Michael R. Weisser's Blog, page 12

Gun Violence And 2020: The Candidates Speak.

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              Now that some of us (not me) have sat through two
debates by the folks who want to take over the Oval office in 2021, we can see two
basic groupings emerging on guns. I’m going to label these groupings as the T-group
for ‘tough’ and the NST-group for ‘not so tough.’ But before we get into
the details of which candidate wants what, I have to say that I agree with the NRA‘s
statement this morning
that “not a
single one of the many gun control schemes proposed by the anti-gun Democratic
candidates for president would make Americans any safer.”  Well, maybe we would be one percent safer.
Anyway, here’s how it breaks down.

              Everyone in the T and NST
groups backs an assault weapons ban and comprehensive background checks, the
idea here being that even though the kid who turned the Gilroy garlic festival
into a shooting range underwent a background check, he was still able to buy an
AK-47. So if we have both comprehensive background checks and an assault
weapons ban, that takes care of that. No more Gilroys, right? 

              It goes without saying that both
groups also support ‘red flag’ laws and other measures to protect victims or
possible victims of domestic gun abuse, although I still don’t really
understand how asking a judge to issue an order taking away someone’s guns is
really any different than walking into the local police station and telling the
chief that so-and-so is acting crazy and happens to own guns. Oh well, I must
be missing something in that regard.

              Where the two groups diverge is on
the issue of licensing. The NST group appears to have no issue with gun
licensing conducted at the state level as long as the process includes using
the feds to conduct the background check. In this respect, the T‘s include
the two old men, Biden and Bern, along with Pocahantas who hasn’t yet released
an official policy paper on guns, but she’ll get around to it as soon as she
finishes all her other policy papers. [Does Liz actually think that anyone
gives a rat’s damn about policy papers?]

              The T group, on the other
hand, led by Cory and seconded by Kammie, wants the entire licensing process
taken over by the feds, who will issue gun licenses after the applicant takes a
gun-safety course, undergoes the background check and blah, blah blah. Cory has
yet to be asked to identify which federal agency would administer the safety course
or, for that matter, would actually oversee the licensing process. Let’s not
forget that the ATF regulates dealers, not gun owners, and oh, by the
way, Kamala want anyone who sells more than 5 guns a year to become a licensed
dealer. So the ATF can now figure out how to inspect millions of new dealers.  Right now they inspect less than 5 percent of
all dealers.

              I hate to keep bringing this up
again and again, but there’s a very simple way to get rid of gun violence. All
you have to do is get rid of the guns which cause the violence, namely, the
small, hi-powered, hi-capacity handguns. And despite everyone’s reverence for
the 2nd Amendment, the government can decide that certain kinds of
guns are too lethal for sale to the general public. Is there any difference
between an AR-15 with a 30-round magazine and a Glock 19 with a 20-round
magazine?  Yea, ten rounds. The AR takes
a military round known as the .223. The round in a Glock 19, the 9×19, also
happens to be a military load.

              If my friends in Gun-control
Nation would get behind a realistic plan to end gun violence by getting rid of
the cause of the violence, the NRA would bitch and moan but so what?
Gun-nut Nation will bitch and moan no matter what the other side says. For all
the wrong reasons, what the NRA said about last night’s debate happens
to be correct.

Why Do People Believe In Armed, Self-Defense?

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              There’s a guy out in Gun-nut Nation named Chris Bird,
who is regarded as one of the patron saints of the concealed-carry movement,
and I have just finished reading his book, The Concealed Handgun Manual,
which is considered a must-read book by all the noisemakers who believe that we
are a safer country because we have access to guns. And since Chris may think
that some of the things I’m going to say about his book aren’t all that
positive or nice, I’ll give the book a plug because you can buy it right here.

              As a matter of fact, I strongly urge my friends in
Gun-control Nation to read this book, because if there’s one thing that strikes
me about activists who want to see us reduce the violence and injuries caused
by guns, it’s the degree to which they seem to have little, if any awareness of
what is said or believed by the other side. Ask the average gun-control
true-believer to explain the difference between an ‘internet’ sale and a
‘personal, sale of a gun and you’ll get the deer-in-the-headlights look. Then
ask the same person to explain the difference between an assault rifle and a
semi-auto long gun and you’ll probably get much the same look.

              I wouldn’t recommend Bird’s book were it not for the
fact that the issue of concealed-carry basically defines the entire gun debate.
Why? Because everyone (except me) seems to believe that the 2nd
Amendment gives Americans the ‘right’ to own a gun. But where the break occurs
between the two sides is explaining why someone should or shouldn’t own
a gun. And the gun industry has been selling its products for the last thirty
or so years by telling customers that a gun is an essential ‘tool’ for
self-defense, even though there is absolutely no valid research which shows
this argument to be true.

              So what we get down to here is a mind-set in the heads
of many Americans who as a group form the market for continued gun sales. And
Chris Bird happens to write books which appeal directly to that mind-set,
whether there’s any reality behind it or not. If my friends in Gun-control are
really serious about coming up with ‘reasonable’ gun restrictions which will
appeal to ‘reasonable’ people on the other side, reading Bird’s book might give
them some insights into why those gun owners believe they should own guns. 

              Bird begins the book with a lecture on ‘situational
awareness,’ a self-defense concept first developed by Jeff Cooper (whose widow
passed away yesterday at the age of 99) back in the 1970’s, which is when,
thanks to Glock, the idea of owning and carrying a small, concealable,
hi-powered and hi-capacity handgun first took hold. The argument made by Bird
is both simple-stupid, namely, that all of us are at all times possible targets
of predators who can only be repulsed with personal armed force because the
cops never arrive on time.

              The book then goes through a whole series of episodes
where armed citizens saved themselves from a criminal attack; it then covers
how to choose a handgun, how to practice with your gun, and how to ‘win a
gunfight’ with references all the way back to the OK Corral. If you’re a
bone-fide member of Gun-control Nation and read this book, you’ll quickly
decide that it represents nothing more than a marketing scam designed to
mislead delusional people into believing they really need to own a gun.

I disagree. I know many of the folks who take seriously what Bird has to say, and their views might run counter to the prevailing liberal orthodoxy on gun violence, but there’s no reason to believe that what they think about armed, self-defense should simply be considered the product of deranged minds. These folks choose to be gun owners with the same degree of diligence that many of my friends believe that gluten-free foods will prevent chronic fatigue syndrome or worse.

Want to reduce gun violence? At least try to understand what the other side thinks.

The Assault Rifle Ban In Florida Heats Up.

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              Things are heating up in Florida and I’m not talking
about the temperature which today hit 94 degrees in Palm Beach. I’m talking
about the attempt by Florida’s Attorney General to behave as if she’s on the
payroll of the NRA. And since Granny Hammer, the NRA’s Florida lobbyist, is
right now laying low until the sh*tstorm about Wayne-o’s profligate spending
goes away, at least Gun-nut Nation has AG Ashley Moody to carry on the good
fight.

              And the good fight involves an attempt by the relatives
of several Parkland victims to put a citizen’s initiative on the 2020 ballot
that would amend the State Constitution and ban assault rifles in the Gunshine
State. The backers of this initiative have collected enough signatures to get
their petition approved by the Florida Supreme Court, which would then allow
them to collect another pile of signatures required to put the amendment up for
a statewide vote.

              You can read the Constitutional amendment right here, and then take a look at Moody’s
attempt to block the amendment right here. Her statement that any semi-automatic rifle with more than a ten-round
capacity is just another standard sporting gun, is right out of the playbook
that the gun industry has been using for years.

              I have owned and hunted with semi-automatic rifles and
shotguns made by Remington, Browning, Winchester, Benelli and a few more, and
none of them took a magazine which held more than ten rounds. You don’t go out
into the woods to shoot Bambi by spraying ammo all over the place. When the
hi-flyers come over on their way to Florida, you’re lucky if you get off two shots
before the birds disappear out of sight.

              What makes an assault rifle so dangerous and lethal is
the fact that the magazine attaches from beneath the gun, which means that no
matter how large it is or how many rounds it holds, it can’t prevent a shooter from
aiming the gun. The venerable M-1 Garand rifle, which George Patton called
“the greatest battle implement ever devised,” was a top-loading
semi-auto that only held 8 rounds. When the military decided to go to a
full-auto gun, Gene Stoner designed the first M-16 to take a bottom-loading
magazine thus increasing the firepower of the gun. And before you start
screaming at me about how the gun-grabbers don’t know the difference between a
full-auto military gun and a semi-auto sporting gun, the current battle gun
known as the M-4 shoots in semi-automatic mode.

Believe it or not, I happen to find shooting an assault rifle to be a lot of fun. You set up a  bunch of bottles down range, you bang away 30 rounds without stopping to reload. It reminds me of the old-time shooting gallery at the circus or the county fair. So I understand that gun nuts will be plenty pissed off if they have to give up this beloved toy. But no matter how you slice it or dice it, a bottom-loading rifle that can take a magazine which holds thirty, forty or even fifty rounds is a killing machine. 

Yesterday a young man cut a hole in a fence, walked into a garlic festival in Gilroy, CA, and used an AK-47 to shoot 15 people, of whom ‘only’ 3 died. He was nineteen, he bought the gun legally a few weeks previously, and other than some suggestive internet rants the day of the shooting, nobody has yet come forward who claims prior knowledge of the event.

So the battle is now joined between the gun industry and their self-appointed public relations director Ashley Moody on the one hand, and the gun-control ‘nuts’ in Florida on the other. The truth is that Gun-nut Nation is terrified that a state like Florida might actually decide that certain guns are simply too lethal to be sold. After all, we’re not talking about a Communist state like Massachusetts or New York. We’re talking about a state which understands that the most sacred duty of every citizen is to protect hearth and home with a gun.

Maybe The NRA Isn’t So Crazy After All.

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Along
with fundraising appeals from Kamala, Bernie and the Wilderness Fund,
yesterday’s mail also included a lovely letter from Wayne-o asking me to join a
very exclusive NRA club – the Golden Eagles.  In fact, I have been pre-selected for
membership by the NRA Honors Committee, and all I have to do is send
back my acceptance form and I’m in. It’s really a great honor and I can’t turn
them down.

Oh, I
forgot. I also have to send a check or credit card payment for $250.

Now
considering the fact that yesterday I walked into Dick’s and Titleist has the
nerve to want almost $500 for a new driver which won’t get my tee shot any
further down the fairway than the driver I have been using for the last ten
years, I can hardly be upset that the boys from Fairfax want half that much to
induct me into the Golden Eagles club.

But what
I found most interesting about this appeal was how it seems to me that the
Fairfax bunch may have actually decided to go back to being what they have
always been before a combination of phony Trump flattery, candy-ass video personalities
and cockamamie marketing schemes got them to briefly lose their minds.

Let’s
start with Trump. No other Presidential candidate had ever made gun ‘rights’
the centerpiece of a national campaign. Schmuck-o Trump never made a speech
without reminding everyone that he was infatuated with guns. Now the fact that
he never even owned a gun or used a gun – so what?

As for NRA-TV,
it was one thing to have bores like Grant Stinchfield droning on and on about the
Socialist threat to gun ‘rights,’ but spicing up the video airwaves with Colion
Noir prancing around or Dana Loesch giving us the tough, ‘f-me’ look? If that
was the best idea cooked up by Ackerman-McQueen to promote gun sales, the
agency should have been canned long before they got into a fight with the NRA
Home Office over who was going to pay Wayne-o’s clothing bills.

The
dumbest move made in Fairfax was when they tried to replace their traditional
training approach (and the 100,000+ certified instructors) with an online
training and insurance program which went nowhere fast. The trainers (I having
been one of them) were the organization’s shock troops. Most trainers engaged
in little actual training activities, but they were always the roots which held
the grass together and could be counted on to show up in large and noisy
numbers every time gun ‘rights’ faced any kind of threat.

Here’s
where things stand now. Trump has stopped pushing the 2nd Amendment
at his Nuremburg rallies; NRA-TV is temporarily shut down (although you can
watch reruns which are even more boring than the original shows) and last month
Wayne-o sent out a letter to all the trainers telling them that he was grateful
for their continued support.  This was
the very first communication I ever received from the NRA which didn’t
ask me to respond by enclosing a credit card number or a check.

When the
annual meeting turned into an exercise in the veritable sh*t hitting the
veritable fan, I assumed the NRA would respond by ramping up the volume,
becoming even more extreme and using the bad news about its management
practices as proof that the anti-gun campaign had reached a new and dangerous
pitch. But it’s pretty tough to accuse someone like Ollie North of being
opposed to private ownership of guns.

On the
other hand, North and his supporters may have done the NRA a great
service because perhaps without realizing it, their attacks have forced Wayne-o
and the remaining leadership to stop pretending that every anti-NRA
message is somehow the handiwork of Mike Blomberg, George Soros and their
Socialist pals. Nothing would make me happier than to see the NRA get back to
its traditional role as a supporter of using guns the way they should be used.

Josh Montgomery: Guns as Fashion Pieces. Why Not?

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Best
Looking Small Guns to Fit Every Pocket

Usually, a gun is purchased to
provide protection. But is there anything wrong with taking other aspects into
consideration, such as the size and look? Well, as long as you have the funds
to buy something more unusual and unique, it’s really not a problem. It’s your
own money into play, after all.

But it’s often hard for us to
find something visually pleasing and effective at the same time. It’s not
impossible, though – you just need to research more. Don’t worry, because
you’ll see some beautiful
and well-performing models below. Who knows, you may even find your
next handgun in this list.

Bond
BullPup9

Who wouldn’t love this small-sized,
Texas-styled gun? It’s eye candy, and apart from the attention-grabbing aspect,
the handgun itself is very good.

This little gun works with most
ammunition, but you really need to be careful when you make the selection. If
you use uncrimped ammo, the force of the pull may actually set the bullet and
casing apart. This could result in the malfunction of the firearm, as the gun
powder will be spread into the magazine.

But overall, the design of the
gun is what makes it so special in the first place. Unlike other semi-automatic
guns where the ammunition is pushed forward into the chamber, the BullPup9 has
its rounds pulled from behind.

The handgun has a short barrel
and a 9mm chamber. The whole gun only measures 5 inches, out of which 3.35 is
only the barrel. It was quite challenging for the designers, but it will be
easy to conceal and carry around for you. And rightfully so, you’ll be proud to
have it on you thanks to the wonderful design.

Kimber
Micro

If you want something even
smaller than the BullPup9, you have the option to choose a Kimber Micro. It
only measures 4.07 inches in length, and it is 1.06 inches wide. That’s really
small and makes it easy to hide and take with you.

This little guy may not be the
best choice for target shooting, but you can rest assured it will do its job
when you need to defend yourself in a risky situation. The recoil is moderate
while the trigger can be pulled smoothly, ensuring a nice yet secure feel when
shooting.

A Kimber Micro is a great choice
if you want something small and easy to conceal while being a pleasure to look
at.

Beretta
Pico

This one is certainly one of the
smallest handguns to come across, if not the smallest. It only has a 2.7 inches
barrel, with the whole length being 5.1 inches, and the width being 0.71
inches. But the fact that it’s so tiny is what makes it a very useful
alternative if you want a defensive pistol.

Aside from its 6+1 capacity and
the .380 capacity, the gun was also provided with an ambidextrous magazine
release, adjustable sights, and low-recoil system. But that’s not all there is
to it: it’s also beautiful thanks to its rounded profile. You’ll surely love
it.

Colt
Mustang XSP

The Colt Mustang is yet another
.380 that will be easy to
conceal. The bullets it uses are enough to cause harm, and the
coolest thing is that it can be hidden very easily. You’ll surprise your
attacker when they think they have the upper hand.

Colt has come back into business
with two new models that contain some components from the old Colt Mustang. The
Colt Mustang Pockelite is one such model – in addition to the .380, it has a
length of 5.5 inches, with a .757-inch slide width and a capacity of 6+1.

Do you think that’s all that
makes this gun such a gem? Because it’s not. The design will make you fall in
love with the weapon on spot. Basically, it has a Commander-style hammer, while
the frame is of aluminum alloy, which has an electroless nickel finish.
Likewise, the slide has a brushed gloss that adds to its charm.

Ruger LCP
II

What you’ll love about this LCP
is that you will find it in most gun shops. It’s quite popular, so it’s not
really a surprise that you’re very likely to stumble upon it.

The appearance will please your
eyes. It’s black, but the compact design adds a lot of detail to it. The curves
and iron sights make it breathtaking, and you’ll most likely be very proud to
pull this pistol out of your pocket when you need to use it. It is also quite
small, so don’t worry about it taking too much space.

The pistol is 5.17 inches with
2.75 inches being just the barrel. Additionally, it has a caliber of .380 ACP,
whereas the capacity is 6+1. It’s very practical and comes at a good price for
the reliability it’s able to provide – so, you should consider it when looking
for a concealed gun.

Walther
PPK

If you want to feel like a new
James Bond, it’s not difficult, not as long as this gun is in your possession.
The luxurious design lets you stand tall in front of potential attackers and
shoot with style when deemed necessary. Of course, the gun itself is not
exactly new. In fact, the first time it has been seen was in 1930.
Nevertheless, it has been redone recently.

Its controls are meant for
right-handed people. It has a .380 caliber, with a 6+1 magazine. It is small
and easy to conceal, and that’s a very important aspect when it comes to
pistols for self-defense.

The design is easy to recognize
and distinguish from that of other small guns. It has a stainless-steel frame
that catches the eye of every gun lover.

Final
Thoughts

There’s nothing wrong with caring
about the look of your self-defense pistol. You need to find the best
one
to suit your tastes – and that means a small gun that fits in
your pocket, works smoothly and looks the part.

How Do We Get Guns Off The Street?

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              One of the strategies most favored by gun-control
advocates to reduce gun violence involves personal interventions with people
who are most at-risk for using guns in ways they are not supposed to be
used.  These at-risk individuals tend to
be men between the ages of 16 and 30, many are minorities and most of them live
in poor, inner-city neighborhoods.

              The strategy usually involves identifying the at-risk
kids or young adults, mentoring them on the risks and dangers of carrying guns,
and in some cases involving the target population in programs and activities
that will help them get jobs or learn skills because otherwise they will just
continue to ‘hang out’ and sooner or later gun violence will again rear its
ugly head.

              Probably the best-known of these programs is Cure
Violence which approaches the issue
of gun violence as a contagious disease, and seeks to limit the contagion by
first figuring out where the pathogen can be found, then sending troops to
those specific locations to wait, watch and then intervene at the beginnings of
conflict between two small groups which starts with a few ‘fuck-you’s,’ then escalates
into violence, ultimately resulting in the gun or guns coming out and – bang!

              The street-level intervention model sometimes works well and sometimes doesn’t
work so well. Evaluations of the program tend to be positive except that in
just about every case, the work is limited to a specific, geographic area
(usually a particular neighborhood identified by the cops as being extremely
‘hot’) where the decline in violence may or may not change the violence rate
for the city as a whole. It is also difficult to assess whether a successful
social service type of intervention can be achieved without increased attention
to that area paid by the cops. Right now, New York City runs Cure Violence programs
in multiple neighborhoods and as everyone knows, gun violence in the Big Apple,
has almost completely disappeared.
But how much of this decline is due to Cure Violence as opposed to the stepped-up
anti-gun efforts
by the NYPD?

              Philadelphia has just announced
the adoption of an interesting twist to the Cure Violence approach, in
this case a program out of Boston known as LIPSTICK – Ladies Involved in
Putting a Stop to Inner-City Killing. This programs counsels women to refuse requests
from husbands or boy friends to buy a ‘straw-sale’ gun and then hand it over to
the man who is legally unable to purchase a gun for himself.

              Several years ago I asked a LIPSTICK staff
member whether they also counsel clients to contact the cops if or when they
learned that their husband or boy friend possessed an illegal gun. She
basically told me that such an idea was an invasion of the couple’s privacy and
that it was something that LIPSTICK would never tell its clients to do.

              Guess what? The same refusal to alert the cops when a
kid on the street has a gun but walks away from a confrontation because of the
intervention of a peacemaker is SOP for Cure Violence and other,
street-level programs aimed (pardon the pun) at keeping things under control. To
alert authorities to the presence of a gun would probably result in the street
peacemaker losing his creds or worse, might provoke a retaliatory attack.

              There is no greater risk to community health than a
teenager walking around the neighborhood toting a gun. And maybe if an adult is
carrying an illegal gun it’s not quite as much of a risk, but let’s not waste
time trying to decide which is worse.

              I am hoping that my friends in Gun-control Nation will stop
trying to convince gun owners of their fervent support of the 2nd
Amendment and start telling gun owners and everyone else that certain types of
guns are too lethal to be in anyone’s hands. And you don’t get that message
across to a fifteen-year old by letting him walk away with a gun.  

Bleeding Out – An Important Book.

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              Want to read the latest attempt by a liberal social
scientist to tell us what we need to do about gun violence? Try Thomas Abt’s Bleeding
Out, the sub-title proclaiming this book to be a “bold new plan for
peace in the streets.” And what Abt believes we can accomplish if we
follow his bold plan is an annual 10% drop in homicide every year in cities
with high homicide rates. If the 20 cities with populations of 50,000 or more
which register the highest rates of fatal violence all initiated Abt’s plan
this year, the result would save 12,132 lives over the next eight years.

              The author’s focus isn’t on gun violence per se,
but he realizes that no significant reduction in urban violence will ever occur
without doing something about guns. With reference to the usual suspects
(Hemenway, et. al.) he makes the argument that we suffer from such a high rate
of fatal violence because we have too many guns. But there’s nothing wrong with
the existence of guns per se, it’s when the guns get into the wrong hands
of young men who use them in a violent way.

              Abt believes there are three categories of wrong-handed
gun owners (‘owning’ as in access to a gun, not necessarily legally owned)
whose behavior needs to be regulated in order for his bold plan to work. These
categories are:

Would-be shooters – individuals who
view using a gun as a way to be accepted within their social milieu.Legacy shooters – individuals who
grew up in families that are “entrenched in criminal violence.”Wounded shooters – individuals who
were subject to extreme trauma (beatings, molestations) during childhood.

Abt’s grand plan for dealing with
these individuals relies on a mixture of effective policing, even-handed
justice, community-level outreach and behavior modification. Sounds
interesting, it’s certainly a new and different approach, but I happen to
disagree.

Want to know why most kids in the
inner-city carry guns? They carry them for the exact, same reason that the
middle-class guy in my town walks into my shop to buy a gun – for
self-protection. The difference, of course, is that the guy who comes into my
shop, plunks down six hundred bucks and walks out with a Glock, has about as much
chance of ever needing to use that gun to protect himself as I have a chance to
lose the next 20 pounds that my internist has been hocking me to lose
for the last ten years.

Having created a portrait of
inner-city gun users which may or may not have any connection to reality, Abt
then shifts his focus back to where he believes the primary responsibility for
reducing gun violence should rest, namely, reducing the demand for guns
amongst the at-risk kids and young adults. The whole point of Abt’s approach to
gun violence is to move the discussion away from various supply-side schemes to
reduce the flow of guns, substituting instead his grand plan that will, he
claims, wean people away from their desire to carry and use guns.

Like every other liberal-mined
scholar who wants to reduce gun violence, Abt makes a point of explicitly
stating that none of his policies would in any way prevent law-abiding citizens
from safely owning guns. What we have is yet another attempt to somehow get rid
of the results of guns but allow the guns themselves to remain. This country
has gun violence for one reason: we allow private ownership of what Antonin
Scalia calls ‘weapons of war,’ which just happen to be the handguns made by
Glock, Sig, Smith & Wesson, etc., all initially designed and used as
military guns.

Everybody keeps telling me it would be next to impossible to forge a national political consensus around the idea that some types of guns are simply too lethal to be owned. Think it would be easier to get hundreds of relevant organizations in 20 large cities to do something which has never been done in even one urban site?

By the way, I liked the book.

Attacking John Lott Doesn’t Explain Gun Violence.

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              If there is one person more disliked than anyone by
Gun-control Nation, that person has to be John Lott. His book, More Guns,
Less Crime, is considered the single, most important reason behind Gun-nut
Nation’s embrace of armed, self-defense, and his ongoing effort to eliminate
gun-free zones provokes anger and negative reactions throughout gun-control
land.is book, More Guns

              In fact, at least one noted gun-control researcher, Stanford’s John Donohue, has basically created an entire academic career based on articles critical of Lott. Not far behind Donahue is the chief of gun research at Harvard, David Hemenway, who has likewise published multiple denunciations of Lott’s work.

              I happen to believe that the attacks on Lott’s work
reflect the failure of liberal social science to explain what is really the
only issue in the entire gun debate which needs to be understood, namely, how
is it that less than ten percent of the individuals who each year commit a
serious act of violence against someone else commit this violence by using a
gun? John Lott’s basic thesis, that criminals switch from face-to-face crimes
(assault) to anonymous crimes (burglary) is an attempt to explain the behavior
which lies behind at least three-quarters of all gun injuries. Have either
Donahue or Hemenway ever attempted any explanation of this problem? They have
not.

              I have two criticisms of Lott’s work. First, the idea
that criminals switch from one type of crime to another type of crime assumes
that one type (assault) is really no different from another type (burglary),
and that criminals switch their modus operandi depending on how they
perceive degrees of risk from different types of criminal behavior. This
assumption flies in the face of everything we know about criminal behavior and
to argue, a la Lott, that the issuance of concealed-carry licenses (CCW)
creates a ‘substitution effect’ for burglary versus assault, is to misread the
nature of how and why these very different types of crimes occur.

              Second, and more important is the fact that most of the
perpetrators and victims of gun violence are individuals who share similar
socio-economic circumstances and demographic profiles. Both groups are
overwhelmingly minority males living in under-served neighborhoods who rarely,
if ever qualify for concealed-carry licenses, an argument Lott has made in
other works. If the average inner-city resident is more frequently armed than
years ago, this simply cannot be explained with reference to the spread of CCW
over the past forty years.

              For all the sturm und drang whipped up by Donohue, Hemenway and others about the pernicious impact of Lott’s research, I have yet to see one, single response to his work which even hints at the issues I have raised above. It really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to sit down, pull some numbers together and create a regression analysis model that will yield a result which aligns with your particular point of view. Want to argue, as Hemenway argues, that we have high rates of fatal gun injuries because we own so many guns? Use the number of guns as your independent variable to control against fatal gun injuries and the United States will wind up on top every, single time. Now the fact that we have absolutely no idea how many of those 300 million guns are in the hands of people who might use those guns to commit a violent crime, oh well, oh well, oh well.

              I think my friends in public health gun research need
to stop confusing research with hot air. God knows we have enough of the latter
on both sides of the gun debate; it’s the former where most of the necessary
work remains totally undone. Gun injuries are the only injury tracked by the CDC
where the person who is injured and the person who commits the injury are two different
people at least seventy-five percent of the time. I’m still waiting for anyone
in the public health research community to ask why this fundamental fact escapes
their research.

Now That The NRA Is Dead, Who’s Going To Be The Enemy?

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              Maybe it’s the weather, maybe it’s that time of year,
all I know is that there seems to be a definite lack of interest and activity
within the ranks of the gun-control gang. Judging from the frequency of posts
on various Facebook pages and the number of emails that I usually receive from
Gun-control Nation every day, I don’t recall such a period of calm in the ranks
of my gun-control friends at least from before Parkland, or maybe before Trump
embraced the NRA at the start of his 2016 campaign.

              According to Google Search Trends, the highest number of searches for the words ‘gun
control’ since July, 2018 was the week of November 4 – 11, 2018 which was the
week of the mid-term elections when guns played a significant role in how some
Congressional races turned out. Last week, this same search term received
almost 90 percent fewer hits. The exact same trend shows up when we
change the search to the ‘gun violence’ term. When we look at the trend over
the past five years, again we don’t find any weekly period where the search
numbers are as low as they are right now.

              What’s interesting about these numbers is that they
don’t align at all with the actual gun violence trends. According to our
friends at the Gun Violence Archive (GVA), the number of total shooting incidents has risen steadily from 2014 until the mid-point of this
year.  In fact, if we assume that by
dividing the numbers for a previous total year in half would give us more or
less a valid comparison to shootings so far in 2019, there would have been
roughly 26,000 events by mid-2015; right now for 2019 we stand at more than
30,000 reports. Of course the GVA is in no position to estimate total
gun violence accurately because open-source data rarely covers non-fatal
shootings or fatal shootings where someone picks up a gun and points it at
himself. Nevertheless, assuming that GVA tracks its data using the same
sources every year, their numbers make it quite clear that the overall gun
violence trend is up, not down.

              How do we explain this apparent disconnect between the
continued increase in gun violence versus what appears to be a lessening of
interest in the problem by the gun-control advocates who should be the folks
who are most motivated and involved? And you can’t put this down to any lack of
gun violence events themselves. After all, just six weeks ago a disgruntled
city employee killed 13 people (including himself) and wounded 4 others in a rampage at the municipal building in
Virginia Beach.

              Here’s my theory and although I could be wrong, I
suspect I’m actually right. When most gun-control activists think about gun
violence, the first thing that pops into their minds is not the number of
people killed or wounded with gunfire but the existence and the activities of
‘America’s first civil rights organization,’ a.k.a. the NRA. Every one
of the 2020 Presidential wannabees from the blue team has explicitly mentioned
the NRA in one campaign speech or another; beating up on the boys from
Fairfax is a constant theme in virtually every gun-control fundraising email I
receive.

              Right now, the problem for Gun-control Nation is that
the boys from Fairfax seem to be doing a pretty good job of bashing themselves.
There have been numerous public defections from the NRA Board,
resignations of key senior staff, and our friends at The Trace claim that the number of government
investigations has hit ten.

              In my first gun book (Volume 10 will shortly appear) I
make the point that if the NRA didn’t exist, the gun-control movement
would have to invent them. For that matter, if Mike Bloomberg and Shannon Watts
didn’t exist, the NRA would have to invent them, too. To all intents and
purposes, right now the NRA doesn’t exist. Can my gun-control friends
come up with a new bogey-man to take the place of the NRA?

Want To Understand Gun Violence? Try Using Your Gmail Account.

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Our
friends at the Gun Violence Archive have been tracking gun violence since
2014, and their data is often cited by news agencies, researchers and advocacy
groups. The problem with what they publish, however, and it’s not their fault
by any means, is that as an open source aggregator, GVA‘s data is more a
reflection of how and why the media covers gun violence than as a comprehensive
picture of what is going on. 

To begin
with, and again this is a problem which the GVA admits to as well,
suicides, even suicides committed with guns, rarely make news. Unintentional shootings
are also events which never attract any public concern unless it’s when the
four-year old grabs the gun and shoots the older sister in the head. Finally, intentional
shootings where the victim survives are undercounted by as much as half, again
a function of media coverage which open-source aggregators are unable to
overcome.

I have
created my own little GVA version by simply going into my Gmail account
and setting alerts for the following terms: ‘shootings,’ ‘gun violence’ and ‘guns.’
Every day those three alerts generate thirty or more links to internet-based
media stories, many of which also end up being sourced by the GVA.  Much in the same way as many people start
their mornings off with a cup of coffee and a newspaper or other source for
news, I begin my day with coffee and those Gmail alerts.

I would
estimate that over the last five years (I started reading the Gmail alerts at
some point in 2014) I have read or at least scanned 30,000 media sources
related to the violence caused by guns. And if anyone reading this column
decides to send me a snarky email about how ‘it’s not the guns that cause the
violence, it’s the people using the guns,’ do me a favor and save your time and
mine, okay? I made an executive decision last week to stop replying to any
email that scores higher than five on what Al Franken calls the dumbness scale,
and that message earns a ten.

The
reason I read these alerts is because I have always felt uncomfortable whenever
my gun-research friends in public health describe
what they are doing as creating an ‘epidemiology’ of gun violence. The CDC
defines epidemiology as the
“study of distribution and determinants of health-related states among specified
populations and the application of that study to the control of health
problems.” But gun violence is a very special problem because with the
exception of gun-suicide and accidental shooting, every other gun injury is
caused by someone other than the person who gets hurt. So the fact that
our data on gun injuries gives us detailed information about the person who got
shot, doesn’t tell us very much about the individual who pulled the trigger and
committed the crime. And make no mistake about it, more than 75% of all gun
injuries happen to be crimes.

Thanks to  FBI-UCR
data, we know where and how these crimes occur, and we also know whether the
shooter and the victim had some degree of contact before the event. So we know
the what, the who and the where of gun violence, but we don’t know the why. More
than one and one-half million violent assaults take place every year but guns
are involved in less than one hundred thousand of these events. How come more
than 90 percent of the people who want to really hurt someone else do it
without using a gun? The answer to that question is what epidemiological
research should provide.

My public health researcher friends might consider spending a
little less time gathering data and a little more time actually reading descriptions
of how people get shot. After all, when it comes to something as complicated as
violence, the devil has to be found in the details, right?