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On This Memorial Day

May 28, 2012 by 1 Comment

In going through some of my Dad’s old papers, I found this from his second tour of duty in South Vietnam in 1970. He was serving as the First Sergeant for Co. A of the 554th Engineer Battalion (Construction). It is an inventory of equipment that was assigned to him as First Sergeant. What’s cool about it is that it lists the Pistol, Caliber .45, (Automatic, M1911A1) that was assigned to him including its serial number. As I know he didn’t get to keep it, I wonder what ever became of it.

He was originally drafted into the Army in October 1940 and served during WWII. He rejoined the Army in 1953 and continued serving until he was medically retired in April 1972. I should clarify that his medical retirement was not due to wounds received in Vietnam but other health issues. At the time he was in South Vietnam with the 554th Engineer Battalion, he was 51 years old. He passed away in 1981 almost nine years to the day from when he retired.

So on this Memorial Day, I’d like to remember the service of my father and all the men and women who have served and are serving in our Armed Forces.

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NRA Responds To VPC’s Misleading Research

May 27, 2012 by 3 Comments

While it may be giving the Violence Policy Center more attention than it deserves, I think the NRA-ILA had to respond to the misleading research regarding “gun deaths” versus deaths by motor vehicle. As Tom Gresham continually points out about his Truth Squad project, a lie left unchallenged becomes the truth for many people. The NRA-ILA’s post on the subject entitled “Dust Off the Old Stuff–VPC Tries to Revive ‘Guns and Cars’ and ‘Consumer Products’ Nonsense” was published on Friday.

In the 1990s, it was common for anti-gun activists to predict that firearm-related deaths–suicides, murders, self-defense shootings by private citizens, shootings by law enforcement officers, and accidents combined–would soon outnumber motor vehicle accident deaths.

It was also common for them to demand that the design and manufacture of firearms be subject to the Consumer Products Safety Commission or the Bureu (sic) of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Their goal was to get handguns banned by setting standards higher than any handgun manufacturer could achieve, at least at a price the market would bear. For example, in 2000, the Violence Policy Center said “Congress should vest the Department of the Treasury [to which BATF belonged at the time] with strong authority to regulate the design, manufacture, and distribution of firearms. Such authority should include the ability to remove from the market firearms that pose a serious threat to public health and safety. . . . Products such as three-wheel ATVs and lawn darts had related death rates microscopic in comparison to handguns, but were nevertheless banned.”

To anti-gun activists’ dismay, the closest that motor vehicle accidents came to accounting for fewer deaths than all five categories of firearm-related deaths combined was in 1993, when firearm-related deaths hit an all-time high, one year after motor vehicle accident deaths fell to their lowest point since 1962. But even then, motor vehicle accidents accounted for 2,298 more deaths than all categories of firearm-related deaths combined.

Fast forward to the present. This week, the VPC claimed that in 2009, firearm-related deaths outnumbered motor vehicle accident deaths in 10 states. It said, “Motor vehicle deaths are on the decline as the result of a successful decades-long public health-based injury prevention strategy that includes safety-related changes to vehicles and highway design informed by comprehensive data collection and analysis. Meanwhile, firearms are the only consumer product not regulated by the federal government for health and safety.”

That’s baloney, of course. The reason that anti-gun activists dropped their “cars and guns” propaganda more than a decade ago is that after 1993, motor vehicle accident deaths began increasing sharply, despite massive government regulation of vehicles, drivers and roads, while deaths involving firearms began decreasing. So great did the disparity between the two trends eventually become, that by 2004 there were 15,364 more motor vehicle accident deaths than all firearm-related deaths combined.

VPC knows that, but it brought up “cars and guns” this week anyway, for a couple of reasons.

First, cranking out “analyses” that insult the intelligence of a fence post is what the Joyce Foundation pays the VPC to do.

Second, with people driving less–due in large part to the lack of jobs and high gasoline prices–deaths from motor vehicle accidents dropped from 43,945 in 2007 (the year before the economic recession began) to 36,216 in 2009 (the last year for which national data have been reported). In the 10 states on VPC’s list, decreases ranged from 6.1 percent in Colorado to 37.6 percent in Nevada.

Nationally, firearm-related deaths remained fairly steady, at 31,224 in 2007 and 31,347 in 2009, with decreases in homicides and accidents. But firearm and non-firearm suicides, each of which accounts for half of suicides, both increased from 2007 to 2009. Suicides account for nearly 60 percent of firearm-related deaths, and between 2007 and 2009 firearm suicides increased in nine of the 10 states on VPC’s list.

Of course, it’s pointless to compare vehicle accident statistics to those for the aggregate of five categories of firearm-related deaths. There’s little similarity between motor vehicle accidents and firearm accidents, and none whatsoever between vehicle accidents and firearm suicides and homicides. For example, more than 90 percent of people who commit suicide suffer from depression, other mental disorders, and/or a substance-abuse disorder. Other risk factors for suicide include a prior suicide attempt or a family history of mental disorder, substance abuse, suicide or family violence. There is also evidence suggesting that suicides can be instigated by news media coverage of suicides and by exposure to suicide themes in literature and entertainment. By contrast, risk factors for motor vehicle accidents include excessive speed, fatigue, poor eyesight and ambient conditions limiting visibility, travelling in darkness and bad weather, mechanically unsound vehicles, and defects in road design and maintenance.

Since we’re on the subject of motor vehicle accidents, let’s all remember to be especially safe on the roads over the Memorial Day Weekend. Next week, with the holiday behind us, there will be plenty of time to remember how full of beans anti-gun activists can be.

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Citizens Committee On HB 489

May 25, 2012 by

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms just released an alert on North Carolina’s HB 489 and the attempt to overturn the Bateman ruling.

The alert:

BELLEVUE, WA – The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms is alerting North Carolina gun owners that state lawmakers are attempting to pass a new “emergency powers” law that may be more restrictive than the one a federal judge just struck down.

House Bill 489, according to Grass Roots North Carolina, would enable cities to restrict firearms rights in the home in emergencies, something they never had the authority to do. Attorney Alan Gura, who represented GRNC and the Second Amendment Foundation in the recently-won federal lawsuit striking down the state’s emergency power to regulate firearms in a declared emergency, says that anyone who tries to enforce a ban on guns under this new legislation would lose qualified immunity.

The legislation, now in the Senate Judiciary I committee, establishes “dangerous weapons restrictions in emergencies.”

CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb said the new proposal suggests that North Carolina lawmakers responsible for this bill “either simply don’t get it or they are determined to undermine a constitutionally-protected civil right no matter what a judge says.”

“The federal court ruled against this sort of emergency regulation, but the legislature is turning around and trying to pass an even more restrictive law,” he observed.

CCRKBA is urging firearms owners to contact their state senator to oppose the measure.

“Try to adopt bad legislation in an effort to replace a bad law that was struck down by a federal judge is not just bad policy,” Gottlieb said, “it is an egregious abuse of legislative power.”

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I Just Love (Southern) Politicians

May 25, 2012 by 2 Comments

I thought the days of the old-time Southern politician in the mold of Huey Long or any of the other rascals like him were long gone. The type of politician who would portray himself in public as a God-fearing, tea-drinking, gun-owning, pro-American family man with a pretty wife and cute kids while in private he wasn’t above having a nip or two and consorting with college co-eds.

SC State Rep. Ted Vick (Chesterfield Cty) has restored my faith in Southern politicians. He is was running for Congress in the new 7th District of South Carolina. On his campaign website, he notes that he is “a businessman, a farmer, a pastor, a sportsman, a soldier and a state representative” who is seeking to return values like “hard work, common sense, and bipartisanship” to Washington. Vick is also a Lt. Col. in the SC National Guard.

He was considered one of the leading candidates in the race. He was even mentioned in an article in the Washington Post about possibly being one of the surprises of this election cycle. However, that was before his little escapade early Thursday morning.

Rep. Vick was stopped in Columbia for doing 44 mph in a 30 zone. A little over the limit but nothing major except:

  • He had been bar hopping.
  • He refused the sobriety test and was charged with DUI.
  • He was carrying a Kel-Tec .380 pistol in his pocket.
  • His concealed carry license expired in 2007.
  • He had a woman in the car with him.
  • The woman was not his wife but a 21-year old recent graduate of USC whom he met in a bar.

Ooops! Rep. Vick has been charged with DUI, speeding, and for the unlawful carrying of a firearm without a permit. He also spent the night in the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center and was released on his own recognizance.

Vick announced just a litle while ago that he is ending his campaign for Congress.

“After spending time with my family, my pastor and my friends, I have decided to end my campaign for the United States Congress.

While I have full confidence that the legal system will clear much of this up, it will not change the fact that I made some serious mistakes that I alone am responsible for. I realize that I have caused pain to those who love and support me and it’s my responsibility to make this right.

Now is the time to allow the legal system to work, time for me to concentrate on my family and time for me to focus on the needs of my State House constituents.

I look forward to spending more time at home with my family and constituents. I will humbly seek re-election to the State House in November. If re-elected I will continue to work across party aisles to seek consensus and progress.”

Now have I left anything out? Hmm. The 21-year old not-his-wife woman was blond (his wife has brown hair) and Mr. Vick is a Democrat who recently made news when he quit the American Legislative Exchange Council or ALEC.

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A Disturbance In The Force

May 25, 2012 by 1 Comment

To paraphrase Darth Vader, “I detect a disturbance in the gun blogger force.”

That disturbance in the force is because Frank W. James – Farmer Frank – of Corn, Beans, Spent Brass, An Empty Page and A Deadline has decided to hang it up after four years. The frustrations he felt with the constraints of Blogger and some of their new “features” was too much for him. He made the announcement on Tuesday in his final post.

I’ve never made a dime off this blog, so by my father’s estimation it has had zero commercial value and my time was wasted……UNLESS I enjoyed it.

And I did for a long time, for over 4 years in fact, but due to the changes being made in the software that Blogger is now putting forth, I no longer enjoy it. In fact, this damn thing has become work.

Work that has zero value because Dad was right, I’m not getting paid anything for it, so it has had no value.

The alternatives in my view are worse because in just about all the acceptable (to me in terms of usage rules) cases I will have to spend money to do this nonsense which means by Dad’s reasoning my ‘work’ would have less than ‘zero’ value. It would have a negative value solely for ‘vanity’ purposes. That’s pretty lame and it’s not going to happen.

So, after approximately 480,000 visits and 626,000 page views over just 4 years of duration, this blog experiment has come to an end.

I’m glad I got to meet Frank at the recent NRA Annual Meeting. I know I will miss his blog. He promises to do guest blogging in the future for movie and book reviews. I plan to take him up on that offer as I am sure will a number of other bloggers.

It is a damn shame that in the effort to make things “better”, technology companies often ruin a decent product. I still can do more with MS Word 2003 than their 2007 version, I’m still not enamored with the Facebook timeline, and, like Frank, I don’t really care for the “new” version of Blogger. As my grandma used to muse, “Such as life.”

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NRA-ILA’s John Frazier Fisks Car Deaths Vs. Gun Deaths Report

May 25, 2012 by

John Frazer, NRA-ILA Director of Research & Information, spoke with Cam Edwards yesterday about the report from the Violence Policy Center that purported that “gun deaths” outnumbered those from motor vehicle in some ten states. He notes that accidental deaths are at a low which was not reported.

As to the non-critical reports in many media outlets around the country, he suggests pointing out the fallacies in the report in letters to the editor or comments on the site.

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Update On Attempt To Negate Bateman Win

May 24, 2012 by

Grass Roots North Carolina sent out an update this evening regarding the NC Senate Judiciary I committee substitute for HB 489. The proposed language of this substitute would effectively negate the win that Alan Gura secured in Bateman v. Perdue.

The substitute has been pulled from the calendar to give the Judiciary I committee “more time to study the issue.” As to why it was even proposed, GRNC speculates that it was legislative staff run amok.

What is becoming clearer, however, is that this might be a case of inadequately supervised staffers running amok. When emergency management bill HB 843 went to the Senate Judiciary I Committee, it still contained the language found unconstitutional in Bateman. Committee chair Sen. Pete Brunstetter then reportedly gave it to staff to “fix.” But instead of simply repealing the now-unconstitutional gun ban, they apparently took it upon themselves to draft new gun bans. Equally clear is that although HB 489 was Rep. “Skip” Stam’s bill, Stam wasn’t even informed that his bill would be gutted before it was attempted.

What remains to be seen is whether Brunstetter and other Republicans will do the right thing and simply repeal the old ban. Right now, too many are still making noises about using gun bans to combat looting during natural or manmade disasters – once again falling for the old trap of targeting lawful guns instead of unlawful behavior.

GRNC is now asking that people contact their state senator (as opposed to the committee members) and make their displeasure known. You can find out your state senator (if you don’t already know) by going to this link and putting in your ZIP+4. If you don’t know your ZIP+4, you can find it on your driver’s license or most any piece of mail coming to your home.

The suggested letter composed by GRNC reads:

Dear Senator:

I strongly urge you to oppose the Proposed Committee Substitute for House Bill 489: “Dangerous Weapons Restrictions in Emergencies” (H489-CSSA-71 [v.4]). The bill would be more accurately titled: “Gun Rights Authorized by Bureaucrats.”

North Carolina’s existing ban on bearing arms outside the home was recently declared unconstitutional under the Second Amendment by a federal court in the case Bateman v. Perdue. But instead of simply repealing what is now a largely unenforceable statute, HB 489 would replace it with an even more insidious ban.

That HB 489’s long title describes “authorizing” arms and ammunition in the home speaks volumes about the bill. Language purporting to restrict cities from banning guns outside the home is vague to the point of being useless; the bill is sloppily drafted; and worst of all, it stipulates for the first time which lawful firearm-related activities I may or may not exercise IN MY OWN HOME.

Understand that I will accept NO NEW GUN BANS, but only the repeal of the state of emergency gun ban found unconstitutional in Bateman.

Please advise me of your position on this issue. I will be monitoring it via Grass Roots North Carolina legislative alerts.

Respectfully,

This is too important an issue to just let other people do it. If you live in North Carolina and you value your gun rights, get off your duff, copy and paste this message into an email, and send it.

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Expect A Coordinated Campaign

May 23, 2012 by

The Violence Policy Center report that compared “gun deaths” with deaths by motor vehicle is, as I pointed out yesterday, misleading. However, that hasn’t stopped their friends in the media and the gun control community along with gullible local media from picking up the story.

A quick Google search shows a slew of stories on the report especially from the ten states where so-called gun deaths exceed deaths by motor vehicles. Most of the local media reporting about it do not have the time nor the smarts to question it. They just report it as the gospel truth because it is coming from an organization that is supposedly dedicated to studying violence.

Then you have stories like the one by Brian Dickerson of the Detroit Free Press. Mr. Dickerson is the Editorial Page Editor. While he should know better I don’t think he wants to delve into the numbers. He’d rather use it to push his agenda.

But don’t expect the from-my-cold-dead-hands crowd to embrace the center’s conclusion that the disparity has everything to do with federal regulation — extensive and wildly successful in the case of motor vehicles, and virtually non-existent in the case of firearms.

Like I said, expect a coordinated campaign of puffball stories along with tut-tutting editorials and earnest letters to the editors about how we have to do something.

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There Is Research And Then There Is Junk Research

May 23, 2012 by 4 Comments

The Violence Policy Center released a report today that analyzed and compared firearm and motor vehicle related deaths for the year 2009 on a state-by-state basis. They found that in ten states firearm related deaths outnumbered  deaths caused by motor vehicles. These states are Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Virginia, and Washington

VPC Legislative Director Kristen Rand states, “Americans are reaping the benefits of smart safety regulation of motor vehicles. The idea that gun deaths exceed motor vehicle deaths in 10 states is stunning when one considers that 90 percent of American households own a car while fewer than a third own firearms. It is also important to consider that motor vehicles–unlike guns–are essential to the functioning of the entire U.S. economy. It is time to end firearms’ status as the last unregulated consumer product.”

As a result of their study, the Violence Policy Center has proposed a number of regulations, bans, restrictions, and enforcement actions.

Comprehensive regulation of the firearms industry and its products could include: minimum safety standards (i.e., specific design standards and the requirement of safety devices); bans on certain types of firearms such as “junk guns” and military-style assault weapons; limits on firepower; restrictions on gun possession by those convicted of a violent misdemeanor; heightened restrictions on the carrying of loaded guns in public; improved enforcement of current laws restricting gun possession by persons with histories of domestic violence; more detailed and timely data collection on gun production, sales, use in crime, involvement in injury and death; and, public education about the extreme risks associated with exposure to firearms.

America is reaping the benefits of decades of successful injury prevention strategies on its highways, but continues to pay an unacceptable, yet equally preventable, price in lives lost every year to gun violence.

There is only one little problem with their study and recommendations. They have aggregated all deaths from the use of a firearm – homicides, legal interventions (police shootings), suicides, and accidents – into what they call gun violence. In each of the ten states listed, suicides comprise the vast majority of firearm-related deaths. Homicides and legal interventions comprise only a fraction of the firearms-related deaths. This ranges from a low of 14% in Utah to a high of 46% in Michigan.

If you look at their recommendations, they do nothing to reduce suicide. Does it really matter to a person who is intent on committing suicide that they can’t use “junk” guns (sic) or a “assault  weapon” (sic) or that there are restrictions on concealed carry? We all know the answer is an unequivocal no.

Suicide is a sad thing. It is painful for those left behind who are left wondering why. It is hard on the law enforcement, EMT, and medical personnel who have to deal with the aftermath. And it is extremely sad that someone has given up all hope of living and decided to take their own life.

If the Violence Policy Center really wanted to propose something useful, they would push for more suicide hotlines. They would advocate for putting mental health treatment on par with other healthcare and not have it treated as a second class illness. They would conduct research into the root causes of suicide.

If VPC really wanted to look at the numbers, it would find that there were more suicides – 36,909 – than deaths from motor vehicles and only about half of those were committed with a firearm. Moreover, deaths from suffocation (hanging) and poisoning outnumbered homicides by almost 4,000 deaths.

VPC doesn’t really want to propose useful solutions nor do they really want to look at the numbers. They do junk research to promote their gun prohibitionist agenda and to continue getting money from the deep pockets of organizations like the Joyce Foundation. It is actually rather pathetic.

UPDATE: Sebastian has more on just how dependent VPC has become on that grant money. Support from donations now comprise less than 20% of their total revenues and you can guess where they get the rest of the money. Moreover, 55% of their budget goes to support the salaries of just Josh Sugarmann and Kristen Rand.