Michael R. Weisser's Blog, page 7

Tom Gabor: Unrelenting Gun Violence and Lax Gun Laws Erode Our Freedoms

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The gun
lobby and gun rights advocates often claim that increasing gun rights makes
Americans more free.  Nothing can be
further from the truth.  Yes, permissive
gun laws increase the freedom of the minority (30%) of adults who are gun
owners to purchase virtually any weapon they choose.  However, increasing the availability of
firearms erodes our freedoms–including those of gun owners and their
families–in a number of ways. 

There is
significant evidence showing that higher gun ownership levels, more gun
carrying, and increasing the presence of guns in homes tend to make people less
safe.  While guns are sometimes used for
self-protection, they are used far more often in crime, against domestic
partners, in suicides, and in unintentional injuries and fatalities.  It follows that lowering gun ownership and gun
carrying will save lives and prevent injuries, thereby sparing many Americans
from the loss of life and the unimaginable injuries and horrors associated with
losing or caring for a loved one who has been shot. 

More
Americans are reporting being mindful of the dangers of being shot when entering
shopping malls, houses of worship, theaters and entertainment districts, night
clubs and other crowded places.  Such
fear is certainly not freedom.  Nor is
the fear of students who are often terrified to go to school.  An American Psychological Association survey
has found that the fear of being caught in a school shooting is at the top of
the list of stressors for students between the ages of 15 and 21.  Freedom is not the term that comes to mind
when we think of K-12 students participating in active shooter drills and
cowering in classroom corners and under desks.

In
response to school shootings, states like Florida with especially influential
gun lobbies prefer to do anything but address the widespread availability of
guns and assault-style weapons.  They
want to focus on arming teachers and school staff, turning school properties
into high security prison-like settings, conducting drills, and focusing on mental
health despite the fact that most school shooters do not have a serious mental
illness.  The militarization of schools
represents the antithesis of freedom for students and school staff.

Requiring
or incentivizing teachers and school staff to carry guns is dangerous and will
cost lives rather than free people from gun violence.   Active shooters are almost never taken down
by armed civilians but putting arms in the hands of improperly trained
individuals will lead to fatal shootings within the school, thefts of guns,
accidental shootings, and other misuses. 
It forces talented teachers out of education and interferes with the
right of students to have the best education possible.  Teachers, students, and administrators alike
oppose the practice and, yet, the gun lobby is pressing to arm teachers since
Wayne LaPierre of the NRA famously stated: “The only way to stop a bad guy with
a gun is a good guy with a gun.” 

The
militarization of schools through arming teachers and active shooter drills provide
constant reminders to students of the dangers of an active shooter.  Rather than freedom, this is a constant
distraction from their studies.  At the
college level, allowing guns on campus seems counterproductive as universities
have consistently been shown to be safer than the surrounding community.  Why import the community’s problems onto
campuses? 

Two years
ago, three University of Texas at Austin professors filed a lawsuit against the
stateAttorney General and several officials at the
university over a 2015 law allowing concealed handguns on college campuses. The
professors argued the law infringed their First Amendment right to academic
freedom, saying the carrying of guns into classrooms created a “chilling
effect” on freedom of expression.  As a former criminology professor, I would
imagine that the free-wheeling discussions we had on such controversial topics
as abortion, sexual assault, and race and justice, would have been far more
subdued or would not have been broached at all had students been “packing.” 

The most
extreme manifestation of how individuals wielding guns can deprive others of
their First Amendment rights are displays of menacing behavior by gun rights
activists aimed at groups who are engaging in activism to bring about gun law
reform.  Armed groups such as Open Carry
Texas and the Utah Gun Exchange have bullied and threatened individuals
organizing voluntary gun buybacks and have stalked activist students seeking
changes in gun laws as they made their way around the country.

Finally, a
shocking example of how the gun violence epidemic can lead to an erosion of our
freedoms is shown by a Senate Republican bill that would tackle mass and school
shootings through the enhanced  monitoring
of students’ communications.  Rather than
addressing the roots of the despair that lead young people to commit school
shootings and their easy access to weapons capable of mass slaughter, the GOP,
a party historically concerned about invasions of privacy, recently filed a bill
that would dig deeply into the online activities of students. 

The legislation would require federally
funded schools to install software to surveil students’ online activities,
potentially including their emails and searches, in order to identify “violent”
or alarming content.  Education groups
say that such intensification of social media and network surveillance can
discourage children from expressing themselves online.  Social media monitoring has already increased
dramatically in response to gun violence. 
The Brennan Center for Justice notes that, from 2013 to 2018, the number
of school districts across the country that purchased social media monitoring
software increased from six to 63.

Schools are being inundated with
alerts, with some receiving over a hundred a day.  The technology does not merely monitor
student activity during the school day but operates 24/7, monitoring school
email accounts, web searches, and, in some cases, students’ public social media
accounts as well.

The
jury is still out in terms of the impact of this dramatic escalation in student
monitoring.  There is a significant
concern that student communications may be misinterpreted due to student
cultural differences and casual conversations that may be mistakenly viewed as
threats by the software employed, potentially exposing a much wider pool of
students to the attention of law enforcement.

While
some monitoring of student activities may be desirable, there is a difference
between encouraging young people to come forward if they witness threatening
behaviors or statements and the routine, around-the-clock electronic
surveillance of young people that will often misinterpret loose talk of kids as
a threat and bring some form of heavy-handed response.  Ultimately, the latter will lead kids to be
more secretive and find ways to communicate with their peers that will
circumvent the monitoring.  Surveillance
may be politically more palatable than dealing with the alienation and trauma
experienced by young people, as well as the enactment of effective gun
laws.  However, such monitoring does
nothing to address the social, psychological, and familial factors that lead
young people to commit horrific acts.  To
the extent that we persist in ignoring the reasons for the carnage we are
seeing, we will continue to fail to free our kids and society from the
ever-present threat of gun violence.

Thomas
Gabor, Ph.D. is a criminologist and author of ENOUGH! Solving America’s Gun Violence Crisis (thomasgaborbooks.com)

Thank God for the 2nd Amendment. How Else Would The Militia Keep Us Safe?

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In case you’ve forgotten, the revered 2nd Amendment requires that every male citizen own a gun in order to serve in the militia and thus protect our country from harm. While of late the term ‘militia’ has become synonymous with crazy, government-resistance strategies promoted by dummies like Cliven ‘let me tell you about your Negro’ Bundy, the idea of para-military citizen’s groups defending themselves, their families, their friends and their communities remains central to Gun-nut Nation’s messaging about guns.

It just so happens that we actually possess a first-person accounting of how one of these citizen-militia groups behaved back in the good old days long before enemies of the ‘right to bear arms’  like Mike Bloomberg or Pete Buttigieg reared their ugly heads. The narrative is found in a book, The Pine Barrens, written by John McPhee. The author has been teaching writing at Princeton University for more than forty years, and has contributed more than 100 pieces to The New Yorker magazine since 1963.

 To many of my readers, the Pine Barrens is associated with a great episode from The Sopranos, where Paulie and Christopher drive into the area in mid-Winter to bury a guy they have killed who then turns out not to be so dead. Their victim runs off, the two North Jersey gumbahs quickly find themselves in the middle of millions of acres of semi-wild woodlands, they end up spending the night cursing at each other inside their semi-frozen car.

What McPhee explains in his brief and beautifully-written book, is that the Pine Barrens weren’t so barren in times past. In fact, the woodlands provided all kinds of raw materials used before and during the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution, such as iron ore, charcoal and wood. But as new technologies and modern modes of transportation emerged, the villages in the Barrens began to disappear and the whole region reverted to a semi-natural state, a process still occurring in many areas that were settled in the pre-industrial period and are now lacking in human presence again.

I live
less than 30 miles from an area in my state (Massachusetts) called the Monroe
Plateau. The Plateau used to be a farming zone, then it saw the development of
water-powered mills, now it basically supports beavers, bears, moose and deer.
Walk a half-mile into the woods from one of the roads that runs through the
Plateau and you better know how to get out or you won’t get out.

McPhee
spends a chapter discussing life in a town called Martha, which had an
industrial furnace that started operating in 1793. There were 50 houses in the
town, a school, a central main house and a hospital. The town also had a
militia which, according to the records studied by McPhee, enrolled all the
able-bodied men in the settlement  who
had to turn out for drills on something called Training Day.

The militia
officers wore uniforms and ‘barked out’ orders which ‘nobody obeyed.’ In fact,
according to the town register which listed all events between 1808 and 1815,
the training days invariably ended up in drunken brawls. On April, 1, 1814 a
militia captain named Townsend was court-martialled for being too drunk to give
orders; the trial took place in Bodine’s Tavern, which was also the public
space used whenever the town put any issue to a vote.

Note
that the description of the militia’s activities were written while the United
States was just coming out of the War of 1812. Note how what went on in the
town of Martha was really no different than what happened when Cliven Bundy’s
son and his buddies organized themselves into a citizen’s militia and took over
the Malheur Forest Range. They sat there for a few days, ate some pizza brought
up by their wives, then turned themselves in because they forgot that the
building which they liberated didn’t have heat.

Whenever
my friends in Gun-nut Nation extoll the virtues of a citizen’s militia it
sounds rather quaint. Better they should spend a weekend tramping around and
defending the 2nd Amendment in a picnic grove; at least that way
they won’t get hurt.

When It Comes To Gun Laws, The NRA Isn’t The Last Word.

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              All of a sudden the boys down at Fairfax have become
very concerned about doing everything with guns in a very legal way. The NRA
website no longer contains those obnoxious, crazy videos from Dana, ‘home-school
Queen’ Loesch, or the dance-and-prance shooting lessons from Colion Noir. Instead,
now we get a whole menu of tips and tricks
about how to make sure that everything you do with a gun stays completely
within the law.

              Except there’s only one little problem with the NRA‘s
new-found concern for making sure that all gun laws are properly observed.  And the problem happens to be the fact that the
way the NRA chooses to describe certain gun laws may not be the way some
of those laws actually work. Take, for example, their advice on how to purchase
a gun as a gift for someone else.

              The comment starts off like this: “Giving someone a firearm carries a certain level of legal responsibility
that does not come with gifting iPads or socks. You should know the laws that
apply to buying firearms as gifts for another person.” Fair enough.
I have no problem with the NRA‘s advice up until now.

              But then things get a little
sticky, because the text then goes on to mention the fact that if you purchase a
gun from a dealer, you must undergo a background check which involves declaring
that you are buying the gun for yourself. But what if you knew that after
buying the gun you were going to walk out of the store, wrap the gun up as a
gift and give it to someone else? And let’s say further that you live in a
state where giving that gun to someone else doesn’t require another
background check? Which still happens
to be the law in 29 of the 50 states.

              Here is what the NRA has to
say about that: “Even if you are not keeping the gun, you are the owner of
that firearm until you legally transfer it to the intended recipient.”
Sorry,  but that’s not how the background
check law works at all. Because what the law says is that you have committed a
felony if you knew you were going to transfer the gun to someone else at the
time you first purchased the gun and
claimed on the 4473 background-check form that you were buying it for
yourself.

              This issue was decided by the
Supreme Court in Abramski v. United States, which was argued and decided
in 2014. Bruce Abramski was a part-time cop who walked into a gun shop in
Virginia and bought a Glock. He then took the gun to Pennsylvania and gave it
to his uncle who had earlier sent him the money to purchase the gun. But to
take the gun out of the shop in Virginia, Abramski had to undergo a background
check, and even though he was buying the gun for his uncle, he certified that
he would be the legal owner of the gun.

              Had Abramski paid for the gun in
Virginia but let the dealer ship it to another dealer in the uncle’s hometown,
he would have been following the law. But by walking out of the Virginia gun
shop with a gun which he knew was going to be given to someone else, he had committed
what we call a ‘straw sale.’

              Abramski didn’t lie on the 4473 because
he was going to sell the gun to a ‘street thug.’ He lied to save himself the cost
of shipping the gun to a dealer in another state.

              The real problem with gun laws,
and this is probably true of the legal system in general, is that you can’t write
a law that compensates for stupidity, and there’s plenty of stupidity floating
around the NRA.

Does Public Health Research Really Explain Gun Violence?

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 Before I get into the body of this column, let me make one thing very, very clear. Mike the Gun Guy has not decided to switch sides and begin promoting the false narratives about gun violence used by my friends in the NRA. I do not believe that having a gun around is more of a benefit than a risk; I do not believe that civilians, trained or not, should be walking around with guns; I do not believe that when Mike Bloomberg, et. al., takes away all the guns, that only the ‘bad guys’ will have guns. 

On the other hand, the fact that I do not subscribe to the most hallowed beliefs of Gun-nut Nation doesn’t mean I am willing to accept the basic assumptions or arguments about gun violence promoted by the gun-control side. And the reason I cannot accept the current gun-control narrative is that it is based on public health research by scholars at first-rate institutions like Johns Hopkins and Harvard, and I find most of this research to be fundamentally flawed.

Public health gun research does not lead to substantive advances in firearm regulation for three reasons: (1). The researchers know absolutely nothing about the industry which they believe needs more effective regulation; (2). the research never focuses on the behavior of individuals who commit 85% of all intentional gun violence by picking up a gun and shooting someone else; (3). the research uses data which is chosen to promote an answer to the problem of gun violence rather than to figure out how to understand the problem itself.

Along with raising these concerns about the value and validity of public health gun research, I want to raise one more issue which is the most troublesome of all. To put it bluntly: I have never (read never) encountered a field of academic research in which the researchers are as unwilling and/or unable to engage in critical, public discussions about their own work. If these scholars consider that the absence of such a critical dialog helps them better understand both the possibilities and the limits of their research, then all I can say is that this field of academic research fundamentally differs from every other academic field, including other research done by public health.

Yesterday
I attended a presentation about a new strategy for diagnosing autism that is
being tested at the Harvard School of Public Health. The lecture was presented
before a room of clinicians and medical students who were encouraged to ask
serious questions about the methods and findings of the strategy itself. Do any
of the scholars who conduct gun violence research ever appear before audiences
other than various gun-control groups who already agree with what they are
going to say? They don’t.

Here’s
an example of how seriously flawed gun research can be and how such flaws take
us further, rather than closer to solving the public health crisis caused by
guns. David Hemenway has made an international reputation for himself by
arguing that the United States suffers an inordinately high level of fatal
violence because we have so many guns. He has made this argument in numerous
articles as well as in his formative
book. 

In the
book (2nd edn., page 2) he compares gun homicides in the U.S. with homicide
rates in other ‘frontier’ countries (Canada, Australia, New Zealand) and finds
that the overall U.S. rate is  6.1 (for
1999 – 2000) while in the other countries it is 1.7 or 1.8. That difference is
because we have twice as many households with guns, even though rates of non-fatal
violent crimes in those other countries (burglary, robbery, rape) are either
higher or the same.

I don’t
recall the last time I listened to a public discussion about gun violence or
looked at a gun-control website that I didn’t see reference to this argument
again, again and again. But what I find most interesting about Hemenway’s
approach is not what he says, but what he doesn’t say. Because the fact is that
the non-gun homicide rate in the U.S. is more than twice as great as the
non-gun homicide rate anywhere else. And while Hemenway gives us those
comparative numbers, he ignores what they really mean.

Because
if you think the imbalance in violence between the United States and other advanced
countries started when the NRA or John Lott began promoting a gun
culture, think again. In fact, we were killing people at a much faster rate
than other advanced countries all the way back to the decades
prior to World War I.

It’s one thing to argue that we are a violent society because we own so many guns. But are there other, equally compelling explanations that might inform us as to why the United States may be a more violent society pari passu? I’m not saying that Hemenway’s argument is totally wrong; I am saying that it is, at best, incomplete. And I am still waiting for anyone in the public health research community to consider that using incomplete arguments as a guide to public policy just doesn’t work.

If any
of my public health research friends want to submit a response, I’ll be happy
to post it here.

Why Do (Many) Americans Own Guns?

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All my friends in the gun-control movement keep telling me that we can reduce gun violence by just enacting some ‘reasonable’ or ‘common-sense’ laws. I suppose that what they mean are laws that even gun owners will agree should be passed, like extending background checks to personal transfers, red-flag laws, ‘common-sense’ things like that. Our friends at the Hopkins group have published a big study which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that most gun owners really do support those ‘reasonable’ laws.

That’s all fine and well except for one, little thing. If you asked the average gun owner what he thinks would be the best way to reduce gun violence, he’d probably say that we should get rid of all gun-free zones. Or maybe put armed guards in all schools. Or better yet, allow everyone who wants to carry a gun to carry it from state to state.

In other words, all these ‘common-sense’ gun laws whose benefits are touted by every gun-control organization are only considered ‘reasonable’ by people who, for the most part, don’t own guns. And if all those folks really want to find a way to communicate with gun owners in order to come up with some ‘reasonable’ regulations that might really gain Gun-nut Nation’s support, maybe they would start out by trying to figure out why people own guns. After all, a gun isn’t like a car- you don’t need to own a gun in order to get to work. And you also don’t really need to own a gun to protect yourself from ISIS, or a street thug, or even from gun-grabbers like Joe Biden or Crazy Bern.

Back in 2015, our friends at Harvard published a very detailed
study on who owns guns in America and why they own their guns. What they found
is that gun owners own handguns primarily for protection  and own long guns for hunting and sport. It
took a whole study to figure that one out? After all, it’s not as if you can’t
take down Bambi with a Glock, but that’s not the way it’s usually done.

If our public health friends want to
really help us figure out how to talk to gun owners about how to reduce gun
violence, they might ask whether just knowing that people buy handguns for
personal protection really tells them anything at all. Colt began making and selling
a self-defense pocket pistol in 1903, which was long before Dana Loesch got on NRA-TV
to warn all America’s housewives to defend themselves against street ‘thugs.’

It’s not as if walking around with a
Glock in your pocket is the only way people can protect themselves from crime.
In fact, most people aren’t wandering around with a Glock and they don’t seem
to feel any more vulnerable than the guys and a few gals who walk around armed.
If public health researchers think they are really explaining anything when
they publish
another study showing that the number of people who actually use a gun to
prevent a crime is somewhere between zero and zilch, maybe they should think
again. The folks who come into my gun shop to buy a gun for ‘personal
protection’ couldn’t care less what some egg-head from Harvard believes.

All I know is that the rate of
violent crime across the U.S.
continues to decline, but the percentage of the population which believes
that having a gun around is more of a benefit than a risk continues to
increase. How do we account for such cognitive dissonance when it comes to the
question of guns?

We don’t. We simply pretend that somewhere,
somehow we can create a magic formula that will get gun owners and non-gun
owners on the same page. In the meantime, deaths from intentional shootings
have increased by more than 25% over the last ten years.

Isn’t it about time we substituted
the word ‘effective’ for words like ‘reasonable’ or ‘common -sense’ when it
comes to promoting new gun laws?

Bye-Bye American Pie.

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              When I was a kid, my father’s favorite gadget was a
hand-held electric drill which he used to make holes in the walls whenever we
needed an additional shelf to hold clothing, books, toys, or any other
household crap. The drill was made by Remington; that’s right, the same company
which made all those rifles and shotguns over the years.

              I don’t know at what point Remington gave up making
drills, but I never imagined that the company would ever give up making guns.
Guess what? To all intents and purposes, the gun maker founded in 1816 has
given up the ghost. Which it looks like may happen now to another iconic gun
brand which first started making guns back in 1852.

              Earlier this week, Smith & Wesson announced they were going to dissolve a
company formed in 2016 known as American Outdoor Brands (AOBC). This was
Smith & Wesson plus a few small companies making gun accessories and other
consumer ‘outdoor’ products, but basically it was the Springfield gun maker
operating under a different name.  When
the bait-and-switch took place in 2016, the company’s stock was selling for $22
a share. Yesterday it closed at $8.36. So much for how Wall Street has reacted to what Jim Dabney, the company
President, refers to as the “potential for organic and inorganic
growth.”

              Going forward, Smith & Wesson will be a separate
company making guns. American Outdoor Brands will focus on building its unique
collection of outdoor consumer products with such iconic names as Hooyman and
Lockdown.  In case you haven’t heard of
these great products, Hooyman makes hand saws used by hunters to build a
tree-stand in the woods, Lockdown makes shelving for the interior of gun safes.
If you take a look at the brands which comprise the AOBC
family, you’ll notice that virtually every product appeals to the same consumers
who happen to own guns. Incidentally, when AOBC made its announcement about
splitting the two companies, the stock price jumped sky high from $7.90 to $8.46. Now
it’s drifting back down to where it belongs.

              What’s really going on here is that the folks who run
Smith & Wesson see the handwriting on the wall and the handwriting ain’t
good. A big chunk of the company’s revenues come from sales of their AR-15
assault rifles, and following the Supreme Court’s announcement which lets the
Sandy Hook lawsuit go forward, at some point this product line may well
disappear. The kid who shot himself and five other students yesterday at Saugus High School used a
45-caliber pistol which is the type of weapon on which the entire financial livelihood
of S&W and therefore AOBC depends. Think there won’t be a new
gun law if Trump and his Senate GOP allies go bye-bye next year? Think
again.

              For all the talk about armed, self-defense and how the
2nd-Amendment gives Americans the ‘right’ to own guns, I always
thought the gun business was something much more suited to the life I experienced
as a kid than the lives that most of us lead now. And while it’s true that as
many as 40 percent of American homes contain guns, it’s not as if the number of
guns being carried around are even a fraction of the number of people walking
around with droids. Last night we were eating dinner in a local restaurant
where the dining room contained about 15 tables, and at every table there was
at least one person playing around with their phone. How many diners do you
figure had guns on their persons? One – me.

              The joke used to be that if you wanted to make a
million in the gun business, you had to start with two million.  I’m beginning to think that maybe the joke
should go like this: Want to make a million in the gun business? Go into
another business. Guns may be as American as apple pie, but many of us are now
eating fresh fruit for dessert.

Guess What? Gun Violence Has Become an Investment Opportunity.

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              Sooner or later I knew it would happen. Gun violence has become an investment opportunity. Or I should say, talking about gun violence has now become a way to bring investors together who can try to make a buck by putting dough into various new ventures and other schemes.

              Want to get in on the ground floor?  There’s a conference being held in New York City  on December 12 whose chief sponsor is an outfit called Northwell Health, which owns and operates more than 20 hospitals in New York State. Chief among these hospitals are Long Island Jewish Hospital and North Shore Hospital which, along with more than 700 outpatient clinics and other facilities, employs more than 68,000 and runs more than 50 of those cutsie, little ‘urgent care’ centers which keep popping up all over the place.

              I think it’s really interesting that a medical
conglomerate which doesn’t operate a single health facility in any inner-city neighborhood
would get interested in health issues related to guns. If I were to take the
time to analyze gun-violence rates in the areas served by Northwell’s
hospitals, outpatient clinics, rehab and dialysis centers, pharmacies, imaging
and everything else, the baseline number for gun-violence injuries would be
somewhere around zilch.  So how come a
medical system which treats the patient population least likely to suffer gun
injuries is all of a sudden so concerned about what their CEO refers to as ‘this public health crisis?’

              Maybe it’s because Northwell has teamed up for this big
deal with a private investment firm, Landmark Ventures, which holds
what they refer to as ‘carefully curated’ events connecting ‘thought leaders,
C-level executives, innovators and entrepreneurs.’ The purpose is to ‘build
strategic relationships and partnerships with top industry dealmakers.’ In
other words, Davos Lite.

              So there you have it. Gun violence has now become a
vehicle for talking about the latest and greatest investment opportunities that
might just be relevant to the medical field. After all, the medical industry
now cranks out more than $3.65 trillion every year.
That’s not chopped liver even in my book.

              Coming up with new medical products happens as well to
be a particular end-game for Northwell Health, which runs a medical-products
lab that has gone heavily into a new medical technology, ‘bioelectronic
medicine’ which promises to replace pain-killing drugs with electronic
impulses that will control the nerves which create pain. These products, none
of which are yet on the market, also are being developed to control bleeds. Is
that the connection with injuries caused by guns? Maybe they are working on
some kind of electronic impulse that will inhibit all those street thugs from
taking out their Glocks because ‘he dissed me.’

              In any case, you may recall that back in February, the
American College of Surgeons hosted a national, gun-violence ‘summit’ where
representatives of more than 40 medical organizations showed up, spent a day blabbing back and
forth and issued the usual laundry-list of recommendations for reducing gun
violence through the application of various ‘sensible’ gun laws. Then everyone
went home and that was the end of that.

              Funny, but the invitation sent out by Landmark Ventures
for the ‘carefully curated’ New York event went to the same groups who showed
up at Chicago, along with companies like Wal Mart and Dick’s Sporting Goods,
who have stopped selling black guns. Oh well, you never know what will happen
when you get a bunch of sporting-goods salesmen in a room with a high-level
assortment of innovators and entrepreneurs.

              If you catch a slight bit of sarcasm in my text, it’s not by accident but by design. Five or six years ago, you could go to any number of conferences which bring ‘thought leaders’ together but you wouldn’t hear any discussions about guns. Now such conclaves seem to be breaking out all over the place.

              There’s only one little problem. Basically, these confabs don’t accomplish a friggin’ thing. Unless what you’re just trying to accomplish has really nothing to do with the violence caused by guns.

The Sandy Hook Case Moves Forward.

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              On December 14, 2012 a 20-year old first murdered his
mother, then shot his way into the Sandy Hook Elementary School, quickly killing
20 young kids and 6 adults before taking his own life.  He left behind a community so devastated that
the school building
had to be torn down.

              Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court, that’s the court with
all those pro-gun judges,
declined to hear an appeal of a decision by the Connecticut Supreme Court
to allow a lawsuit against the gun maker to go forward. After seven years, it
appears that the parents of some of those victims will finally get their day in
court.

              The gun industry will also get its day in court. And
when this day dawns, the gun industry will, for the very first time, have to
prove that at least one of its products isn’t too dangerous to be manufactured
and sold.

              Way back in the good old days, in the 1970’s and
1980’s, the gun industry made most of its products for hunting and sport.
Companies like Winchester, Ithaca, Remington and Harrington & Richardson
made millions of rifles and shotguns that could be found in just about every
rural home. When those homes all disappeared, ditto the guns.

The gun industry, not wanting to go the way of the companies that made mixmasters or typewriters, moved quickly into new product lines based on the idea that guns make us safe and secure. The studies which claimed that guns protected their owners from crime had more holes than a slice of Dorman’s swiss cheese, but since when do we decide what to buy based on facts?

The bottom line is that the guns which started to sell more frequently beginning in the 1990’s weren’t designed for hunting or sport. They were designed to do one thing and one thing only – to kill or injure men, women and children, regardless of how or why those killings and injuries occurred.

The gun industry knew full well that pretending that a military rifle like an AR-15 was just another ‘sporting gun’ had no basis in truth. But so what? Nobody was going to sue gun manufacturers just because they came up with a clever slogan as a way to sell more guns.

At the same time the gun industry was avoiding the issue of product lethality, our friends in Gun-control Nation were doing exactly the same thing. Instead of holding gun makers accountable for the dangerousness of their products, they began promoting the idea that we can reduce gun violence by keeping guns out of the ‘wrong hands.’ But what happens when it turns out that most of the mass shooters commit their rampages with an perfectly legal guns?

The two sides in the gun debate avoid the issue of lethality because each side feels it incumbent upon themselves to pretend reverence for the cherished 2nd Amendment.  The pro-gun side never misses an opportunity to ballyhoo (and usually mis-state) the Heller decision, even though prior to 2008 Americans were armed to the teeth without the benefit of any Constitutional protection at all. The anti-gun gang has no choice but to pretend an equally-strong belief in the 2nd-Amendment. After all, who among us would ever dare question the validity of Constitutional ‘rights,’ even if one of those ‘rights’ allows me to yank out my Glock and pop a cap on your head?

The Sandy Hook case cuts through all that nonsense and puts the issue of lethality right where it belongs; namely, whether the manufacturers of this particular commodity can pretend that this item is no more dangerous than any other product bought at the corner store.

The courts have long held that government has a ‘compelling interest’ to protect the community from harm. If someone knows anything more harmful than some jacked-up kid wandering around with an assault rifle and a bunch of 30-shot mags, I’d like to know what it is.  

Richard Douglas: The Difference Between AR-15 and Mini-14

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In this post I’m going to show you the
difference between the AR-15 and Mini-14.

Including:

PerformanceBuildSpecificationsLots more

So if you’re wondering the difference between
these two proven workhorses, this article is for you. Let’s get started!

Performance

The reliability and accuracy of both of these
assault rifles in the field are up to par with autoloader standards, which are
typically slightly less than those of pump or bolt action rifles.

However, the slight edge favors the Mini-14
with its conventional gas piston operated action which requires less
maintenance and upkeep over time as opposed to the AR-15’s direct impingement
gas operating system.

Many personal reviews draw the conclusion that
the AR-15 rifle is simpler to operate and has a more intuitive feel and design.
On the other hand, others prefer the more durable and cleaner operating action
of the Mini-14.

The AR-15 is extremely accurate within 500
yards, especially if you attach accessories
like a .17 HMR optic. On the other hand, the Mini-14 is accurate
within 200 yards since it’s designed to be used as a varmint-style ranch rifle.
That said, they’re both mechanically accurate rifles.

Look & Feel

Both of these rifles have an
easily-recognizable, signature look.

The AR-15 sports a lightweight, tactical body
weighing in around six pounds without magazine. On the other hand, the Mini-14
looks more like a hunting rifle that weighs approximately seven pounds and four
ounces empty.

The Mini-14 can prove the more conspicuous,
low-profile rifle in practice. The all-black, synthetic look of the AR-15 might
be off putting for those who intend to transport it around in the back of the
pickup truck among other places, without attracting unwanted attention.

Materials & Build

These rifles are both manufactured by American
companies: AR-15 by Colt Manufacturing Company and the Mini-14 by Ruger
Firearms. The build quality of both of these firearms are on par for top-notch
American built hardware.

The AR-15 features a 16” barrel made of steel
while the Mini-14 barrel is slightly longer at 16⅛” and made of stainless steel
— which could prove vital for boaters and those who live in areas of humid
climate where rust abatement is a constant issue.

The buttstock and handguard of both rifles
consists of black synthetic plastic with the option of upgrading to a wooden
buttstock for the Mini-14 rifle for the more outdoorsy look.

Specifications & Price

The AR-15 and the Mini-14 both conveniently
share the same caliber — .223 Remington or 5.56 mm NATO. This versatile
caliber proves ideal for small game hunting, home defense, and even when SHTF
moments.

The AR-15 measures in as the shorter rifle
with the overall length averaging around 32-⅝” to 35-¾” depending on
attachments and modifications compared to that of the Mini-14 which ranges from
34” to 37-¾”. The shorter length gives the slight edge of maneuverability and portability
to the AR-15. 

The price department also offers a slim
advantage to the AR-15 with an average MSRP of $899, while the Mini-14
typically sells for $989. These prices apply to basic models with no
aftermarket attachments or modifications such as telescopic sight, bipod stand,
tactical flashlight or laser, etc.

Final Thoughts

The final breakdown of the differences between
the AR-15 and the Mini-14 reach the long-awaited conclusion, drumroll please…

The Colt AR-15 offers many advantages such as
a lightweight and compact design with intuitive handling, while the Mini-14
boasts a more reliable firing mechanism along with a stainless steel
construction for easy maintenance and greater durability.

These two titans in the semi-automatic game,
stand unequaled in providing enthusiasts with non-stop thrills in the shooting
range or on the hunt for big game. The only way to settle this tireless debate
would be for you to test it yourself and send some lead down the shooting
range. 

That said, I’d like to turn it over to you:

Do you prefer the AR-15 or Mini-14? Or perhaps
both? Let me know in the comments down below.

Bloomberg-Watts Vs. LaPierre Isn’t A Fair Fight.

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              I went to my first NRA show in 1980. It was held
in Philadelphia (of all places) and featured an appearance by a Presidential
candidate named Ronald Reagan. I don’t recall his speech attracting much
attention, I also don’t recall that there were any vendors promoting ‘tactical’
products or any of the other crap which currently provides the gun industry
with its marketing mantra about how and why guns are needed for personal
defense.

              That was then, this is now. The last time I went to the
NRA, which was the 2014 Indianapolis gathering, you would have thought we
were one step away from having to defend ourselves from an ISIS invasion
or from a complete and total disarming of the American population, or both. No
matter where you looked, there was endless signage exhorting everyone to prove
their patriotism by making sure that liberals, gun-grabbers and all sorts of
other left-wing radicals (including the African-born occupant of the White
House) would never get a chance to take away ‘our’ guns.

              At some point during the Indianapolis hoopla I wandered
into the business meeting where the now-deposed head of the NRA-ILA,
Chris Cox, was giving a speech. And here was the sentence
that I remember most of all: “The 5
million members of the NRA will not allow Michael Bloomberg to lie his way, buy
his way, or bully his way into taking away our Second Amendment rights!” The
reason I remember this line was because the week prior to the show, the New
York Times carried an article
which claimed that Mayor Mike had decided to ante up $50 million to promote gun-control
programs, chiefly through investing in the growth of Moms Demand Action for
Gun Sense in America, founded by Shannon Watts.

              Yesterday
the Washington Post took some time out from celebrating the doomed
Presidency of Schmuck-o Trump to
interview Shannon Watts, the headline reading: “The NRA is weaker than
they’ve ever been.” Which, if anything, is something of an understatement
given what has happened to the boys in Fairfax over the last couple of years.
America’s ‘first civil rights organization’ has gone from getting the
red-carpet treatment at the White House to shutting
down its media channel, losing Board members
and spending what little dough it has in the 
bank account to defend itself from legal threats all over the place. You
think the investigation into the NRA‘s non-profit status being conducted
by the state whose Governor wrote the infamous Clinton plan to
regulate the gun industry isn’t a serious threat?  Think again.

              In the
olden days, the only reason the NRA was considered such a powerful force
was that the other side, the gun-control side, didn’t have any kind of financial
or organizational clout. But once Mayor Mike decided to move into the business
of growing a gun-control movement, I knew that the NRA‘s dominance in
the public discussion about guns would quickly come to an end. And I didn’t
have to be any kind of self-appointed genius to figure that one out. I simply
made a quick comparison between the achievements and experiences of Mike
Bloomberg versus Wayne LaPierre.

              Mike
Bloomberg took a $10 million partnership payment from Salomon Brothers in 1981
and created an international media
company which today has locations worldwide, employs more than 20,000 and
may have annual revenues in excess of $10 billion bucks. He’s probably worth
more than $50 billion, which makes Wayne-o’s alleged financial excesses
look like chump change.

On the other hand, Wayne LaPierre has never worked in the private sector and his experience in building any kind of organization adds up to zilch.  When he took over the NRA in 1991, he pushed the membership from 2.5 to 3.5 million; in the process he entirely used up the organization’s financial reserves. So much for Wayne-o’s business acumen.

If the NRA stops trying to lead the alt-right and goes back to representing the legitimate needs of hunters and sport shooters, this would be a very good thing. Going up against Shannon and Mike is something they better avoid.