harmonicminer

I just watched an episode of “The Mentalist” which featured yet another deranged gun owner willing to commit mass murder to satisfy his dark inner demons that led him to obtain guns in the first place.

It featured all the usual cliches.  There was the scene at the firing range out in the boonies somewhere, where lots of crazy people were all lined up shooting TVs, bottles, old computers, various other defunct appliances, watermelons, and so on, using shotguns, rifles and handguns, and even one belt fed machine gun (which led all the other folks at the informal range to cheer and applaud).

Here’s the thing:  I’ve been at many different firing ranges, both regulated (with a range master) and unregulated (with no range master, and everyone simply applying common sense).  I have pretty much never seen a bunch of people all side by side firing such a mixed array of firearms at such a mixed array of targets.  Nearly everyone shoots rifles and handguns at paper targets in firing ranges, even unregulated ones.  That’s because they want to know how accurately they are shooting, and you really can’t tell any other way.  Generally, there is a section for handguns, a section for rifles, and a section for shotguns.  This is because handgunners are shooting at different ranges than rifle shooters, and because shotgunners are often shooting at clay targets.  People practicing with self-defense shotguns are usually using paper targets as well, typically at handgun ranges.

I have never seen a machine gun at an unregulated range.  I have seen them ONLY at special shows where people line up to pay for a short period of shooting time under highly supervised conditions.  If someone opened up with a machine gun in any other situation, especially without warning, the rest of the shooters would not applaud.  Some might call the cops.  Nearly all would be likely to back off, pack up, and leave.  No one wants to be associated with a nut-case, or be around one…  and only a nut case would do that, even if he owned one legally.  (For the record, machine guns are so highly regulated that legal owners of them are just about the most trustworthy people you’ll ever meet, and the LEAST likely to do such a thing.)  So that means someone who did such a thing would be highly suspect in the eyes of the shooting community.

Finally, the bad guy in this story had a concealed carry weapons permit in California, apparently in the Bay Area, if I understand how the show is based.  This is truly unlikely.  The Bay Area is just about the hardest spot in a difficult state to get such a permit.  They go to famous movie stars, millionaires, former police chiefs, and so on….  only people with pull in the system.  Normal people can’t get them (we can talk about the unconstitutionality of such discrimination later).  Certainly, out of work people down on their financial luck (the case in the story) are not going to have one.

The incidence of criminal behavior on the part of concealed carry weapons permit holders in ANY state is very, very low, and it’s even lower in California, where it is so difficult to get such a permit in most places.

So, let’s just say that this episode of The Mentalist was written by someone who is mentally challenged….  and obviously knows nothing about guns and gun owners…..  and who has an axe to grind.

How do I know the script writer knows nothing about guns, as well as being ignorant about gun owners?   As a ploy, the police are supposed to have snuck into the bad guy’s house and replaced all his ammo with blanks.  Furthermore, these had to be blanks that would cause a fully automatic weapon to operate properly, so they could catch him in the act of trying to mow people down with a weapon filled with blanks, and then arrest him.

Since they didn’t know WHICH of his weapons he’d be using, they would have to have replaced ALL his ammo for ALL his weapons with blanks.  Outside of the unlikelihood that he wouldn’t notice the replaced ammo, and the impossibility of being certain they’d FOUND all his ammo to replace it, self-loading semi-automatic and automatic weapons mostly won’t operate with blanks.  But this guy is shown emptying an entire magazine of them with narry a malfunction.  This gives thin plot devices a whole new meaning.

Does anybody think the California Bureau of Investigation has thousands of rounds of blanks in all calibers just sitting around in case they need to fool some criminal gun owner?  Linked up in belt-fed form for machine guns?  Since, in the story, they couldn’t have known which weapon he would use, they would have to have planned for that one, too.   I can just see some flatfoot sitting at a desk laboriously building chains of linked blanks.  Maybe he’d get done in a week or two.

I’m still laughing.  Hollywood is indeed fantasy land, filled with dupes and dufuses.  What morons.

The previous post in this series is here.

Powerline has a brilliant article by Professor Malcolm from George Mason University Law School.  Normally, in these series, I don’t merely link, and I try to provide some original content and analysis.

But this article so perfectly captures the supine British attitude towards evil that I had to include it here.

In my recent article at Renewing American Leadership, redefining the “seamless garment” argument for pro-life causes, I mentioned that supporting the personal right to own and carry suitable weapons for self-defense is itself a highly pro-life position.

In the light of the recent tragedy in Norway, Charlie Cooke at NRO has observed that if Norway’s firearms laws had been more like Idaho’s or Utah’s, it is very likely that the death toll would have been far smaller from the lunatic murderer’s killing spree.

It took about 90 minutes for the police to respond effectively.  While that’s an atypically long time by US standards, the fact is that the police in the USA almost never “get there” in time to stop murders, even multiple murders.  The only people who can stop them are those on the scene.

Those who congratulate themselves for being in favor of making it essentially impossible for private citizens to defend themselves and their loved ones, from some “morally superior” perspective that believes laws against guns save lives, are simply ignorant of the facts regarding gun ownership (including keep and bearing) by law abiding citizens, and have the blood of innocents on their hands wherever they’ve succeeded in imposing such restrictions.

A gun locked up in a safe in a closet does you very little good when you’re attacked in grocery store….  or on an island.  40 states have realized this, and now have “shall issue” laws for concealed carry permits, meaning that people without criminal backgrounds are automatically approved with suitable training.  I wonder how long it will be before the rest of the states come around.  I wonder how many people who could have defended themselves will have to die before those states change their laws.  I also wonder how many people will be attacked who might not have been if the criminals had not been so certain that their intended victims were not armed.

“Gun free zone” equals “target rich environment” for lunatics and just plain killers, who ignore gun laws by definition.

The Orange County Register reports that a Transient finds police gun replica under leg.

A Costa Mesa homeless man called Costa Mesa police officers Sunday night to turn in a gun he said he found under his leg after waking up at Lyons Park.

The piece – which turned out to be an air-soft gun – is an exact replica of the 40-caliber semi-automatic Heckler & Koch pistol that Costa Mesa police officers use, Sgt. Clint Diebell said. The gun has the same weight, look, color and feel as the officers’ sidearm. When the slider is pulled or the cartridge is removed, one can see brass that resembles a bullet, Diebell said.

There is no doubt the death of six people and the wounding of 13 others in Tuscon was a terrible tragedy.  As more information on the killer comes out each day  it is clear he is and has been a very troubled man.  But there is another tragedy in all of this – the tragedy of those who would use this horrific incident for political gain.  The number of silly accusations hurled towards Sarah Palin, the Tea Party, talk radio and others have been as baseless as they have been shrill.  Sarah Palin is to blame because she used the word “targeted” in describing certain congressional districts of interest in the last election.  She is also blamed because some of her literature used the graphic image of a scope sight’s cross hairs.  The PC crowd would have us believe that these words and images, long used by many in both political parties and elsewhere, are now enough to drive someone to violence.  And it didn’t take long before the PC madness began to take hold.  A mere 10 days after the mass murder CNN was apologizing for a show guest who had used the phrase “in the cross hairs”.

Do rational people really think that removing gun metaphors from idiomatic speech will stop random acts violence by the Jared Loughners of this world?

If anyone truly believes this then in the interest of public safety let’s commit fully and wholeheartedly to remove these phrases from our language:

Henceforth…

No longer can a person be chewed out by their boss for something and then say, “She let me have it with both barrels”!
No longer can we have a civil dispute where the first side to get a lawyer is often referred to as “bringing out the big guns”.
No one is allowed to “go off  half cocked”!
You can no longer commit fully to something “lock stock and barrel”.
No more firing off a letter.
No more outlines with bullet points
Women can not be described as “hot as a $2 pistol”.
…or, as a “pistol-packing mama”. (I’m sure women are heart-broken about THAT!)
it is now off limits to “use a shotgun approach” (as to cover all bases).
Concluding a deal can no longer be referred to as “pulling the trigger”.
And poor old Roy Rodgers would have had to rename his horse AND dog!
The makers of Colt 45 Malt Liquor will be adversely affected.
Henceforth nothing streamlined will be described as “bullet-shaped”
(They’ll have to do something about that high-speed train in Japan)
Being drunk or high can no longer have the synonym “loaded”
Basketball players will have to come up with some other way of trying to make a basket since they will no longer be able to “shoot” the ball.
No one can stand “ramrod straight”
No one who speaks plainly and truthfully can be a “straight shooter”
Being accurate is no longer being “on target”
getting very angry is no longer “going ballistic”.
“Shooting from the hip” can no longer explain someone speaking extemporaneously.
“He’s just a flash in the pan” cannot be someone of temporary fame or importance
You may not “bite the bullet”.
you may not “jump the gun”.
Superman will have to describe his speed in terms of something other than being “faster than a speeding bullet”.
You cannot be “gun shy”
You had better not get caught “gunning your engine”.
…or “rifling through drawers”
no more “shotgun weddings”.
no more operations that result in “shooting blanks”.
No more job candidates described as “high caliber”
No more developed biceps described as “guns”
(And no more sleeveless shirts, apparently.)
You can no longer be “under the gun”.
…or “In the crosshairs” (thank you, CNN)
You cannot “drop the hammer”
..or look for “the smoking gun”.
You may not “ride shotgun” in a car
..or hazard a guess with “a shot in the dark”.
You cannot spend all your money and then complain “you shot your wad”.
You most certainly cannot describe the attitude of determined preparation as “locked and loaded”.
No one will encourage you to refrain from getting upset by telling you to “keep your powder dry”
You won’t be in any danger of “being out gunned”
And you won’t explain your preparation to tackle a difficult task by being “loaded for bear”.
Nobody will ever be a “loose cannon” again.
You’ll never be in danger of being “out-gunned”.
..or by having anyone “taking shots” at you.
(I wonder if this will adversely affect Tequila drinkers…)
There are no easy cures and no longer any other way to say it like, “there’s no silver bullet”.
There are no more “warning shots”
…or “a shot across the bows”
You cannot be “shot down”.
or “shot down in flames”, no matter how badly you lose an argument.
And you can’t “shoot yourself in the foot” ever again
You cannot be a “son of a gun”
You don’t have to take any “flak”.
And no one will criticize you in a malicious, underhanded manner by “sniping” at you.

That’s all there is to it.  Just see to it that these and other gun metaphors are forever banished from our language, then sit back and watch the world become a safer place!

Parsing the Second Amendment

It’s been about a month since the U.S. Supreme Court rendered its decision in McDonald vs. Chicago, a successful challenge to the city’s handgun ban. It was decided on the basis that the 14th Amendment extends the prohibitions of the Bill of Rights to state governments, and thus the Second Amendment applies.

So let’s look at the Second Amendment: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

One gun-hater argument is that this does not guarantee an individual right “to keep and bear Arms,” but is some sort of group right that applies only to members of state militias.

But “people” clearly means individuals in the Fourth Amendment, which stars with “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated . . . .”

Further, it’s pretty clear that the Founders supported private ownership of weapons, not just of muskets, but of entire ships laden with cannons.

That’s because the Constitution gives Congress exclusive power to “grant Letters of Marque” — that is, authorization for a private party to engage in piracy on the high seas against the nation’s enemies.

(Beginning in 1856, many civilized nations signed a treaty renouncing letters of marque, but the United States has not, although it’s been a long time since Congress issued one.)

Next, what did they mean by “militia”? From what I can gather, the general belief at the time was that the state militias would be America’s primary military force, mobilizing against invasions, uprisings or Indian attacks. Thomas Jefferson, for one, was opposed to a standing army. His fear was that if you had all these soldiers drawing pay, you’d be tempted to use them, and his agrarian republic would turn into a rapacious empire.

Even so, Jefferson did not abolish the standing army when he became president; indeed, he founded West Point in 1802 to train officers for the standing army.

We do know what the Founding Fathers meant by “militia,” for there is the federal Militia Act of 1792, which defines the militia as “each and every free able-bodied white male citizen of the respective States, resident therein, who is or shall be of age of eighteen years, and under the age of forty-five years . . . .”

It was not some small group of volunteers, but just about every capable citizen of the day. Gun ownership was a federal mandate, not an option.

“Every citizen . . . shall . . . provide himself with a good musket or firelock . . . or with a good rifle,” along with powder, shot, knapsack and the like. Further, the guns and related gear could not be seized to satisfy unpaid debt or taxes.

But what did “well-regulated” mean? That the militia was supposed to have a lot of rules, as we might understand it today? That inspired me to delve into the English major’s bible — the Oxford English Dictionary — which attempts to track every word in every sense from its first written appearance to the present.

(I’ve long hoped to be rich enough to buy the full 20-volume second edition issued in 1989, but I’ve had to settle for the tiny-print version of the first edition of 1933, issued as a Book-of-the-Month Club premium.)

It provides a relevant definition for “regulated” — “Of troops: properly disciplined” with a 1690 citation and a note that is a rare usage, long obsolete by 1933. But that appears to be what it meant when the Second Amendment was proposed in 1789, that militiamen were supposed to be proficient with firearms, since that was a big part of their discipline.

So you can argue that the Second Amendment is an archaic relic that ought to be repealed, or that it means we should restore regular drills on the village green so that we’ll have a “well-regulated militia.” But there’s no reasonable argument that the Founders wanted the government to have the power to outlaw private gun ownership — especially not when one of the nation’s first laws made it a requirement.

I would add one other point, a fairly important one.

It is the SECOND Amendment, just following free speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble, and the like.

It seems to have been fairly important to the founders, to get such pride of place.

And the Supreme Court has long ago decided that the Bill of Rights applies to state and local governments as well, though it seems to need to reaffirm that principle from time to time.

The previous post in this series is here.

The extreme nature of British gun bans has still not protected the people from the occasional mass murderer with a gun.  In fact, even in the USA, they only tend to happen where virtually everyone is known to be disarmed by law, like in schools, government offices, universities, post offices and military bases [go figure, but they're disarmed].  When was the last time you heard of a mass murder at a gun show?  Or a gun range?  Of course, in Britain, everyone is disarmed all the time everywhere, by law…  so mass murder can happen anywhere at all.  According to Peter Hitchens, Perhaps these deadly rampages aren’t so ‘inexplicable’ after all:

Yet another gun massacre is followed by yet another typhoon of psychobabble,
sentiment and bogus declarations that ‘this must never happen again’, when everyone knows that it will.

It’s difficult to argue for tighter gun laws, since they’re already so tight, though I’m sure the authorities will think of something suitably irrelevant and futile, as they did after Hungerford and Dunblane.

They are determined to make sure nobody in this country is armed, apart from criminals and terrorists, the invariable effect of ‘tough’ gun laws that trouble only the law-abiding and have no impact on illegally held weapons at all.

The truth is that until 1920, Britain’s gun laws were so relaxed they made Texas look effeminate, but we had virtually no gun crime. That only really began to increase here after we abolished hanging.

But that truth doesn’t fit the Leftist dogma which has ­everyone, including the Tories, the media and the police, in its grip, so the facts will be ignored.

What can we learn from the Cumberland murders? Well, first of all that the police are no use to anyone once a crime has been committed. They never were and they never will be, except if they can do first aid.

It’s such a pity they’ve forgotten their job is to prevent crime rather than hold verbose Press conferences afterwards and festoon the countryside with silly scene-of-crime tape copied from American TV shows.

It’s possible an old-fashioned village constable, on the spot, might have done something to halt Derrick Bird, or have realised something bad was going to happen before it did.

It’s ­certain that the modern fire-brigade approach to policing with its sirens, helicopters, computers and flash cars was no use.

This is another area where the “mother country” of the USA has simply lost its mind.  Hitchens goes on to conjecture that anti-depressant drugs are at the heart of some of these mass murders.

Maybe.

The next post in this series is here.

I’ve commented on the issue of the biggest dangers to young people here.  And here is more corroboration for the perspective I gave.

Car Crashes Leading Cause of Teen Deaths in U.S.

Of the more than 16,000 teenagers who die in the United States each year, most are killed in automobile accidents, but murder, suicide, cancer and heart disease also take their toll, a new government report finds.

In fact, among black male teens, homicide is the leading cause of death, said report author Arialdi M. Minino, a statistician at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

“This is a group of people we don’t pay much attention to when we talk about mortality,” Minino said. Teen deaths account for less than 1 percent of all deaths per year in the United States, he noted.

Still, Minino thinks that more needs to be done to cut the number of teenage deaths.

“These are preventable causes of death,” he said. “So, this is a group where we can extend ourselves so kids won’t die, by extending common sense ideas.”

Each year in the United States, an estimated 16,375 children between the ages of 12 and 19 die. Nearly 50 percent die in accidents, with car crashes accounting for more than one-third of all deaths, Minino found.

But among black male teens, murder is the leading cause of death. Moreover, the highest teen death rate is among black males at 94.1 deaths per 100,000 people. “That’s 50 times more than among white males. That’s a very large disparity,” Minino said.

The leading causes of death among teens stayed the same during the period studied, Minino noted. Accidents accounted for 48 percent of deaths; homicide, 13 percent; suicide, 11 percent; cancer, 6 percent; and heart disease, 3 percent.

In addition, from 1999 to 2006, the annual death rate for teens has remained constant, at about 49.5 deaths per 100,000 population, Minino said.

But the risk of dying is not the same for all teenagers. Boys are more likely to die than girls, and older teens are at higher risk of dying than younger teens.

For example, for 12-year-old boys the death rate is 46 percent higher than for girls. At 19, the death rate is three times higher for boys than girls (135.2 deaths and 46.1 deaths per 100,000, respectively), Minino found.

“I wish people would look at these groups with an eye toward intervention,” Minino said. Teenagers are a “relatively neglected group when it comes to public health.”

Another expert sees the human cost of teen deaths and stressed that even though the number of deaths is low, teenage deaths should not be ignored.

“I hope when people read this report they realize how sobering it is and are not falsely lulled by the fact that these adolescent deaths ‘only’ make up 1 percent of total deaths,” said Dr. Karen Sheehan, medical director of the Injury Prevention and Research Center at Children’s Memorial Hospital and medical director of the Injury Free Coalition for Kids in Chicago.

When thinking about deaths of young people, it is important to consider the years of potential life lost, she said.

“Every one of these 16,000 adolescents who died will never get married . . or contribute positively to society,” Sheehan said. “We should be appalled that this many deaths happen to children this age, and we should be ashamed that these deaths occur disproportionately in certain populations.”

Hmm…  this last strikes me as a ridiculous comment.  Should we be less ashamed if the murder rate among non-black young males was just as high as that for blacks?  It isn’t the disproportionality of which we should be ashamed.  It is our failure to deal with the cause of the young black male murder rate that shames us.  That cause is well known to everyone, namely the fact that most of those killing and being killed did not have married fathers in the home raising them.  THAT is the biggest single factor, not race itself. 

The government policies that have encouraged the destruction of the black family are also well known, aren’t they?

So much for “promoting the general welfare.”

Six Contradictions, Seven Contradictions, who’s counting?

Herewith, Seven Contradictions of Gun Control:

*  Guns are used in crime  –  yet we have many laws restricting guns

*  We have many laws restricting guns  –   yet criminals can always get guns illegally

*  Criminals can always get guns illegally  –  yet we need more laws restricting guns

*  We need more laws restricting guns  –  yet states with more guns have less crime

*  States with more guns have less crime  –   but too many people have guns

*  Too many people have guns  –  yet we have many laws restricting guns

*  We need more laws restricting guns  –  yet criminals don’t obey gun laws

Coming soon:  Six Contradictions of Pinball

The other kind of IED (intermittent explosive disorder)
Much more at the link.

The New York Times says that a faculty member at the University of Alabama killed 3 and wounded 6 others after being denied tenure at the biology department. Circumstantial evidence suggested that she was upset at what she believed was unfair treatment. The suspect apparently “had told acquaintances recently that she was worried about getting tenure”, and the NYT quoted one source as saying “she began to talk about her problems getting tenure in a very forceful and animated way, saying it was unfair.”

I’ve been to some tense faculty meetings. Meetings with outcomes that had the potential to really change people’s lives who were involved, in one way or another.

So far I haven’t had to duck and cover because somebody started shooting.  But it is starting to seem that the only people who respect the “gun-free zones” on campus are the victims.

Maybe I should start ordering my hoodies to be Kevlar-lined.

Just in case a deranged post-modern prof who gives feminist readings to medieval French poetry happens to go postal.