feet, hauling all your food and
gear with you. Many hunters choose an ATV to navigate the terrain and get into
position quicker.
Of course, that comes with its own set of
challenges. For one thing, they’re noisy- an obvious disadvantage when you’re
after stealth.
Taking an electric bike mitigates all of these
problems. Hunters can travel significant distances with minimal effort and time
elapsed in the process.
2. Easier Access to Harder to Reach Places
We just mentioned how hunting spots tend to be
off the beaten track.
They can also require navigating challenging
terrain.
Thick scrub, significant hills, and muddy
paths make life hard for the average bipedal hunter. Sometimes you don’t have
to walk a long way to have a tough slog on your hands.
Using an electric hunting bike helps make life
a breeze. Get to the top of hills without a problem. Get off the track without
issue. Get through muddy sections with ease.
Suddenly, the opportunity to novel exploration
into harder areas becomes possible. Hunters can get in amongst the rough to
scout out the territory.
3. Spend More Time Hunting
What happens when you get into place quicker
and more easily?
There’s more time to hunt.
Hunters have more time on their hands. it
means less time and effort spent getting into position. Tasks like checking for
scrapes and rubs can be performed in a fraction of the time.
Tracks that take 2 hours to take by foot can
be covered in half the time (or less). That means far longer proportions of the
day can be spent on the hunt itself.
Get your positioning wrong and need to move
on? No problem. Hop back on the bike and find a new spot. Life is far easier
with a set of thick, powered wheels to call upon.
4. Carry More Gear
Strength is often a limiting factor.
There’s a host of gear the average hunter
can’t take, simply because they can’t physically carry everything. It might be
possible on flat, solid land. But to take everything through forests and over
hills, for days at a time, the task becomes untenable.
The same goes for food.
With just a backpack to haul everything in and
out, there’s only so space for food.
Being able to carry more means a) life on the
hunt is inextricably easier and b) you can go hunting for longer periods of
time.
That’s what an electric bike offers a hunter.
A 5-day hunt becomes a 10-day hunt because you can finally take everything you
need.
5. Leave Less Scent
Moving by foot can be an effective means of
getting into position.
Indeed, for thousands of years, it was the
only way!
Hunters are more likely to leave their scent
behind like this though. Making direct contact with the ground is a recipe for
leaving traces of your presence. Remember, walking takes significant effort;
sweat and body odor ensues.
It doesn’t take much for an animal to pick up
on your presence. Get the positioning wrong and a hunter can give the game
away. A whole day stalking can be for nothing.
Using an electric bike requires less effort on
the hunter’s part; it leaves less scent behind as a result.
6. Make Less Noise
The best hunters make very little noise.
There’s no room for error. One snapped twig
can spook an animal and send it running.
Electric bikes are naturally quiet. It’s pedal
power, after all! They’re also lightweight and easy to manoeuver. All told,
they can be exponentially quieter than a clumsy person hunting on foot.
Want to know how the work? Here’s a link where
you can learn about these bikes.
7. More People Can Get Involved
Young and old alike can now enjoy hunting more
easily as well.
Some people may have hunted their entire life.
Upon getting to a certain age, their bodies may no longer be able to take the
strain. Those pack marches and days on the trail become physically unrealistic.
As we’ve seen, an electric bike takes much of
the strain. Those hard to reach places are easier to get to. People who thought
their hunting days were behind them can get back out there!
Likewise, young people can keep up and come
along for the ride too.
8. Easily Transport What You Catch
Lugging a 300lb buck home is no easy task.
On top of everything else a hunter is
carrying, that extra weight can be a serious energy sapper.
Electric bikes make this less of a problem.
The extra power would make it an easier task anyway. However, some clever
people have designed trailers to attach to the bike too. Simply put your catch
on the back, and ride off home.
Final Thoughts on the Electric Hunting Bike
There you have it: 8 ways the electric hunting
bike is changing the way people hunt.
Hunting has been around since the dawn of
time. E-bikes are a relatively new invention that is just taking off. Combining
the two is starting to revolutionize the sport. It makes the life of the hunter
exponentially easier in all manner of ways.
Hopefully, this post has highlighted exactly
how.
Like this article? Read more hunting-related articles right here on our blog. Just search ‘hunting’ to get started.
