The Misdirection of Gun Restrictions

A liberal blogger asked the question, "How many people have died from gun violence because Republicans put the NRA profits above public safety?" If one looks are crime statistics and historical evidence, the answer would be none, because the people die when the crime rates are high, and there is no evidence that the massive increase of gun ownership has resulted in an increase in gun crime, as a matter of fact the opposite is true. Like the issue of background checks, there is no evidence that the gun restrictions would protect anyone or increase public safety. While the left has done a good job of associating guns to crime, the reality is gun violence follows crime rates, not the other way around.

Throughout the country, whether a state had strict restrictions or not, gun violence and homicides fell about the same rate of 50% over the last 20 years, while gun ownership nearly doubled. It is easy to pass laws and demonize guns, but much harder to actually to have real affect on violent violence. The anti-gun zealots say universal back grounds checks are logical and make sense, which on the surface does seem so, the problem is background checks have ever been shown to lower crime rates. Further the system is so flawed that some 80% of those flagged when trying  to buy a gun, are flagged in error. Is this the kind of system that should be expanded?

The same with assault weapons ban. One might buy into the argument that assault weapons and large capacity magazines have the ability to shoot more bullets and kill more people, yet their use in crimes (along with use of any rifles), continue to be very rare; less than shotguns, while their number in the US has climbed to 4-5 million. As a matter of fact, if all the assault weapons disappeared from the country, there is no evidence that it would have any impact on gun violence and/or gun homicides at all; it's simply a scam. Again it is the left simply creating an emergency and divisive issue and pretending they are on the side of public safety, while nothing they are proposing has ever prevented or lowered the amount of gun crimes and/or gun homicides; the problem is not guns, it's crime; and crime is way down so gun crimes are way down. It's that simple.

Meet Mike “The Gun Guy” Weisser; Self Hating Arms Dealer and Gun Owner Hating Zealot

The following article was published in the NYT by what may be  is one of the most condescending anti-gun zealots in a long time; he also appears to be a self hating arms dealer, "Despite what the N.R.A. says about people, not guns killing other people, there is no consumer product as lethal as a gun. But walk up to a guy (and it’s still almost always a guy) who is lovingly caressing the gun he just bought and tell him that what he’s holding is a lethal weapon and he’ll stare at you in disbelief. Ask him why he just plunked down $600 and he’ll stare at you again. He bought that gun because he likes buying guns — it’s as simple as that. He may mumble something about the 2nd Amendment because that’s what he’s been told, but if you think picking up a gun is any less impulsive than buying any other nonessential consumer item, think again." A Gun Dealer talks About Guns


Mike “The Gun Guy” Weisser  statements seem designed to show gun buyers/ owners as brainless trend following idiots (based on his description of his gun buyers, it really sounds like the only people that buy guns from him are know nothing liberals that have no idea why they are buying a firearm, it’s just seemed a cool thing to do). I for one have never heard a gun owner mumble when asked why he owns a gun(s), be it for self defense, hunting or target (milk jugs included) shooting. I can surely agree that if you “walk up to a (conservative) guy (and it’s still almost always a guy) who is lovingly caressing the gun he just bought and tell him that what he’s holding is a lethal weapon and he’ll stare at you in disbelief,” as the conservative will think the woman asking the question (and it’s still almost always a woman) must be a liberal tune; the fact that a firearm is a lethal weapon is the very reason it was bought for gods sake!! Further one wonders what liberal socioeconomic circles the author runs in where one would have the money to impulse buy a $600 gun, they way most of us pickup a key chain flashlight while waiting at a checkout line. In the final analysis, when you hear a liberal say they believe in the 2nd Amendment (like it’s alien spacecrafts) and they only believe in common sense gun safety (like banning assault weapons when it is pretty much agreed the use of any rifle in a crime is so rare as to be an anomaly). The truth behind all this appears to be liberals continually trying to drum up a gun emergency where none exists; fortunately it has become common knowledge that gun crimes/homicides have been steadily falling for over 20 years, which is why the majority of Americans put gun control near the bottom of their list. But liberals still want to make it a decisive issue so they can try to use guns to discredit conservatives in elections.

Mike Weisser ends his article saying the best course is to trick gun owners into believing that anti-gun laws by liberals are only to protect the 2nd Amendment and make it easy to continue to by guns.

"Rather than considering them as participants in a modern morality play, they need to be engaged as consumers who, above all, don’t want to lose their ability to quickly and easily purchase guns. The trick is to convince gun owners that by helping to find ways to protect us from gun violence they won’t lose what they love. But that’s a conversation of a very different kind.

Liberals call these "ways to protect us from gun violence," common sense gun laws; what is not discussed openly is that liberals believe that it is only common sense to disarm the public and ban firearms. So that is their real end game.  

Citizenry Pushing Back on Unpopular Gun Restrictions

All those that want an Australian type of gun confiscations should consider these three facts.

1) Unlike Australia (and every other country in the world) the people do not have a 200 year history of a Bill of Rights that constrains the Federal Government, resulting in a citizenry believing that gun ownership is a right and not a privilege, dictating gun ownership, shall not be infringed by the government.

 2) In Australia the popularity for gun confiscation was 90%; a huge percentage considering the small fraction of Americans want to disarm themselves.

 3) In Australia 1 in 5 owned guns; of the 3,000,000 guns only 600,000 were turned in voluntarily. In the US gun there are a 100 times more guns with ownership exceeding 1 to 1, with some 350,000,000 guns.

So the reason that the gun restrictions in Australia works is becasue it is the will of the people, so the majority comply.  In the United States it is the opposite, where liberal politicians are governing against the will of the people and trying to push gun bans and restrictions on a very suspicious citizenry. As an example, in September of 2011 the citizenry of Colorado recalled two state legislators (the first time in Colorado history) and a third did not run for election, after they pushed through a slate of, what turned out to be, very unpopular anti-gun laws. The most contentious was a mandatory  turn in/ magazine confiscation law that would a million of previously law abiding Coloradans into criminals over night. Further in Connecticut, another unpopular law demanded owners register their assault weapons with the state or face confiscation and arrest. The law was all but ignored, plus it was also discovered that at least 68% of the police officers in the state owned an unregistered assault weapon. It appears the state is now taking a wait to prosecute tactic, charging only those when the police discover a violation during their routine calls for service. And in Los Angeles, a new law (similar to the Colorado law) required the turning in of magazines with a capacity over 10 rounds, but not one magazine was turned in.

What liberals tend to ignore is a law has to to has voluntary compliance to work. In other words, just passing a law does not mean it will be followed, and if it is not, there is little the state can do about it, bar some unreasonable punishment which is forbidden by our Constitution. This is the danger of legislating against the will of the people. At the point the people say no, there is a real danger that the current leadership will loose the peoples respect, and the current governance will collapse due to a nullification by the people of  their permission to lead.

There are many skewed studies design from the beginning to cherry pick information to show that gun availability results in gun crimes; the primary statistical issue is correlation does not equal causation, in other words it's very difficult to determine cause from effect. http://www.latimes.com/busines... However, any study on guns needs to stand up to the FBI statics that gun homicides have been spiraling down (by 50%) in the last 20 years, while gun ownership has skyrocketed; yet based on this information Peter Gelblum is horrified; that's hard to figure (hey thousand of people are not being killed, isn't that a good thing?) unless Peter simply hates guns under any circumstances. Here are some other facts; of all homicides blacks are the victim 50% of the time (although they are only 13% of the population) and 80% of black male adults die from homicides. Further some 80% of of non-suicide violent gun deaths is a result of gang violence and a majority is black on black crimes in poor black urban communities. These Democrat run ghettos are the only places bucking the trend of reduced gun violence; and these cities have the strictest gun regulations in the country. Yes, these thugs can go across the borders where gun regulations are not as strict, but FBI studies tell us that the vast majority of guns obtained by criminals are not purchased legally or stolen; most are acquired in an underground black market. Even if guns are obtained in such a manner, it does not explain why the violent crime rate is much lower where the criminals are supposedly going where guns laws are less strict. As far as background checks, again the FBI and ATF have released information that 93% of guns denied through background checks are false positives

The there is call for a so called ban to "automatic" or assault weapons; automatic is being used in-correctly as these non-military grade rifles are semi-automatic. The reason liberals use the terms automatic and semi automatic interchangeably, is first because it really piss@s off gun people and second, to promote misinformation to the ignorant masses of liberals. This is becasue if the masses were to find out the truth, that workings of a semi-automatic rifle is essentially the same as every pistol ever made going back to 1911 (or before), and that not only are these rifles rarely used in crimes, (certainly less than shotguns) even though there are some 4-5 million in the hands of the law abiding citizenry, the FBI has acknowledged that another assault weapons ban would have absolutely no affect on reducing homicides and/or violent crimes (just as what didn't occur during the last ban). Then the liberal masses might start asking; Well if that is true, why not try something that has a chance of actually reducing violent crimes? It is simply the left making a mountain out nothing (a strawman), and making a great noise of how they want to save the citizenry with this ban, so they can claim the morale high ground, when in reality the entire issue is just a smoke screen to divert attention away from the Democrats utter failure in creating cities that are no more than hellholes, that are killing off blacks in record numbers.

US Enjoying the Lowest Violent Crime Rate in Decades

The left continues to use the false narrative that we are having a gun crime epidemic and something needs to be done right now. The truth of the matter that violent crimes have been falling for the last 20 years. Yes there has been spikes in urban cities run by Democrats, but over all "Compared with 1993, the peak of U.S. gun homicides, the firearm homicide rate was 49% lower in 2010, and there were fewer deaths, even though the nation’s population grew. The victimization rate for other violent crimes with a firearm—assaults, robberies and s@x crimes—was 75% lower in 2011 than in 1993. Violent non-fatal crime victimization overall (with or without a firearm) also is down markedly (72%) over two decades". http://www.pewsocialtrends.org...

 The liberal mantra is, to reduce the "epidemic" of gun crime,s there is a need to reduce the number of guns. But the facts show that violent crime numbers have continued to fall as the number of guns has significantly increased; IOW, rather than having an epidemic of violent crime, we are enjoying a drop in crime that has not been seen since the the 1930-1940s and to a level not seen since the end of the 19th century.





But that hasn't stopped the left rigging their studies try to demonize guns. One of my favorite has been passed around recently after the Oregon shooting; that armed citizens have never stopped a mass shooting. Two liberal magazine web sites www.thenation.com  and  www.rawstory.com  floated two stories written by a supposed combat veteran and Navy SEAL, that good guys with guns stop bad guys with guns is a fantasy. However it appears neither publication vetted the guy who turned out to be a complete fraud. Further, when one looks at the argument that armed citizens haven't stopped any mass shootings, it quickly becomes obvious that it is base the false premise that someone is documenting mass shootings that didn't happen. In other words, mass shootings either happened or they don't, one can only speculate whether the actions of an armed citizen stopped a mass killing or not. Here is one of the many lists where armed citizens stopped violent crimes (or maybe thwarted a mass shooting).
https://www.washingtonpost.com...

The fact there has been a considerable rise in mass shootings, but it's really a false argument because it fails to address how few there have been to begin with. "There were, on average, 16.4 such shootings a year from 2007 to 2013, compared with an average of 6.4 shootings annually from 2000 to 2006. In the past 13 years, 486 people have been killed in such shootings, with 366 of the deaths in the past seven years. In all, the study looked at 160 shootings since 2000. (Shootings tied to domestic violence and gangs were not included.) http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09...  So we are talking about an average of 10 additional mass shootings a year; and for this you want to take tens or hundreds of millions of guns from law abiding citizens. IOW this demonisation of guns from the anti-gun lobby (and it's followers) is not about public safety, it's about liberal social engineering to fit their agenda. But they keep repeating this false narrative over and over, hoping that will make people believe it. And why not? It's the same tactic used by liberals/fascists/Marxists and other collectivists all through modern history.

The Right to Bear Arms, Gun Laws and Mental Illness

Once again a cowardly psychotic killer takes a gun(s) to a gun-free zone and does the unthinkable. So what is the answer? Well, it should be noted that where the more stringent gun laws are, the more gun violence occurs. In Chicago, the city with arguably the strictest anti-ownership/anti-carry gun laws in the nation, they are approaching a new record this year (bucking the national trend downward) with already more than 2,000 shooting injuries and near 400 deaths. President Obama says it’s clearly a political issue, and Hillary Clinton wants another assault-weapon ban even though the first had no effect on gun crime at all; according to the FBI, there are five times more people killed with knives. The only demonstrational response that has worked has been to eliminate most gun-free zones and allow more citizens to carry firearms. But the anti-gun lobby doesn’t really care about public safety, they just want to eliminate gun ownership. Contrary to the anti-gun lobby, more law abiding citizens than ever are buying guns, which has resulted is the demonisation of the NRA as the cause; but  the NRA did nothing than their usual advocacy of gun safety and legal possession. Most citizens, even if they don't own a firearm, are comfortable in the fact they would be able to buy one if needed. The increase of gun sales was simply a reaction to Obama pushing for more restrictions on gun sales, showing President Obama may be the best thing that has ever come along for gun manufacturers.

Most of these mass, more accurately called "'rampage killers', tend to follow a definite pattern, what he called a "program for murder and suicide." The shooter, almost always a young man, enters an area filled with many people. He is heavily armed. He may begin by targeting a few specific victims, but he soon moves on to "indiscriminate killings where just killing people is the prime aim." He typically has no plan for escape and kills himself or is killed by police". What Mass Killers Want—And How to Stop Them We have also seen a trend that these rampage killers are on psychotropic drugs, showing a connection between mass killings and mental illness. Now certainly the vast majority of those with mental illness, or on mood stabilizing drugs are not violent, many of which live a unassuming normal life aided by these mood stabilizing drugs.

But, there has been a disturbing trend that school psychologist tend to diagnose the condition de jour, causing parents to demand request psychotropic drugs from their doctor.

The mother of the shooter Oregon Jr College stated that her son had Asbergers Syndrome (AS), a disability related to Autism. However if one has even a cursory understanding of AS, one would know that such a diagnoses was extremely unlikely. AS is also defined as a non-verbal learning disability, a child with AS would have inability to understand  non-verbal communication, such as body language or tone; a condition that results in a lack of eye contact. AS kids also have a very limited understanding of the world around them, and will become anxious if familiar routines are not followed and can be overwhelmed by sensory stimulation, sometimes called an AS meltdown. Further, AS kids tend to be internally motivated (rather than trying to fit in or receive praise). This leads AS kids with a lack of understanding social norms. And while an AS kid is capable of anger, it is usually directed at an individual an not something so removed as organized religion.

The age of the Oregon shooter shows that he was diagnosed with the condition de jour in the 1990's; every 15 years or so a different developmental disorder becomes the most commonly diagnosed disorder (the end result these diagnoses result in rampant over-medication). In the 1980's it was ADD and later ADHD (these two alone account for most the over-medication, often prescribed simply to control the child's behavior and not treat a disorder), in the 1990/2000's it was Asperger's Syndrome/ Autism Spectrum, and now since it appeared in the DSM-5, (The official list of recognized disorders) Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder, or DMDD. While the shooters true disorder has not been released, the suspect did go by the online name "Lithium Love", and was reported to have been institutionalized for not taking his medication. Lithium is a powerful psychotropic mood stabilizer, most commonly used to treat Bipolar Disorder, a condition defined by extreme mood shifts. Bipolar Disorder can sometimes lead to related condition called Dysphoric Mania, where a person will experience depression and mania at the same time. This a full-blown psychosis ,where individuals  lose the ability to determine the difference between what is real and not real, they have visual and audio hallucinations, which can lead to extreme behaviors, such as paranoia, suicidal and/or homicidal tendencies, rage, extreme violence and/or a lashing out at imagined enemies. Progression of Psychosis in Bipolar Disorder

 "Mass shooters aim to tell a story through their actions. They create a narrative about how the world has forced them to act, and then must persuade themselves to believe it. The final step is crafting the story for others and telling it through spoken warnings beforehand, taunting words to victims or manifestos created for public airing." What Mass Killers Want—And How to Stop Them


There is not one gun restriction the anti-gun lobby has ever been proposed that can or will stop rampage killers or even gun crimes in general. The fact the laws that have been implemented tend to be a one size fits all in what is a multi-faceted that rarely resulted in any reduction in these crimes makes one wonders why the anti-gun lobby keeps demanding the same failed restrictions hoping for different result. Gun Laws and Crime: A Complex Relationship The only policies that have been shown to work in the real world is to arm the citizenry. Rampage killers, like other sociopaths, know enough to stay clear of locations were the targets may be armed. The result of  of doing away with these gun-free zones, will probably result in the citizenry stopping more gun crimes, instead it will result in criminals going elsewhere where they feel safe; but if a rampage killer does attack a group where one or more is armed, at the very least there will be some ability to stop the carnage.

So what is the answer? It's important to know that these rampage killer meticulously plan their attacks; often study previous rampage killings in great detail. Further they see a great rational in what they have planned. They often have paranoid delusions and see themselves as a victim of an unjust society.  The  Oregon rampage shooter posted “A man who was known by no one is now known by everyone. His face splashed across every screen, his name across the lips of every person on the planet, all in the course of one day. Seems like the more people you kill, the more you’re in the limelight. To these rampage killers they often see the killings as a means to an end, and that end is to garner the largest audience possible. So the rampage killer of his act will try and out do previous mass killers to create more notoriety himself. And while fame is a objective by itself, the rampage killer wants everyone to know why he did what he did, his life story and grievances; so in many was mass media is as much to blame for this phenomena and anything else. The answer is to mitigate the audience; which means media needs to tone down their reporting. First law enforcement should shut down all social media attached to the suspect; the media should hold back the killers name and photo; the press already does this with juvenile suspects, so it could certainly do the same for rampage killers. Give all the attention to the victims and survivors, and be indifferent to the shooter. Report on the victims life stories, but not how they died; and praise the heroics of the survivors. Do not release any information on the shooters rational for the shooting (ie manifest); it generally won't make sense to the average citizen anyway. Hopefully, when those contemplating a rampage shooting, sees how little a shooter is reported on, and how their grievances are ignored they will pursue other avenues to place themselves in the limelight. 

Beware the 'Gun-free Zone"

One of the most dangerous places, where your chance of getting murdered by a cowardly stranger is the highest, is a "gun free zone." The anti-gun zealots paradigm continues to be framed by false hysterics and not in reality. The facts are the FBI continues to tell us gun crimes are at a 50 year low (while gun ownership has increased 1/3) with one caveat; black on black crime in many urban areas has been on the rise over the last 4-5 years (During the time Obama has been President and paling around with Al Sharpton). There is a little hope however, while Chicago is rated dead last in allowing gun ownership and using federal laws and to arrest and imprison criminals that commit gun crimes, Detroit with it's new Republican mayor has instituted a plan that arms more citizens while working with the Federal DOJ in prosecuting and giving stiff sentences to gun toting criminals; the first year, car jackings were reduced by almost 32%. Detroit to Crackdown on Gun Crimes

This is the same tactic pioneered by the state of Virginia's Republican legislature; there over the last 7years, gun sales increased 100% while gun crimes dropped almost 30%. So the choice is elect leaders that institute symbolic feel good, "common-sense measures" that punish law abiding citizens or those that institute measures that punish criminals and decrease gun crimes. Virgina Gun Crime Drops Again as Firearm Sales Soar

We have the laws to arrest and prosecute criminal gun violations, we simply need to use them. Further it is not the the number of guns in law abiding citizens hands that is the problem as it has become well known that restricting gun ownership and high capacity magazines and/or registering gun owners have never led to a reduction in criminal activity. But the left refuses to admit this is the case, as usual they rely on their emotional attachment to their world view to dictate their reality; but the reality is states with the most restrictive gun laws have the most gun crimes..What is apparent is the anti-gun zealots have no real interest in public safety, they simply have an anti-gun agenda, and really don't care whether it has a positive affect on the citizenry safety or not.

Recently the Chief of Police of Washington DC blamed large capacity magazine for the high murder rate, however she had to facts to back that up because her police Department doesn't keep any records of such information, but did the media call her on it? No.

California Blocks All New Gun Sales with Microstamping Mandate

As of Jan 1, 2015 no Handgun Manufacturer will be allowed to sell any new model handgun in California; the reason being the new Microstamping mandate and the fact that no handgun manufacturer in the US uses the technology. While I'm sure that those that against the lawful ownership of handguns are cheering with delight, the end result is new and safer guns will not be available in California Microstamping is a process where identifying characters are engraved on the head  of the firing pin of a handgun, with the hope that it will leave an impression on the primer of a casing, so law enforcement can identify a handgun that was used in a crime. While the California Police Chiefs Association (CPCA) originally showed interest in the technology,  they now express concern over the "hasty implementation" as  "peer-reviewed studies conducted by independent research organizations conclude that the technology does not function reliably and that criminals can remove the markings easily in mere seconds". California Police Chiefs Association Calls for Firearms Microstamping Study

To date, Glock, Ruger, Smith and Wesson have already said they will not sell new handguns guns in California rather than invest in what is was deemed a faulty technology in 2007 that can be defeated by criminal in seconds (It should be noted that Law enforcement is exempted from the mandate as they are constantly upgrading their officers firearms, which these days are about 80% Glock; apparently civilians don't rank high enough to be able to purchase newer and safer firearms) and there has also been limited research and/or development of the technology. The only reason Microstamping has become mandatory is the patent has run out, while gun manufactures and law enforcement have serious reservations, the California Legislators apparently do not. Further even though that patent has run out, the proprietary machinery owned by the developer, NanoMark of Seattle, Washington, makes it still the only company from which the Microstamping technology can be purchased. "Two trade groups, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) and the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers Institute (SAAMI), filed a lawsuit in 2014 seeking both declaratory and injunctive relief against what the groups perceive as an attempt to ban semi-automatic handguns in the state." The court issued a decision on May 21, 2014 that denied NSSF and SAAMI’s preliminary injunction request to stop the state from enforcing the new law. The court found that they failed to establish a reasonable probability that they will success on the merits of their case." However this was before the largest firearm manufactures declared they are not going to build a faulty system into their pistols and have been resigned to the fact that they will not be able to serve the California market with their new and often safer handguns; this may result in another attempt to force an injunction. Now this does not mean that Californians will not be able to purchase handguns, there are hundreds of models on California's Department of Justice (DOJ) gun list, it's just new models that have been made illegal by this law.

Finally it is worth noting that California has dozens of gun safety laws that the legislature simply refuses to fund. Included is a law that allows the California DOJ to track down gun owners that made legal purchases of handguns or assault rifles, but have since become ineligible from owning them due to mental illness or a criminal conviction. Unfortunately of the 20,000 illegal gun owners on the list, with some 40,000  illegally possessed firearms in California, only about 2000 have had their firearms confiscated; and around 3,000 are added to the list every year. California Unable to Disarm 19,700 felons and Mentally Ill People 

The folley that a gun has but one purpose

"A gun has but one purpose...to kill" is highly simplistic and in many cases wrong. First in most cases guns that are aimed at people are designed to stop a threat, not to kill; the Hague Convention of 1899 prohibits the use of bullets that expand when fired into a body, hence only full metal Jacket bullets are used in warfare. A full metal jacket bullet makes it less likely a person will be killed; it's also well known that a wounded soldier takes more resources that a killed soldier. There is also the fact that guns are used as a deterrent much more than they are used to shoot people; hence the saying that carrying a concealed weapon gives the carrier more options than those that don't. There are also many firearms specifically used for target shooting that are so job specific (the majority of competition/target shooters do not hunt), they don't translate well to handling/aiming hunting firearms and certainly would be impractical to use hunting or in a deadly force scenario. Yes, the purpose of a gun used to hunt is to kill, but if a police officer wounds a bad guy and that wounding stops the threat, it would be a homicide for the police officer resume shooting to make sure the bad guy was dead. Certainly if a person uses deadly force, for clarity sake there needs to always be the justification to take a life. But one can't ignore that the rate of fatal firearms injures in the US is 10 per 100,000 but the number of non-fatal wounded is 25 per 100,000. So if "a gun has one purpose; to kill" it would seem the gun is not accomplishing it's purpose very well.

California Current Gun Laws Continue Unfunded

In a recent blog I was asked,  Like most of what is touted as needing "reform"; immigration, gun ownership by criminals, database of criminals with mental health issues, and I'm sure you all can think of more, we need simply to enforce and apply the laws we already have. 

In other words what are the current gun laws that are not being enforced? This was the subject of an LA Times Article,  California unable to disarm 19,700 felons and mentally ill people . The article starts out saying California authorities are empowered to seize weapons owned by convicted felons and people with mental illness, but staff shortages and funding cuts have left a backlog of more than 19,700 people to disarm, a law enforcement official said Tuesday.

The article goes on to say, that in California alone, there is a 3 year year back log on simply entering the names of felons and the mentally ill that should be ineligible to posses or acquire firearms and tracking down the 19,700 known felons and mentally ill that own or have acquired some 39,000 firearms and need to be disarmed but haven't been; this is blamed on a lack of funding and there are some 3,000 names being added to the list every year.

One is therefore forced to ask why is there little political pressure for more funding of these exsisting laws rather than the likes of Diane Fienstein pushing for another Federal Assault Weapons and large capacity magazine ban? California already has such a ban, but according to FBI and DOJ studies, their use in crimes is statistically insignificant as the vast majority of guns crimes are committed with handguns. So rather than really make the citizenry safe by taking guns away from felons and the mentally ill, all the political will is to ban weapons from law abiding citizens.  The idea that we need gun and magazine bans, rather than fully fund the laws we have now is ridiculous; in California even at gun shows all buyers must have a back ground check and guns must be transferred through a registered gun dealer, but the DOJ returns are so slow many guns are sold to those that are prohibited to buy because the dealers are not advised within the waiting period). California already has all the gun control being asked for by President Obama and more, but we aren't funding it. One has to wonder what the real end game is..

The Purpose of Guns is Not to Kill People

An interesting truth that is often ignored even by those that are gun advocates, is that guns are designed to stop people from whatever they are doing, not kill them. Granted, in the process of stopping them you will likely kill them and the very act of firing a weapon is an act where the use of deadly force needs to be justified,  but killing the suspect is rarely the intended purpose. Now I'm not saying this because I think one should shoot to wound, I am saying this because if the average citizen or even police officer shoots and wounds a suspect, and the suspect is then no longer a threat, practically none will walk up on the wounded suspect and finish them off; is killing the suspect was the purpose they would! The police are taught to shoot at the center of mass at a human silhouette target. This is not because shooting a person center of mass has a greater probability of killing a human target, but because shooting center of mass increases the probability of hitting a human target, thus increasing the probability of stopping a suspect. The left has based all it's anti-gun rhetoric that all guns have one purpose; to kill. That even target shooters are only honing their skills for hunting and/or killing; never mind that of the 100 million gun owners in the US, only 37.7 million have participated in hunting of some kind. Therefore the idea that gun is actually a tool to stop someone from doing harm usually results in extreme responses. This Thursday I called KSCO and talked with Mark Silverman who had as a guest West Holts, from California Gun Talk. My call was in response of an incredibly stupid remark by Silverman. Silverman was discussing an incident where a female shot a male intruder 5 times with a handgun and the intruder survived. Silverman then said since the female didn't kill the suspect with 5 rounds there would be no reason for her to have a large capacity magazine, the impetus being since the only purpose of a gun is to kill people, the victim had somehow failed to protect herself because she didn't kill the intruder and would not need more ammunition if there were more intruders because she had already shown she wouldn't be able to kill them. When I said that she had accomplished her goal by stopping the intruder from doing her harm, which is the same reason a police officer uses deadly force, to stop someone from committing a violent act. At this Silverman cut me off, stated off the cuff that the police are not taught to shoot at knees and hung up on me; expect this result from the left because it is poison to their script..

When deadly force is justified, to sole purpose is to stop the perpetrator; whether it results in the perpetrator's death or not is really inconsequential.

The Fallacy of "If Only One Life is Saved"

In the typical twisted logic of a progressive, President Obama recently said of increased gun control, "if there's one life we can save, we've got an obligation to try." This is simply a collectivist idiom designed to make giving up ones rights sound noble. Millions of Americans sacrificed their lives for the freedoms we now enjoy, but President Obama would have us believe that if a freedom might lead to the injury of some  innocent person, than that freedom should be mitigated or excised away; it's government saying, you are not smart enough to make the decisions that rule your life, so the government must step in and do it for you; it is the road to self enslavement. The collectivist will always take some tragedy and drive up the hysteria ("never let an emergency go to waste"), then explain that unfortunately some individual rights will need to be given up for the greater good and there is no tragedy that can not be politicized by the left; it is not out of the realm of possibilities that Gabrielle Giffords injured brain was unable to even understand her anti-gun speech given recently in a congressional hearing ). The reasoning of "If only one life is saved," is collectivist rhetoric that  will never accomplish it's stated purpose of saving lives, or like gun bans, the regulations will only be symbolic at the time, but will morph into into the call for more restrictive regulations in the future. Even worse, we give up our freedoms because we are told, every individual right taken away may have the consequence of saving a life). The collectivist politician(s) continue to promise not only what they can never deliver, but what the have no intention on delivering. The purpose behind such actions are described by Thomas Sowell ;

 "The whole point of the collectivist mindset is to concentrate power in the hands of the collectivists -- which is to say, to take away our freedom. Freedom is seldom destroyed all at once. More often it is eroded, bit by bit, until it is gone. This can happen so gradually that there is no sudden change that would alert people to the danger. By the time everybody realizes what has happened, it can be too late, because their freedom is gone". Obama's Rhetoric

In a society with individual rights, regulations and laws are a governmental request for voluntary compliance. But with a concentration of power and a loss of individual rights (history has shown that collectivist societies breed totalitarian and oppressive regimes) there is no need voluntary compliance. Collectivists like President Obama like to use the same terminology as our founding documents but give them a collectivist meaning. A perfect example is the "general welfare" clause in the US Constitution. Any person who has spent any time reading the Federalist Papers, know that far from being a social mandate, " promoting the general welfare"  was  the end result of the Constitution, and it's guarantee of individual rights and limited government. Finally lets look at the gun problem logically. There hundreds of millions of guns in the hands of law abiding citizens and only a handful of nut-jobs that may want to slaughter the our children in the schools. Do we ban future sales of certain weapons that are rarely used in this slaughter, or do we guard the children? I have a son starting High School next year and I know what I want..and it's not a symbolic gesture.

Gun Control; the Australian model

 Below is a letter to the Editor espousing the Australian model of buying back guns. It is a straw man argument that still requires rebuttal.

Mentally unstable males are being blamed for many of the killing sprees. OK, but is everyone overlooking the obvious? A mentally unstable person cannot go out and kill 10, 20, 30 people without the aid of semi-automatic handguns and military style assault rifles. It's the guns stupid! Stay on message. And people keep saying there are no easy answers to gun violence. Wrong again! Australia is an excellent example of what can be done to stop mass murder with guns. In 1996, a lone gunman killed 32 people with semi-automatic guns. Within weeks, the Australian government was working on gun reform laws that banned assault weapons, tightened licensing laws and financed gun buyback programs. Since the laws were enacted in 1996 there has been a reduction of gun violence and no more mass murder rampages. Yes, something can be done. Ron Lowe


Before I discuss the Austrian buy back model, lets look at your statement  "A mentally unstable person cannot go out and kill 10, 20, 30 people without the aid of semi-automatic handguns and military style assault rifles." Perhaps you forget that terrorists currently and throughout history use bombs to commit mass causality slaughter. While an assault weapon is deadly, bombs are cheaper and are capable of much more destruction and death.

The Australian buy back is another strawman argument buy the left. The Australian mandated buy back program resulted in 650,000 firearms being turned in. While the result was a reduction in gun violence,  non-firearm violent crime increased; so the end result was a wash in violent crime. Australia has a population of about 20million; the US has a population of 300 million. For every 100 Australian, 20 owned guns; for every 100 Americans 80 own guns. Australia has not bill of rights or a constitutional right to own a firearm; the US has both; the right to bear arms in Australia has no where near the significance than it does in the US. There is also nothing in the Australian constitution that guarantees human rights, only five explicit individual rights in the Constitution. They are the right to vote (Section 41), protection against acquisition of property on unjust terms (Section 51 (xxxi)), the right to a trial by jury (Section 80), freedom of religion (Section 116) and prohibition of discrimination on the basis of State of residency (Section 117). Australia also has a limited separation of powers, so the government can pretty much dictate whatever it wants and the citizenry is expected to obey. The national laws of other countries are not created in a vacuum, a fact conveniently not brought up by the Left; remember how Obama praised China, "Everybody's watching what's going on in Beijing right now with the Olympics. Think about the amount of money that China has spent on infrastructure. Their ports, their train systems, their airports are all vastly the superior to us now, which means if you are a corporation deciding where to do business … you're starting to think, "Beijing looks like a pretty good option." Why aren't we doing the same thing?." If Ron Lowe thinks the US should model Australia, he best go to Australia, because it ain't happening here!

2nd Amendment for Muskets?

The following is a couple of responses to the Santa Cruz Sentinel blog on Gun Control. The first addressed the belief by some that our founding fathers would have drawn the line at muskets.  

When the Second Amendment was crafted, our Founding Fathers had no idea how guns would evolve over the next two centuries. They were under the belief that Americans should have the right to bear muskets! Not automatic weapons. The Obama administration should keep that in mind as they decide new guidelines on what guns Americans should legally be able to possess. William Wright, Santa Cruz

William Wright, yours is an opinion that usually comes from ignorance of the Constitution. Believe it or not the founding fathers believed that every American was in charge of his own life; and to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, if it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg..it is of no concern. The only time Americans were expected to come together was as an armed militia when "the security of a free state" was in jeopardy. Therefore "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," by the state, as it may be the the state itself that is threatening the existence of the free state; our forefathers did not trust government. The type of weapon was to be a contemporary military grade weapon; as a matter of fact the idea that one militia member with an assault weapon could be more deadly than a platoon with muskets would have been welcome when we were fighting the British; they had already learned that couple regiments of rifleman could destroy three or four regiments of Tories with muskets; the rifle was pretty much the assault weapon of the day.. However firearm innovation did not stop with rifles.100 years later the Henry rifle, "gave a single man the firepower of a dozen marksmen armed with muzzle-loading muskets." There is little doubt that a 150 year old Henry rifle would give a modern semi-automatic assault weapon a run for it's money. So no William, our Founding Fathers did not write the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution under the belief that Americans should have the right to bear muskets. Our Founding Fathers wrote the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution under the belief that the Americans citizen should be able to repel an army to preserve the Constitution itself using whatever contemporary firearm that would be available at the time to accomplish that goal.

The second was a response from a very inarticulate liberal, with their typical emotional response, but he did hit on some points the "holier than thou" liberal tend to bring up..The writer, Jack Hoff (apparently his name and self description) was responding to a Mike Marketello who wrote, "I'll take it slow and in steps so you can follow along. Yes, we do have police, and we do have a great 911 system. It is your contention that nobody needs a gun, the correct response being not to protect yourself from violence, but to dial 911 and wait for the police to show up and protect you?  Well Jack, we have police, we have 911, give it your best shot and explain to the folks here why we still have crime? I mean we have the cops and 911, nobody need be a victim it's 2013, so why do you suppose people choose to be a victim of crime instead of just dialing 911.
The forum excitedly waits your reply, it should be a good laugh."

Heh Mike, that is why we have 911 and a police dept. Get a grip pal, this is 2013 not 1774!
Gun owners==kooks!

Mike Marketello: 99% of gun owners are so called "hunters". Can't wait to play "dress up" in camo clothing, get together with a bunch of their drinkin' "BUDDIES", and go out and destroy a living animal. Let's not forget the high power scope so the animal can be shot from 200 yards away! I'd rather spend the weekend with my girlfriend.....however, I'm a straight male.
All hunters are cowards! I learned karate and earned my black belt over 30 years ago.
A real man can defend himself without a gun. P***ies are gun owners!
Get off you lazy asses and take a self defense class.
Oh, and I love how hunters carry their "weapons" on the gun rack in their rear pick-em-up
window! Like I'm a real man because I have rifles in my truck window. Jack Hoff

 Jack Hoff, you sound like a typical liberal, if the facts don't fit your world view, just make them up as you go along; 99% of gun owners are hunters? really? The reality of course is your world view is shared by very few, but your right to share them came at the barrel of a gun. Perhaps you've haven't noticed but we live in dangerous times. I am a retired Police Officer and I can tell you that 99% of the time we arrive after the fact and help clean up. Having a firearm simply gives you one more option,"If you have a gun you can decide if it's necessary to use it; if you don't have a gun that is not a decision you will be able to make." Also there has never been any correlation between gun ownership and violent crime (Britain has more violent crime per capita than the US). Yes, the US has a much higher murder rate, but subtract the gang members killing each other and suicides, the number drops considerably (these are two areas where the killings and death would still occur with or without firearms). Oh, and carrying firearms in the back window of a pickup is to be lawful; when transporting a firearm it must be unloaded and either somewhere beyond reach (ie a trunk) or in full view and most gun owners don't want their firearms rattling about in the beds or their truck. BTW, I think you parents named you right.

Thank's to VP Joe Biden for Making Guns Cool Again

The one saving grace of an over reaching government is the constant misreading of the citizenry. It should be obvious to any thinking person that with over 300 million firearms already in circulation a gun ban of newly purchased firearms will have no effect on gun crimes at all. But what it does do is make  guns really cool again and the thing to have. Before Prohibition, many Americans seemed satisfied that if they could buy a drink, it didn't really matter if they had one or not; but with a pending gun ban led by VP Joe Biden and the anti-gun lobby,  we now see Americans scrambling to buy firearms and ammunition at a here before unheard of rate, much the way the citizenry during Prohibition pursued a speakeasy. And it's not because of Zombies; it's because Americans do not like being told what they can and can not have.  The state has thrown out the straw man arguments, such as assault weapons are not designed for hunting, as if there is something in the second amendment that says the right to bear arms is for hunting. When a person that actually understands the Constitution explains the reason for the right to bare arms is to protect the citizenry from an over reaching and tyrannical government, the main stream media treats this like an extremist belief, as if our forefathers vision of a government built on the foundation of individual rights was also the act of extremists. But somewhere in the sole of every American is the belief in freedom and Liberty; one of the most common replies by Americans is, "Hey, its a free country".

I heard a British journalists that is a member  of the US media, refer to the Constitution as a book; and said during a debate that he debated the second amendment many times and he knows what is says. The reason that this journalist is so ignorant is because, while he may had read the Constitution he has never lived it. He doesn't understand that while Britain has already given up it's individual freedoms and sovereignty, partly due to the Britain's lack of a Constitution with a guarantee of individual rights, however in America our Constitution is still alive and still guarantees that America is a free country. The reason we want our guns is not just for hunting; and not just for personal protection; and even not just to fight off a tyrannical government; it's because it's is our Constitutional right to own them. Something an non-American will never understand.So thank you VP Biden, for as long the citizenry believed guns were available, gun ownership really wasn't an issue. But now your just not hip (or a true patriot) unless you are armed. VP Biden says part of his gun control program is to confiscate all unregistered firearms. How's that working out for you Joe? Found any unregistered firearms yet?

Obama's War on the Middle Class Part 2

President Obama may make speeches to the contrary but suburbia is one of his main targets; suburbia represents to Obama all that is wrong with America. First the flight to the suburbs took with it funds that had been used to fund inner city schools. Second the lavish comfort of a single family in a suburban home is the kind of inequality and flaunting of capitalist success that runs contrary to his socialist’s roots and the gas wasted driving to and from the suburbs. The President has reacted by letting gas prices double in 3 years, a plan to increase taxes on those making over $250,000 and allowing middle-class healthcare to increase substantially . The president believes that except for the government elite, the preferred method of housing is small high rise apartments near ones work as the President has praised in China.

 The NYT recently performed an accidental act of journalism with an article titled Ambiguity in Health Law Could Make Family Coverage Too Costly for Many.

Remember those immortal words by Nancy Pelosi, “We have to pass the bill to find out what is in it?”; well there has been more “find(ing) out what is in it”. Turns out when determining what is affordable healthcare Insurance, the IRS says the dollar amount should be based solely on the cost of a single employee and not his family; family insurance usually cost 3-4 times that of individual insurance. Healthcare advocates say this will result in millions who are currently insured, not being able to afford healthcare for their families or afford private insurance from the “State Exchanges” and will not qualify for any subsidies;  further those that are being priced out of their health insurance, will now have to pay a fine for not buying health insurance!. The Democrats who pushed the Healthcare bill through late on Christmas Eve despite the public’s dislike, believes this “interpretation” of the Healthcare law is wrong. But the IRS who has been tasked to implement ObamaCare, simply says their interpretation of the health care rules were drafted by, “our legal experts — career civil servants who are some of the best tax lawyers in the world,” and if the IRS runs out to be wrong, even though $70 billion @ year is already being gutted from Medicare, the cost of ObamaCare will once again increase substantially. In affect the ObamaCare, which was supposed to make healthcare available to millions of uninsured Americans, will take away affordable healthcare from millions of employed lower middle class families that previously had insurance but won’t be able to afford healthcare under Obamacare; and the uninsured will be primarily women and children which advocates say will “unravel much of the progress that has been made in covering children in recent years”.

This continues President Obama’s war on the middle class and perpetuates the belief that ObamaCare was designed to fail so the electorate will be more receptive to socialized healthcare. Apparently President Obama’s belief in the redistribution of wealth is not restricted to the rich, unless you consider those that make $30,000 @ year, rich.

If you're going to have a war, it's better if your opponent is unarmed.The recent mass shootings in Colorado and Wisconsin are beyond tragic; but the idea that somehow the lack of gun control is the cause, is political correctness at its worse and admittedly will not stop the killing. The simple fact is small arms make terrible mass causality weapons compared to what else is available to terrorists. In the United States with its gun culture, a semi-automatic firearm is the weapon of choice. However in countries were fully automatic firearms are common, terrorists use bombs. The reason is very simple; a bomb will kill and injure 10 times that of a firearm. Further, all that’s needed to stop an armed terrorist is an armed citizen. If gun control is taken to its logical extreme, we will have to rely on government to protect us, something the police admit they cannot do, as all they can do is respond after the fact.

No Thanks President Calderon, We'll Keep Our Freedoms

If one wants to look at what America would look like without the second amendment, all you need to do is look south of the border. One of President Calderon's key messages to the US was to re-instate the federal assault weapons ban so assault weapons would stop “pouring over the border" and arming the cartels. This is of course a lie. The idea that somehow an assault weapons ban would stop the shipments of military grade small arms to Mexico, is political posturing and has no element of truth; the weapons described by President Calderon are already so tightly regulated in the US, that in all but a few cases, they are already banned. The difference is quite simple, the assault weapons used by the cartels are fully automatic M16's and M4's. The popular AR-15's in the US are not fully automatic, not military grade, and actually more expensive on the world market than their fully automatic big brothers. Further, there is already a ban against selling these weapons to Mexicans Nationals, or any other non-citizen. What President Calderon is hesitant to admit, is the vast majority of the military grade small arms that fall into the hands of the cartels are funnelled through the Mexican military and other international arms dealers across Guatemalan border The Myth of 90 Percent: Only a Small Fraction of Guns in Mexico Come From U.S. . Where else could one get grenades launchers with live grenades and their big brothers Rocket Propelled Grenades? These are the munitions that are commonly seized and blamed on sales from the US, as if one could go down to your local Big 5 and buy an RPG.

That is not to say that some small arms are not bought by Mexican Nationals. You see, firearms are forbidden to the citizenry in Mexico, so the only firearms in Mexico are in the hands of the corrupt law enforcement, the military, the cartels and of course other criminals (it just like the bumper sticker, "If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns). Mexico has the distinction of having the highest crime rate in the world. Further the police and military are either hunkered down in bunkers fearful of an attack from the cartels or working for the cartels themselves. This leaves the cartels and other criminals to pretty much have their way with the unarmed citizenry. Further the Mexican government, which continually exerts control over it's citizenry with fear and intimidation, certainly doesn't want a citizenry that can fend for itself. So the citizenry is forced to sneak across the border, and either find to send money south to their families, or obtain some form of self defense and return to his crime ridden homeland; this is apparently the state President Calderon would like to see the US citizenry.

What makes the US different from all other countries, and specifically different than Mexico, is the right that the people control (or are) the government. 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", was added to secure that right. The constitution has the audacity to say the people's right to own firearms is necessary to secure the power of the people over it's government. The second amendment does not protect the right to bear arms for hunting and sport shooting, the second amendment prohibits an over reaching federal government from disarming the states, so the states can maintain their autonomy. But, oppressive governments like Mexico do not want an empowered electorate and unfortunately Calderon seems to have found friends in President Obama and his Attorney General Eric Holder. The argument is simple, do we want America more like Mexico, or does Mexico want to be more like America; 10-30 million illegal aliens can't be wrong.