Thursday, January 13, 2011

More Thoughts

Cartoon courtesy National Review Online

Read NRO's extensive interview with John Lott to make sure you've got the information you need to rebut morons...Bill Maher comes to mind. Regarding Maher's appearance on Leno, where he suggested the NRA should be named the "assassin's lobby," I think Sebastian has the right of it when he noted the "tepid applause" that greeted the remark. The antigunners have lost the people, if they ever had them.

Real John Lott's op-ed in the New York Red Star...er, Times, too.

I love this piece, also in NRO, which has been super on guns recently, on how real jounalists should deal with firearms.
If a left-of-center reader turned to his favorite pundits this week to find out what to think about the Tucson massacre and gun laws, he’d have read nothing but clichés and half-truths.
There are at least two reasons for this. First is that most of these columnists have no firsthand knowledge of guns or gun culture. Second is that they haven’t bothered to read any of the countless academic studies of gun control that have come out since John Lott published More Guns, Less Crime in 1998. Perhaps they don’t want to slog through lots of statistics, or perhaps they just don’t care about the issue.
When I worked with NSSF I was amazed that reporters who would research any other topic to death simply took Brady's word on gun issues.

8 comments:

Sapper3Delta said...

Michael, I need to comment but can't leave a comment on the NYT page. Seems like the locked it out.

One type of comment that comes up repeatedly is about the occurrence of crime. I don't remember where I heard it, probably from you, but nothing prevents crime. There's no invisible force, no power, no law of physics that dictates crime prevention. Crime happens, no matter what we do. What is within our power is what we do when crime does occur (i.e., when the bubble goes up). That's all that we can do. We have no foresight to see that we will encounter a bad guy during our day, If we did, I'd just stay away. This is where the law comes into play. I think I've heard you say dozens of times in some form or fashion, that laws either limit or empower the citizenry. I wish I could hear at least one law maker (or lawyer) admit that laws don't actually make anyone do anything (again the mind control force field idea). We obey because we fear the societal/acceptance rejection (or going to jail). But, when someone doesn't have that fear, what compels them? Certainly not the law. What compels them is them.

I couldn't read past the 2nd page comments. Most all were just reciting the same unbacked statements. I cannot tell if any one of them read More Guns, Less Crime. I think they're just going off of the title and assuming... I must admit I did not read the article itself, but I have read more than half of John Lott's book. I gotta admit it's really dry reading. It is essentially a statistics report. The ideas that come from the book are not first stated and proved. The opposite is the case, first he presents the data (as well as provide his sources) then draws conclusions about what the results possibly mean in this order: there were such and such gun laws in these areas and this is the crime history, not we're going to prevent such and such so we're going to look for the laws that work. I appreciate Mr. Lott's work and believe it. Lott's conclusions are based on psychology. Well, when the psychology doesn't fit the then, of course, they're going to be the exception to the conclusion. Like I've heard you say, if they really want to, they're going to no matter what... unless the invisible force field that Congress can generate will stop them.

I listened to this week's podcast recently. You're absolutely right about concealed presentation and who your focus of protection should be, you and your own. These comments really drive me nuts. One person said, if "Mr. Zamudio had a gun, why didn't he shoot him." There's a comment from someone who has no clue. There was a pile of people on the floor, who is he supposed to shoot? Ack....

I don't know, what do you think? Am I crazy for thinking? I don't mean my ideas, I actually mean thinking.

Jack said...

Bill Maher, Sandra Bernhard and their fellow liberal entertainers who have no real jobs except playing the fool as court jesters should keep their degenerate remarks to themselves! Anyone with half a brain can see through their shallow self important facades that cover their fetid souls!

Anonymous said...

Stephen King,

You said: "John Lott stupidly refers to magazines as"CLIPS" !

What a DUMB ASS!"

I ask: Don't you wish that this was our biggest challenge?

I think that you're visiting the wrong blog. Instead of the "bane-blog", I think that you should be at the "banal-blog"

Life Member

Mike Orick said...

The 10 round mag limit is back on the table.

In 1881 in Tombstone AZ nine men armed with at least 10 guns fired at each other near the O.K. Corral. They fired about 30 shots at each other at distances of less than 30 feet. When the smoke cleared there were 3 dead and 3 wounded.

In 2011 in Tucson AZ one man with one gun fired more rounds than all nine of those men put together, killing twice as many and wounding almost five times as many all by himself. He did that before the good guys nearby carrying concealed could stop him.

This is progress?

On the other hand, Tombstone is much safer now that the people who live there are allowed to carry concealed weapons than it ever was when they were not allowed to carry any guns at all in town. Their are fewer gunfights in town now that the good folks there are carrying sixteen shooters than there was when nobody could carry six shooters.

In 1990 NYPD was armed mostly with six shot revolvers. Ten years later in 2000 they were armed mostly with sixteen shot semiauto pistols. Though officers were firing more than twice as many rounds with their semiautos during gunfights in 2000, they were hitting their targets half as often (9% v 19%) as they did with their revolvers in 1990 . More progress?

Then again, crime in NYC is at record lows now that sixteen shooters are the pistola du jour for both cops and robbers.

How safe do we want to be, and at what cost?

I do not support it, but a 10 round mag limit bothers me more on priciple than it will in reality.

Anonymous said...

Sapper3Delta,
You have nailed the escence of the arguement. No one has said it more concisely. Bravo! I will use your lines with honor, if allowed.

Life Member

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