Is today backwards day?
After posting this, I read further in my blogroll, and Weer’d pointed to this article on Fox News.
Have I woken up in opposite town?
Quote from Peter Vallone, of all people:
“By prosecuting this woman and seeking 3 1/2 years of jail, we are shooting our own [gun-control] efforts in the foot and giving the rest of the country ammunition,” Vallone said.
True enough, I think. Cases like these make the obvious point that we need to standardize our concealed carry laws, and that laws that prevent individuals from carrying their firearms amount to harassment at best. (Assault is already illegal, guys.)
But here’s where it gets wacky:
“Clearly, the laws are too strict here, but that’s something we need to work out for ourselves without honoring licenses to carry guns in states where felons can carry them,” he said.
Emphasis is mine. We have a Democrat New York City councilman admitting that the laws are too strict, which is crazy enough. But then he goes on to articulate the standard that he thinks is the correct one. That they should honor permits from other states, except for states where felons are allowed to carry guns.
Um…I’ll take it. Inasmuch as there are no states where felons can carry guns. So, yeah, universal reciprocity.
Weer’d points out the foolishness of this statement, but I think it provides a window into what they think that they can get away with. And that bar is pretty low, my friends.
GRNC on the NYT
Grass Roots North Carolina sent me an email bulletin regarding the Mike Luo’s hit piece in the New York Times that we examined yesterday. Full link is here.
National Review makes the same point that I did, slightly differently.
And, shocker of shockers, the Observer reprinted the original, flawed article.
The most interesting quote from the three sources was Paul Valone’s. Apparently, Mr. Luo interviewed Mr. Valone prior to publishing his article. (Paul Valone, for those who don’t know, is the director of Grass Roots North Carolina, as well as Charlotte’s gun rights Examiner.) From Mr. Vallone:
Luo admits not bothering to confirm more than a handful of the matches found, so given the small data set used, the number of “false positives” may well exceed the number of accurate matches.
So, once again, let’s review. Mr. Luo pulls some data. And even with his data as stacked against CCW holders as it could possibly be, he can’t manage to make his point, because even a cursory examination shows that CCW holders commit very few crimes. This, he must resort to anecdote. Mr. Luo says anecdotes are valid in proving that CCW holders commit crimes, but invalid in proving that CCW holders use their weapons to stop crime.
All we need now is Japete telling us we are mean, and we will have come full circle.
Concealed carry hit piece in NYT
The New York Times has written a hit piece on concealed carry in North Carolina. In particular, they try to make the case that North Carolina’s CCW permit process is flawed, and that it allows prohibited persons to obtain CCW permits. The Times offers the following:
More than 2,400 permit holders were convicted of felonies or misdemeanors, excluding traffic-related crimes, over the five-year period, The Times found when it compared databases of recent criminal court cases and licensees. While the figure represents a small percentage of those with permits, more than 200 were convicted of felonies, including at least 10 who committed murder or manslaughter. All but two of the killers used a gun.
2,400 crimes committed, and “more than 200 convicted of felonies” would seem to imply that 2,200 of the crimes were misdemeanors. But still, 200 felonies is a lot, right?
Well, lets see how many permits we have in NC? 228,072 So the raw rate of all crime is:
=2400/228,072 = .01 or 1%.
Felonies ->
=200/228,072 = .00008 or .08%. Get that? 8/100 of a percent that a CCW holder will commit a felony over a 5 year period.
We need to do some math in order to compare this with the general population. Note that the 200 figure is over a five year period. Lets assume that the 200 felonies are evenly distributed. (Normally this isn’t a good idea, but we are only really interested in order of magnitude comparison here.) 50 felonies in a single year period. Now, normally, crime rates are quoted in number of occurrences per 100,000 persons. Since the numbers are so close, I’m going to keep the math simple and halve the number of people who have CCW permits . Note that is will overstate the number of crimes committed by CCW permit holders. 25 felonies per 100,000 permit holders per year.
Let’s compare this with the general NC population, shall we?
Felonies in NC, in 2010, per 100,000 people: 3,955.7 Shall we consider only violet felonies? 374.4 per 100,000.
In short, CCW permit holders are not more law abiding than then general population, they are MUCH more law abiding than the general population.
What if we consider murder? The article cites 10 murder or manslaughter convictions over a 5 year period. That’s two per year, or 1 per 100,000 permit holders. What’s the NC average? 5.1 murders per 100,000 in 2010. In short, the murder rate among CCW permit holders is at least 1/5 the murder rate of the general population. And remember, the CCW rate is overstated using my back of a napkin methodology.
But in a very real sense…none of this matters. The argument in front of us isn’t “do CCW holders commit crimes” or “do they commit crimes more frequently than the general public” or even “does widespread CCW make society safer?” The only real question is “does CCW make society less safe?” As the article points out:
As a result, the question becomes whether allowing more people to carry guns actually deters crime, as gun rights advocates contend, and whether that outweighs the risks posed by the minority who commit crimes.
The article goes on to note:
Gun advocates are quick to cite anecdotes of permit holders who stopped crimes with their guns. It is virtually impossible, however, to track these episodes in a systematic way. By contrast, crimes committed by permit holders can be.
The article goes on to then cite anecdotes of permit holders who commit crimes.
The article goes on to criticize the work of John Lott, who found that CCW reduces crime, and praise the work of economists who found no correlation between CCW and crime reduction. No one is arguing anymore that CCW increases crime, except for the New York Times, and by their own standard, data over anecdote, they fail miserably.
Gun Safety
I wanted to touch on one more aspect of Sean’s post which bears consideration. Sean on the notion that North Carolinians Against Gun Violence is a “gun safety” organization:
That’s a laugh. Gun Safety is taught by people who instruct others in safe gun handling techniques. The NRA teaches gun safety and so do many others. Gun Safety is mostly a matter of learning to apply Jeff Cooper’s 4 Rules.
I’m an NRA certified pistol instructor, and I’ve taught a few dozen people to shoot safely. I’m the graduate of several shooting schools, including Gunsite, where they invented those four rules. I’d suggest that I know quite a bit about gun safety, certainly more than Mr. Fitzsimon. I can prove that what NCAGV is advocating is less safety, not more.
There is one specific place that I have to go every day, and I have to go unarmed, and that is to my daughters’ school. I drive her to school each morning. I am on the school grounds for approximately three minutes. I never leave my car. And yet, if I drop her off with a gun on my person, then I am guilty of a felony. (And a federal felony, for that matter) Taking a gun onto school grounds is one of the few (in fact, I believe the only) permit violations that is a felony rather than a misdemeanor.
Consider case one: I get up in the morning, I put my concealed carry gun in it’s holster, and go about my business. The gun in it’s holster is perfectly safe. It is pointed in a safe direction, and the trigger guard is covered, and thus the gun will never go bang. I get in my car and drive V to school. Again, trigger guard is covered, gun is pointed in a safe direction. The gun won’t go off unless I pull the trigger. Even if there is some mechanical problem that drops the striker (essentially impossible in modern guns, and certainly in my M&P, but lets assume for the sake of argument), it doesn’t matter. The gun is in a safe direction. 100%, perfectly safe. I drive up to the school, kiss my kid goodbye, and drive off. Simple, easy, safe.
Now lets look at the current situation. I put my gun on in the morning like always. It goes in the holster. I drive V to school. Now I have a problem. I can’t bring my gun on school grounds, which means that I can’t drive onto school grounds, which means that I can’t park on school grounds. So I have to find a place nearby to park. Now I have to take my gun off, while it remains concealed, so I either need to get out of the car, draw the gun, set it down, take off my holster, put the gun back into the holster and lock it up, all without letting anyone see the gun or pointing the gun in an unsafe direction. The second alternative is that I try to take the gun off in the car, which makes it much easier to conceal, but much harder to keep pointed safely. (An experiment for the reader: put on your holster and unloaded firearm. Go to you car. Sit down. Now try to get the gun out of the holster without muzzling yourself or your passengers. Good luck with that.)
Now, because we have safe storage laws in NC, I can’t just leave the gun in it’s holster in the car. I have to lock it up, unloaded. So now I am unloading the gun, still in the car mind you, and still trying to manipulate the gun without muzzling myself or my daughter, who is sitting next to me. Now I have to lock it up and walk her to school.
Of course, when the gun is on my hip, it’s chance of being stolen sits right about at zero. When I leave it unattended in my car, the chance of it being stolen rises quite a bit, especially if anyone saw me unloading my gun and locking it up.
And then, once I return to the car, I get to do the dance all over again, this time getting the gun loaded and back into the holster. For folks who don’t know, re-holstering is one of the more dangerous things that you can do with a pistol. You are driving the pistol downward into the holster. If anything gets caught between the trigger and the holster, your gun will go bang.
A US Airways pilot found this out the hard way on a flight to Charlotte. But the accident as caused by poor holster design and, more importantly, stupid rules that forced the pilot to fiddle with his gun. Just like the stupid rules that make citizens fiddle with their guns around schools, putting people at risk.
So you tell me, NCAGV…which is safer? And which of us is really lobbying for gun safety?
Blood in the streets
Sean linked to a…well, I guess I’ll call it a screed…by one Chris Fitzsimon, complaining about some aspects of the new gun laws that took effect here in NC. I’m not going to go into the specifics and refute his assertions; Sean has done a much better job of that. But one paragraph stood out for me from Chris’ diatribe:
It’s probably not a good idea to argue with a stranger over a parking space at a state park or confront a reckless cyclist on your local greenway. They might have a loaded handgun hidden in their belt.
For those of you new to the gun rights arena, this is the latest incarnation of the classic “Blood in the Streets” meme. I am first aware of in 1987 when Florida began the movement toward modern, shall-issue concealed carry. It posits that once law abiding individuals (law abiding by definition, remember, in order to be eligible for a permit) have ready access to concealed weapons, they will immediately abandon all previously used mechanisms for conflict resolution, and instead will begin a conflict resolution strategy wherein one murders the individual with whom one is in conflict with. For example, in the aforementioned parking space conflict, the previously law abiding citizen will, for some reason, murder the individual attempting to take his or her parking spot, and then presumably resume his or her shopping. This may be an example of guns inciting violence, as Joe Huffman documents here.
The fact that this never happens does not seem to diminish the concern of the anti-gun crowd. The meme was originally applied at the state level, as more and more states adopted modern concealed carry, but inasmuch as 49 out of 50 states allow some form of concealed carry, the anti-gunners are running out of states to apply the meme to. It seems that the new theory is that the meme applies, not at the state level as previously thought, but rather in micro-environments such as parks and playgrounds. Thus, allowing law abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons in playgrounds will trigger the previously described change in conflict resolution, and when little Johnny wants to use the swing that little Suzy is on, the citizen will simply murder parent and child and allow little Johnny to use the swing. As you can see, this is much more likely than the “taking turns” conflict resolution strategy currently in place in most playgrounds.
All kidding aside, what kind of a view of the world do you have to have in order to believe this crap? That lurking in each and every one of us is the potential, nay, the desire, to murder our fellow citizens over trivial matters. It is only good folks like Chris Fitzsimon who keep us safe by…making it illeager? Or something…
One of the things that I have picked up in watching and reading the interviews with Jerry Sandusky is that he really doesn’t get how creepy he sounds. He thinks that it is perfectly natural that a grown man would shower with adolescent boys, and that showering would involve “horsing around.” In his view of the universe, that is natural behavior between grown men and boys. In Chris’ view, the natural order of things is that people kill each other over trivial matters, and he and his ilk stand as vanguards preventing the natural order.
And I find that just as creepy.
Indeed, a sea change.
Tam says it better than I did as is par for the course.
We may not win this time, but yesterday was a big, big deal.
Gun laws racist?
Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy earlier this month told parishioners at St. Sabina’s Church that federal gun laws are akin to “government-sponsored racism.”
Yes, I agree! The racist roots of gun control are well documented. But wait, there’s more…
“I want you to connect one more dot on that chain of African-American history in this country, and tell me if I’m crazy: Federal gun laws that facilitate the flow of illegal firearms into our urban centers, across this country, that are killing black and brown children,” he said according to an WMAQ-Channel 5 story that aired Thursday.
Yes, I agree. The BATFE shouldn’t be doing that! And it’s absolutely immoral to make it difficult for the victims of these thugs to defend themselves with proper tools.
Somehow, I don’t think that is what this ignoramus meant…
10 Rules for dealing with the police
Cato.org is hosting a premier this Friday for “10 Rules for Dealing With the Police”.
If a free society depends upon an informed citizenry exercising oversight of its government, then more people need to know how to handle themselves in a police encounter. Is cooperation always the best course of action? Or are there times to assert the constitutional right to refuse consent to a search of one’s home or belongings? A new documentary film answers those questions and more in an informative and entertaining series of skits narrated by Baltimore trial attorney Billy Murphy (from HBO’s The Wire). Learn how the safeguards of the Bill of Rights operate outside of the courthouse and on the street. Learn how to make smart decisions and respond effectively to police misconduct.
The trailer:
Good info to know.
Necessary reading
Joe Huffman is one of the best reasoned, most reasonable gunnie voices out there. This essay is required reading.
MAIG’s secret plans
Sebastian at Snowflakes in Hell has obtained a copy of New York mayor Micheal Bloomberg’s recommendations to the Obama administration on how to restrict gun ownership. It’s worth a read.
Kudos to Sebastinan. He is doing some great work out there.
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Do your part!
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