Obama's Gun Control Prescription

First, the Drudge summary:

Obama using gun issue to advance health law...
Presses doctors to ask patients about guns in home...
'Health care providers' to offer gun safety tips...
At least $4.5 billion in new spending...
Ignores violent movies, video games...

WAR ON CRAZY: OBAMA DEPUTIZES DOCTORS

That's a pithy summary of the most troublesome portion of Obama's plan. Pitched to the nation by exploiting children as pawns, Obama's plan includes just one thing that might have prevented the Sandy Hook massacre: $150 million to “put up to 1,000 new school resource officers and school counselors on the job.” As I understand the term "school resource officer," that refers to armed law enforcement officers assigned directly to a school. Now, correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't that the NRA solution that the far left spent the past few weeks savaging?

Much of what is on Obama's wish list has nothing to do with Sandy Hook and everything to do with the laundry list of gun control proposals the far left has been advocating for years. At the top of his list, a new "assault weapons ban" and a limit on magazine capacity to ten rounds. Neither has a snowball's chance in hell of passage in Congress and, indeed, will likely never see a vote.

Obama's other legislative proposals come with a price tag. This from the Weekly Standard:

• $4 billion for the president’s proposal “to help keep 15,000 cops on the streets in cities and towns across the country.” (That is roughly $266,000 per police officer.)

• $20 million to “give states stronger incentives to make [relevant] data available [for background checks] … “$50 million for this purpose in FY2014”

• “$14 million to help train 14,000 more police officers and other public and private personnel to respond to active shooter situations.”

• “$10 million for the Centers for Disease Control to conduct further research, including investigating the relationship between video games, media images, and violence.”

• $20 million to expand the National Violent Death Reporting System.

• $150 million to “put up to 1,000 new school resource officers and school counselors on the job.”

• “$30 million of one-time grants to states to help their school districts develop and implement emergency management plans.”

• $50 million to help 8,000 schools “create safer and more nurturing school climates.”

• $15 million to “provide “Mental Health First Aid” training for teachers.”

• $40 million for school districts to “work with law enforcement, mental health agencies, and other local organizations to assure students with mental health issues or other behavioral issues are referred to the services they need.”

• $25 million for state-based strategies that support “young people ages 16 to 25 with mental health or substance abuse issues.”

• $25 million to “offer students mental health services for trauma or anxiety, conflict resolution programs, and other school-based violence prevention strategies.”

• $50 million to “train social workers, counselors, psychologists, and other mental health professionals.”

I can't see much, if any of that legislation, getting passed, at least as itemized by Obama. On the two issues on which left and right have some common ground, background checks and mental health, there is still a great deal of legitimate mistrust that the left will try to shoehorn these into a backdoor means of improperly denying people their 2nd Amendment rights.

As to the mental health issue, the core problem is that our laws make it difficult if not impossible to institutionalize someone who could well turn violent. Nothing in these proposals addresses that problem. Moreover, all mental illness is not equal. Step one would be to identify which mental health issues are so severe as to make an individual dangerous to himself or others, thus establishing a standard upon which to allow or deny a person their 2nd Amendment right. A related issue needs to be made as to when any such ban should be lifted after an individual has successfully been treated. Without any of those issues clearly addressed, the Obama solution of throwing hundreds of millions at mental health does nothing to address Sandy Hook or Second Amemdment concerns.

As to Obama's twenty-three Executive Orders, conservatives can now exhale for the most part. The majority of the Orders are nothing more than Obama telling government agencies to do the jobs that they are tasked by law to do - a point The Everlasting Phelps makes with good humor. The majority of the Orders do nothing other than give the appearance of motion.

That said, the most troubling of the Orders were identified in the Drudge headline at the top of the page, linking to a post by The Weekly Standard:

According to a background briefer provided by the White House, President Barack Obama is asking doctors to help deal with guns. Here's the relevant passage:

PRESERVE THE RIGHTS OF HEALTH CARE PROVIDERS TO PROTECT THEIR PATIENTS AND COMMUNITIES FROM GUN VIOLENCE: We should never ask doctors and other health care providers to turn a blind eye to the risks posed by guns in the wrong hands.

 Clarify that no federal law prevents health care providers from warning law enforcement authorities about threats of violence: Doctors and other mental health professionals play an important role in protecting the safety of their patients and the broader community by reporting direct and credible threats of violence to the authorities. But there is public confusion about whether federal law prohibits such reports about threats of violence. The Department of Health and Human Services is issuing a letter to health care providers clarifying that no federal law prohibits these reports in any way.

 Protect the rights of health care providers to talk to their patients about gun safety: Doctors and other health care providers also need to be able to ask about firearms in their patients’ homes and safe storage of those firearms, especially if their patients show signs of certain mental illnesses or if they have a young child or mentally ill family member at home. Some have incorrectly claimed that language in the Affordable Care Act prohibits doctors from asking their patients about guns and gun safety. Medical groups also continue to fight against state laws attempting to ban doctors from asking these questions. The Administration will issue guidance clarifying that the Affordable Care Act does not prohibit or otherwise regulate communication between doctors and patients, including about firearms.

There are real problems with doctors insinuating themselves into what decisions a person makes regarding guns, problems multiplied exponentially at the thought of doctors who may not be specialists in mental health reporting on people for violent tendencies. That sets up a truly adversarial relationship between patient and doctor, making the doctor an agent of the state.

This may indeed be more insidious than even appears at first blush. This from a commentor at Legal Insurrection suggests a plausible scenario that is troubling indeed:

What these do is utilize the medical/mental health health records (that were created by Obamacare) as the new database to determine the criteria for gun permits. What people miss, is that this isn’t just about your doctor asking if you own a gun. This is about you, your spouse, or your child(ren) telling a doctor, therapist, or school psychologist that they feel depressed, anxious, suicidal, fearful, or that they have a condition that requires psychiatric medication. Once you have been treated and given your psych meds, your doctor/therapist writes notes. These notes are what are submitted to insurance companies for payment. Medicaid already has a system set up to screen notes & treatment plans to determine if they will pay and cover future treatment. Once these agencies have open access to each others database (executive order #1) this will be used to determine if you are qualified to have a gun permit or to pass a background check. This and #4 are the most concerning of these orders. . . .

This is one that requires far greater analysis from 2nd Amendment supporters,

So what was missing from Obama's plan?

One, missing was any suggestion to expand on "gun free zone" legislation. That was smart on the part of Obama. Gun free zones only insure that when a bad guy with a gun shows up, the law abiding will be disarmed. That was perhaps the central lesson of Sandy Hook. Obama would have been savaged if he had tried to expand on gun free zones.

Two, missing from Obama's plan was any discussion of the role of Hollywood and violent video games in promoting violence in our society. Could that have been a simple oversight?

Lastly missing, since this was a global solution proposed by Obama to gun violence, was any sort of recognition that much of the violence in our country is, one, gang related, and two, most often carried out by an identifiable subset of society. I was waiting for Obama to tell us that FBI statistics show that over 50% of our nation's homicides are carried out by blacks who make up just over 13% of the population. Without that, this was not a serious attempt to address the underlying causes of gun violence, it was a far left offensive on our 2nd Amendment rights.

At any rate, this dog and pony show over the past month was a huge build-up to, mostly, a molehill. There may be some movement on background checks if the left acts in good faith and doesn't try to create yet another back door to gun control. The interplay between healthcare providers and 2nd Amendment rights deserves a colonoscopic level of scrutiny. That said, the real issues of Sandy Hook, a broken mental healthcare system for the seriously mentally ill, gun free zones and the lack of a good guy with a gun at the point of the crime, those were ignored by Obama.

Update: Mice Deb has a great roll-up of reaction to Obama's gun control proposals.

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Children As Political Pawns

It is perhaps possible to sink lower than using children as pawns and props for political gain - though its a well the left returns to with regularity. But even for the left, Obama's use of children during his address to the nation today is pushing beyond the envelope. In the run up to the speech, Obama also released the letters the White House received from these children begging and pleading for him to rid the nation of our plague of guns. This from the AP:

Three days after six teachers and 20 students were killed by a rampaging gunman at their elementary school in Newtown, Conn., an 8-year-old from Maryland pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote to President Barack Obama asking for "some changes in the laws with guns."

"It's a free country but I recommend there needs (to) be a limit with guns," Grant wrote in the Dec. 17 letter. "Please don't let people own machine guns or other powerful guns like that."

In the days after the shooting, children around the country apparently had the same idea as Grant. They put their feelings about the massacre on paper and sent those letters to a receptive White House.

"I am writing to ask you to STOP gun violence," wrote Tajeah, a 10-year-old from Georgia. "I am very sad about the children who lost their lives. So, I thought I would write to you to STOP gun violence."

On Wednesday, when Obama makes his long-awaited announcement of proposals to reduce gun violence, he will be joined by Grant, Tajeah and other children from across the U.S. who expressed their concerns about gun violence and school safety to the one person they think can make a difference: the president. . . .

So, let's make policy on the basis of letters from some children obviously well on their way to being good little lefties. Excuse me if I hear an adult's voice telling the 8 year old that a "machine gun" (that is the definition of a semi-automatic weapon for many on the left) was used at Sandy Hook, or a 10 year old framing the issue as "gun violence." But that aside, where were the letters telling Obama not to take away gun rights. Surprisingly, apparently no kids wrote in support of that.

Here is a site with a continuously updated roll up of weapons being used by the law abiding in self defense. If you scroll down, you will find links to news reports and articles of more than a few teens and even children who have protected themselves with guns against criminals. There is the boy who used an AR15 to stop a home invasion; the 12 year old girl home alone who shot an intruder in the shoulder; a 14 year old babysitting who shot an armed man who broke into his home; and many more. Likewise you will find many links to the elderly who have similarly protected themselves with weapons.

They don't get included in Obama's release for obvious reasons. This is utterly disgusting. The irony here is that the left is using the pure emotion derived from focusing on children to further their message. Yet the one emotion these people apparently can't feel is shame. It should also be noted that Obama used the obligatory far left justification for the gun control legislation he is pushing: ""If there's even one life that can be saved, then we've got an obligation to try." His definition of "one life" apparently does not include those law abiding among us whose lives are saved by guns.

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Sandy Hook, The 2nd Amendment, Biden & Gun Control

“If you look at every one of the tragic events that have attracted so much attention, it’s hard to be able to pinpoint what you could have done to assure it wouldn’t have happened."

PJM quoting Joe Biden, Biden Drafts Gun Agenda While Acknowledging Weak Links to Tragedies, 10 January 2013

Every American shares the horror at what happened at Sandy Hook. That said, the far left has embraced Sandy Hook as an opening to try and pass all of the gun control legislation they can dream up. Yet, as the quote from Biden shows, even the far left acknowledges that their "solutions" are disconnected from anything that would have stopped the Sandy Hook massacre. Just to review:

- The shooter didn't buy his weapon, he stole it. There have been a plethora of plans floated for more background checks and more paperwork in the wake of Sandy Hook, none of which would have stopped the massacre.

- The Sandy Hook shooter used a .223 Bushmaster "assault rifle" to kill some or all of his victims. But the reality is that he had 20 minutes of free fire time once he entered the school and before police arrived. He could have used any type of fire to accomplish his carnage. Banning "assault rifles" would not have stopped Sandy Hook.

- Accepting the left's claim that "assault rifles" serve only one purpose - to kill people - that is a feature, not a bug. Just what does the far left think that the 2nd Amendment protects? Using weapons for skeet shooting? For hunting rabbits? No, the purpose of the 2nd Amendment is, per the Supreme Court, to allow people to keep and bears arms in order to protect against "public and private violence." The AR15 is perhaps the most viable weapon for that purpose - especially for home defense and use by women, teens and people of limited strength. It is a weapon with virtually no recoil, it fires a bullet at very high velocity, thus having having "stopping power" in respect to criminals, and it can hold enough rounds in its magazine to be useful against multiple targets threatening violence.

- Expanding "gun free zones" or penalties for possessing fire arms inside or in the vicinity of schools is the biggest joke of all. One, it merely insures that the law abiding are disarmed for the criminals who, surprisingly enough, are not deterred by the fact that guns are outlawed there. "Gun free zones" only invite carnage. Two, the reality is that the "gun free zone" legislation is nothing more than a de facto ban on gun ownership among the law abiding, particularly in most cities. So, for example, if you are prevented by law from having a firearm within a thousand meters of a school, that would effectively act to disarm the majority of people living in most cities.

- The single "solution" to Sandy Hook, doing away with gun free zones as a matter of law and allowing some teachers and staff to carry concealed weapons, subject to reasonable requirements for training and certification, does not seem to be even within the realm of Biden's task force. - Limiting "high capacity magazines" has nothing to do with stopping what happened at Sandy Hook. One, magazines are simple to exchange - it takes only a second. It is not something that will slow down a criminal bent on firing more than ten rounds. Two, "high capacity magazines" are problematic, but for wholly practical reasons - they have a tendency to jam. Indeed, in the infantry, we never used anything over a 20 round magazine for our M16's for precisely that reason. The only reason for the left to fixate on magazine capacity is as a backdoor to outlawing weapons that are able to take "high capacity" magazines. Lastly, when it comes to self defense, unless someone on the left can assure me that my family will never be put in a position where their safety depends on firing more than ten rounds, then limiting magazine capacity is a restriction on my right to self defense.

- The only thing that even remotely comes close to addressing the causes of Sandy Hook have been some superficial discussions of mental illness. We will have to see what Biden's task force proposes, but I have zero trust in the left to do anything other than use this as a backdoor to gun control. I could envision the left trying to deny gun permits by law to anyone who ever visited a psychiatrist or whoever was once diagnosed with depression and put on anti-depressants. What we have not heard from Biden any serious discussion of allowing people with severe mental illness to be involuntarily institutionalized for evaluation and treatment.

So there you have it. What Biden will ultimately propose, we will have to wait until next week to find out. But you can be sure of one thing - it would not have stopped Sandy Hook, nor will it stop the next mass murder. The only thing that will stop that is if there is a sane person with a gun who fortuitously happens to be at the right place at the right time when the next mass murder is attempted.

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Some Thoughts On Guns & The Left

From Bookworm Room: "Over the course of twenty-five years, I've come to understand that an armed citizenry is the only defense against a tyrannical government; that a weapon is the only way to give an advantage to a small woman (or man) being attacked by a big man (or woman); that the fastest way to stop a murderous gunman is to be lucky enough to have a sane gunman in the same crowd; and that an armed society is a polite society."

- The story of the Georgia woman who protected her family by emptying a .38 caliber revolver into a criminal had a good ending - but it is also a cautionary tale. The intruder took 5 shots with the .38 and still was able to walk away. If there had been multiple intruders or if she had missed with a few shots, the outcome might have been much different. I say again, particularly for women and teens, the single best weapon for home defense is an AR15. It has no recoil, much greater stopping power, and carries significantly more rounds.

- From Instapundit:

DO NOT TRUST CONTENT FROM BRADY CAMPAIGN: FactCheck:

Rep. Donna Edwards said that “since Columbine, there have been 181 of these school shootings.” That’s an inflated figure. She used a list of “major school shootings” supplied by the Brady Campaign that included incidents that were neither shootings nor at schools.

Other than that, the list was accurate!

- Looking at all of the gun control ideas being tossed around by the left, not one of them appears as if it would have actually stopped the Sandy Hook massacre.

- Gabby Giffords has a particularly obnoxious column in the USA Today. She says:

Special interests purporting to represent gun owners but really advancing the interests of an ideological fringe have used big money and influence to cow Congress into submission. Rather than working to find the balance between our rights and the regulation of a dangerous product, these groups have cast simple protections for our communities as existential threats to individual liberties. Rather than conducting a dialogue, they threaten those who divert from their orthodoxy with political extinction.

Given her description of those who disagree with gun control legislation as being an "ideological fringe," one can pretty much bet that her idea of a dialogue is "shut up and listen to me." Come to think of it, that is the same format the left uses for bipartisan compromise.

- Lastly, I still haven't come to grips with Obama's reelection, nor the fact that over 50% of the people who went to the polls pulled the lever for this utterly incompetent far left ideologue. Our nation is in far deeper trouble than I suspected on 6 Nov., 2012, and I really wonder if we will ever come out of it. Moreover, I strongly suspect that Obama will lead us into a Constitutional crisis during his four years, whether that is over guns or the debt ceiling or some other aspect in which he goes around Congress to impose his will by fiat on our nation, I don't know. But it is coming. I fear for our nation.

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Guns, Equality, A Land Where "Thieves Rule The Night," & An Insane NYT "News Analysis" (Updated)

There is an old saying, God created man, Samuel Colt made them equal.

We saw the exercise in equality play out in the news just the other night when an intruder broke in on a woman and her two young children. They tried to hide from him in an attic crawl space. He sought them out. The woman had a .38 caliber revolver that she emptied into him, then escaped unharmed with her children. In another story in the news, a young woman in India and her boyfriend were on a bus, unarmed, when they were attacked by several men. The men beat the boyfriend, then gang raped and disemboweled the woman.

[Update: This from Instapundit - GOOD: Delhi Gang-Rape: Indian Women Stocking Up On Guns For Protection. God created man and woman. Col. Colt made them equal.]

Those are anecdotes. So what happens on a meta-scale when a nation is disarmed, and people are unequal to the criminal element? For that, we can compare the U.S. and the U.K.

In the U.K., gun ownership is virtually banned. Even the police force in the U.K. is, for the most part, unarmed. Raw figures show that the UK has a lower homicide rate than the U.S., 1.2 per 100,000 of population in the U.K. versus 4.8 in the U.S. But when it comes to violent crime overall, the UK is a much greater hotbed than the U.S., with 2,034 violent criminal incidents in the U.K. per 100,000 of population versus 486 in the U.S. An anecdote from a British police officer gives a chilling feel for the ramifications of a disarmed society - where the criminals are very often more powerful at the point of the crime than either the citizens or the police. This from the Police Inspector Blog:

An ATM raid is where a gang steals a digger, a flatbed truck and some old 4X4 vehicles. They then drive in convoy, at night, to an isolated bank or other ATM site, use the digger to smash the ATM out of the wall, load it on to the flatbed and ‘make off’ to a dump site.

At the dump site, which will be a field or a clearing in a wood somewhere, the kind of place they also use to burn the metal out of stolen cable, the ‘engineer’ will be waiting in another 4X4, ready to cut the ATM open and release the cash. The cash is then divided and the gang abandon all but the getaway vehicles and run for home.

This is a high value business. Some ATM’s have up to £1/4 million inside if they are ‘hit’ at the right time. Every county police officer knows where I am coming from with this. Here is the bad bit for us.

If an insomniac wandering about in the early hours sees such a raid and calls it in, we have to respond. When we eventually arrive, single crewed or if we are lucky, double crewed, if the offenders are still there or if we come across the convoy ‘making off’ we can expect to be met with extreme violence by at least eight hardened criminals. They are better armed than us and will ram our family saloon cars off the road in an instant.

If police officers are caught in the open they will be met with baseball bats, iron bars and firearms. They will also be heavily outnumbered. Even if we manage to get one of the counties very few police dogs to respond, the dogs can be stabbed or shot and the handlers beaten half to death. This has happened in Ruralshire. With our tiny numbers of police available for such a huge county, our pathetically underpowered vehicles and our uniquely unarmed status, the thieves rule this county at night now, not us.

It would seem that disarming the populace has the effect of making them game animals for the predators. And the same holds true for the police. It has the point of making the law abiding citizens unequal when it counts most, when their lives and liberty are on the line.

Equality is perhaps the greatest good - so the progs assure us. They demand equality for women, for minorities, some even for flora and fauna. You have to wonder why these calls for equality end completely when it comes to the ability of the average law abiding person to protect their lives and liberty?

Update: As we prepare for the upcoming Obama push to limit the availability of guns to law abiding Americans, the NYT continues their daily rhetorical support for such measure with a "news analysis" piece, More Guns = More Killing. Even for the wildly partisan NYT, this one should win an award for its over the top and under sourced claims.

The NYT notes that the NRA solution to Sandy Hook style massacres is to expand legal gun ownership among the law abiding and to put armed individuals in our schools. The Times then tries to make the point that more guns just means more killing by using the examples of Latin American countries, all with unstable governments, poor economies, many with massive problems of narco-terrorism, and several with left wing insurgencies, such as FARC. They are not quite relevant comparisons to the U.S..

The NYT also relies heavily on quotes from David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. He makes the remarkable claim that “[t]here is no evidence that having more guns reduces crime. None at all.”

The NYT let's that statement stand, apparently unable to find anyone around their water cooler who might contest it. To assist the NYT on this, let's point out that one who would contest it would be professor and author John Lott, who has studied the correlation between gun ownership and violent crime and written extensively on the topic. This from an interview with Prof. Lott:

There is a strong negative relationship between the number of law-abiding citizens with permits and the crime rate—as more people obtain permits there is a greater decline in violent crime rates. For each additional year that a concealed handgun law is in effect the murder rate declines by 3 percent, rape by 2 percent, and robberies by over 2 percent.

Concealed handgun laws reduce violent crime for two reasons. First, they reduce the number of attempted crimes because criminals are uncertain which potential victims can defend themselves. Second, victims who have guns are in a much better position to defend themselves.

Question: What is the basis for these numbers?

Lott: The analysis is based on data for all 3,054 counties in the United States during 18 years from 1977 to 1994.

Question: Your argument about criminals and deterrence doesn’t tell the whole story. Don’t statistics show that most people are killed by someone they know?

Lott: You are referring to the often-cited statistic that 58 percent of murder victims are killed by either relatives or acquaintances. However, what most people don’t understand is that this “acquaintance murder” number also includes gang members killing other gang members, drug buyers killing drug pushers, cabdrivers killed by customers they picked up for the first time, prostitutes and their clients, and so on. “Acquaintance” covers a wide range of relationships. The vast majority of murders are not committed by previously law-abiding citizens. Ninety percent of adult murderers have had criminal records as adults.

Question: But how about children? In March of this year [1998] four children and a teacher were killed by two school boys in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Won’t tragedies like this increase if more people are allowed to carry guns? Shouldn’t this be taken into consideration before making gun ownership laws more lenient?

Lott: The horrific shooting in Arkansas occurred in one of the few places where having guns was already illegal. These laws risk creating situations in which the good guys cannot defend themselves from the bad ones. I have studied multiple victim public shootings in the United States from 1977 to 1995. These were incidents in which at least two or more people were killed and or injured in a public place; in order to focus on the type of shooting seen in Arkansas, shootings that were the byproduct of another crime, such as robbery, were excluded. The effect of “shall-issue” laws on these crimes has been dramatic. When states passed these laws, the number of multiple-victim shootings declined by 84 percent. Deaths from these shootings plummeted on average by 90 percent, and injuries by 82 percent. . . .

Question: Violence is often directed at women. Won’t more guns put more women at risk?

Lott: Murder rates decline when either more women or more men carry concealed handguns, but a gun represents a much larger change in a woman’s ability to defend herself than it does for a man. An additional woman carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for women by about 3 to 4 times more than an additional man carrying a concealed handgun reduces the murder rate for men.

The NYT brings up Australia as proof that gun bans are effective.

After a gruesome mass murder in 1996 provoked public outrage, Australia enacted stricter gun laws, including a 28-day waiting period before purchase and a ban on semiautomatic weapons. Before then, Australia had averaged one mass shooting a year. Since, rates of both homicide and suicide have dropped 50 percent, and there have been no mass killings, said Ms. Peters, who lobbied for the legislation.

They don't quite tell the whole story. The homicide rate in Australia, low in 1996 at 1.9, increased in the three years after their gun ban before dropping to 1.3 in 2007. Regardless, overall, violent crime in Australia has exploded since gun control was imposed, with the sum of violent crime, including sexual assaults, robberies and assaults, increasing about 20% in just 12 years.

In comparison, the violent crime rate in the U.S. has fallen precipitously in the same time frame:

Indeed, it would seem Australia is going through much the same experience as Britain, with a fairly low homicide rate, but a disarmed populace increasingly suffering at the hands of violent criminals who hold the upper hand at the point of their crimes. When "thieves rule this country at night," that is not a society in which I would like to live. Nor would most of the NYT's employees, I would imagine, were the violence ever to be directed into their fantasy world.

Back to the article. The NYT writes:

“To put people with guns who are not accountable or trained in places where there are lots of innocent people is just dangerous,” Ms. Peters said, noting that lethal force is used to deter minor crimes like shoplifting. . . .

There are a number of responses to this. The NYT provides zero facts to justify Ms. Peters bald assertion. According to Dr. Lott, statistically, the degree at which civilians with gun permits criminally misuse their weapons is very low, and indeed, no higher or lower than that level of misuse among trained police officers. Moreover, according to at least one retired LAPD detective, it is quite likely that gun permit holders are actually more experienced with their weapons than the average police officer. This bald claim by Ms. Peters is just pure arrogance combined with a mistrust of the unwashed masses.

Lastly, there is this gem from the NYT.

“If you’re living in a ‘Mad Max’ world, where criminals have free rein and there’s no government to stop them, then I’d want to be armed,” said Dr. Hemenway of Harvard. “But we’re not in that circumstance. We’re a developed, stable country.”

The canard in Dr. Hemenway's analysis is glaring. Criminals will always have "free reign" for a period of time when a crime is being committed - at least if the intended victims are unarmed or otherwise unable to mount an effective defense. Police respond after the fact, when the criminal's carnage has either been done or been stopped. For example:

1. Sandy Hook Elementary School was a "gun free zone" where the teachers and staff were prevented by law from carrying concealed weapons. Once the shooter gained access to the school, police were notified. It took police twenty minutes to arrive, during which time the shooter killed 26 children and teachers.

2. In Texas, two men attempted a home invasion. Inside the home were a teen age boy and his young sister. The boy retrieved his father's AR15 and proceeded to shoot the criminals, protecting his life and the life of his sister. Police arrived in time to take the suspects to the hospital.

3. In Georgia, a home invasion ended when a woman, defending herself and her two small children, shot her assailant five times. Police arrived in time to take the suspect to the hospital.

4. In Texas, during the Luby Cafeteria Massacre that claimed the lives of 23 people, a diner at the cafeteria who had left her weapon in her car in order to comply with Texas gun control laws at the time, testified that she could easily have stopped the massacre had she had her weapon in her purse. Police response time was about 15 minutes.

5. In Connecticut, during a home invasion by two men, the husband, Dr. Petit, was beaten and put into the basement. There were no guns available to Petit or his family. Over the next seven plus hours, Dr. Petit's wife was strangled and their two daughters, one 11, the other 17, were tied to their beds and raped. Near the end of the ordeal, Dr. Petit was able to free himself and went to his neighbor's house to call the police. The police arrived, set up a perimeter, then stood in place for nearly half an hour, waiting for more back up. During that half hour, the criminals poured gasoline over the two daughters - both still alive - then set them on fire.

The lessons of the above anecdotes are blatantly clear. If you have a weapon, you can defend yourself, your family and others. If you are disarmed by law or choice, then you are wholly at the mercy of criminals. And as the above scenarios makes clear, while we may not live in a "Mad Max" country, there is nothing to keep "Mad Max" from visiting you or your loved ones. Dr. Hemenway has apparently been lucky in his life to date, but that has not been because he has any concept for the reality of crime, violence or self defense.

Related Posts:

- Boy Uses AR15 To Stop A Home Invasion

- Larry Correia's Brilliant Essay On Guns, Gun Control & Concealed Carry

- Thoughts On Gun Control From The Late Paul Harvey

- The Futility Of An Assault Weapons Ban As An Answer To Sandy Hook

- When Seconds Counted At Sandy Hook, Police Were Twenty Minutes Away

- St. Louis Police Chief Calls for Arming School Personnel

- John Fund essay on Mass Murders, Gun Control & Our Treatment of Mental Illness

- Luby Cafeteria Massacre, Testimony of Suzanna Hupp, Texas School District Authorizes Concealed Carry For Its Schools

- Reynolds On Gun Free Zones, The Left's Mistrust Of Armed Private Citizens, & Our Problematic Mental Health Laws

Linked at Larwyn's Linx, Nice Deb and the Watcher's Council. Thanks.

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The Feinstein Gun Grab

Sen. Dianne Feinstein will be introducing 'gun control' legislation in January. She is using the excuse of Sandy Hook to introduce legislation that is jaw dropping in its breadth. I have yet to read the text of the bill, but the write up Feinstein provides describes vast regulation of weapons of all sorts. Indeed, it would appear to reach virtually all semi-automatic rifles and hand-guns, since virtually all use detachable magazines.

Following is a summary of the 2013 legislation:

• Bans the sale, transfer, importation, or manufacturing of:
• 120 specifically-named firearms
• Certain other semiautomatic rifles, handguns, shotguns that can accept a detachable magazine and have one military characteristic
• Semiautomatic rifles and handguns with a fixed magazine that can accept more than 10 rounds
• Strengthens the 1994 Assault Weapons Ban and various state bans by:
• Moving from a 2-characteristic test to a 1-characteristic test
• Eliminating the easy-to-remove bayonet mounts and flash suppressors from the characteristics test
• Banning firearms with “thumbhole stocks” and “bullet buttons” to address attempts to “work around” prior bans
• Bans large-capacity ammunition feeding devices capable of accepting more than 10 rounds. 
• Protects legitimate hunters and the rights of existing gun owners by:
• Grandfathering weapons legally possessed on the date of enactment
• Exempting over 900 specifically-named weapons used for hunting or sporting purposes and
• Exempting antique, manually-operated, and permanently disabled weapons
• Requires that grandfathered weapons be registered under the National Firearms Act, to include:
• Background check of owner and any transferee;
• Type and serial number of the firearm;
• Positive identification, including photograph and fingerprint;
• Certification from local law enforcement of identity and that possession would not violate State or local law; and
• Dedicated funding for ATF to implement registration

I have recently concluded that our modern left is every bit as totalitarian as were Stalin and Mao, the only difference being that they are constrained to acting incrementally in our nation.  I see now that I was wrong.  Feinstein's rather incredible attempt to disarm the law abiding is anything but incremental.

And do note the extreme irony.  Feinstein is promoting this as a response to Sandy Hook.  The shooter in that massacre had 20 minutes of free fire time once in the "gun free zone" and before police arrived.  He could have used virtually any weapon still allowed under Feinstein's regulation to accomplish the same amount of carnage.  This isn't legislation responsive to Sandy Hook, it's legislation solely aimed at the law abiding.


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The Left: Unleashed & Unhinged Over Gun Control

The slaughter at Sandy Hook has unleashed the left, who see it as an opportunity to disarm the law abiding. From David Gregory today, we get a mocking diatribe against the suggestion that every school have armed guards - even as he sends his children to an elite private school where, in fact, his children are protected by armed guards. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a man protected 24 hours a day by armed security, has talked about confiscating assault weapons from the people of his state. And then there is the NYT editorial board, who opine today on "the scourge of concealed weapons."

Scourge?

Your welcome to read through the NYT's idiocy. Concealed carry is only implicated in the Sandy Hook massacre in as much as the school was a "gun free" zone where none of the staff were allowed a weapon. That gave the shooter 20 minutes of free fire time once he entered the school to accomplish his carnage. He could have done it with a couple of muskets in that amount of time. All of those critical relevant facts are simply ignored by the NTY.

So what is it that the NYT's want? They certainly don't hide it. The NYT editorial board is using Sandy Hook to request that Obama use federal law to trump those 39 states that either have laws allowing concealed carry without permit (4) or those with "shall issue" permitting (35). They want concealed carry permits to be rarely, if ever issued. They want a re-institution of the scary looking weapons assault weapons ban. And lastly, they want Obama to greatly expand the "gun free zones" so as to include "public places like parks, schools and churches."

Though we still await further Supreme Court decisions, if the right to "keep and bear arms" means anything in terms of self defense, then it means that the right to possess arms in defense of self and others travels with the person. It means they should not be unilaterally disarmed by the designation of free fire gun free zones. It means that all people not specifically disqualified, such as by prior criminal record, should be allowed concealed carry. And it means that people need to have access to weapons that would be effective against a tyrannical state actor - and that means at least semi-automatic rifles.

The left's reaction to Sandy Hook is anything but a measured one. They are unhinged and unleased. For the left, the 2nd Amendment simply does not exist, and the Heller decision is to be devoutly ignored. Sandy Hook is nothing more than an excuse for them to stop people from being armed. Guns are simply too dangerous to be allowed in the possession of the unwashed masses, and every trick that can be used to disarm them should be used. The mind numbing hypocrisy of those calling for disarmament is surreal.



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The Final Word On Guns, Gun Control & Concealed Carry

So now that there is a new tragedy the president wants to have a “national conversation on guns”. Here’s the thing. Until this national conversation is willing to entertain allowing teachers to carry concealed weapons, then it isn’t a conversation at all, it is a lecture.

Larry Correia, An Opinion On Gun Control, Monster Hunter Nation, 21 Dec. 2012

In the wake of Sandy Hook, Larry Correia has written probably the most informative essay on guns, gun control laws, and concealed carry that you will find. It is long. Go here and read it.

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The Total Futility Of An Assault Weapons Ban In Light Of Sandy Hook (Updated)

In the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre, President Obama, responding to clarion calls from the left, has vowed to enact meaningful gun control legislation. For her part, Senator Diane Feinstein "has said she intends to introduce a new ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines on the first day of the next Congress in January."

What is an "assault weapon?" I am sure everyone has some - necessarily vague - idea. The term "assault weapon," as defined by the the law passed in 1994 and which expired in 2004, meant nothing more than a weapon with certain cosmetic characteristics - characteristics that scared progressives whose sole apparent familiarity with them came through watching action movies. PJM has up an excellent post on just how ridiculous the 1994 "assault weapon" ban actually was, and in particular, with a visual that says it all:

This gun, an AR15, was banned as an assault rifle:

This gun, the same in all relevant respects, was not banned.

The difference between the two weapons - the one on the bottom did not have a bayonet mount or a flash suppressor. So what defined an "assault weapon" was not ballistic characteristics, but pure cosmetics. Not surprisingly, the "assault weapons ban" had zero impact on gun crime.

And for the record, note that "a 2001 Justice Department study revealed that fewer than 2% of State and Federal inmates used, carried, or possessed a military-style semi-automatic gun or a fully automatic gun during their current offense." In other words, the push to ban guns that scared progressives was both ineffective and unwarranted.

That said, the fact that an AR15 knock-off was used in the Sandy Hook massacre does not mean, on the facts of that case, that banning the single most popular weapon in the United States for hunting, self defense and target shooting would in any way have prevented the tragedy. The relevant facts are:

1. The shooter was insane, and our mental health laws make the institutionalization and forced treatment of such individuals very difficult, if not impossible. Indeed, perhaps the defining characteristic of most mass murders is that the perpetrator is mentally ill. The starting point for any national action in the wake of Sandy Hook should begin with an examination of our mental health laws.

2. The shooter had 20 minutes of free fire time once he entered the school and until police arrived, whereupon he committed suicide. As former police officer Mike McDaniel points out at PJM, that type of response time is hardly unusual. With 20 minutes, the shooter could have used virtually any type of firearm and have accomplished the same degree of carnage. Indeed, one can imagine that, if the shooter had used, say, a pump action shotgun in the close confines of the school and with massed targets, the carnage may even have been worse.

3. The only thing that could have actually stopped this shooter before he massacred 26 women and children would have been other people with weapons at the point of attack. We are heralding the principal of Sandy Hook and others who lunged towards the shooter in an effort to stop him. They are dead. We are heralding a teacher who hid her students. She was murdered. We as a nation should prefer to be heralding these people as living heroes, one of whom ended the massacre by killing the shooter. The only rational course of action in the wake of Sandy Hook is to end gun free zones and allow schools to arm some of their staff per reasonable requirements. (Update 2: According to the latest Gallup Poll, more Americans support arming school staff than more gun control laws.) It is not to enact a ludicrous ban on weapons that scare progressives.

Update 1: From Instapundit - REMINDER: Sen. Dianne Feinstein Has Concealed Carry Permit. Well, sure, because her life is important. Not like yours.

Related Posts:

- When Seconds Counted At Sandy Hook, Police Were Twenty Minutes Away

- St. Louis Police Chief Calls for Arming School Personnel

- John Fund essay on Mass Murders, Gun Control & Our Treatment of Mental Illness

- Luby Cafeteria Massacre, Testimony of Suzanna Hupp, Texas School District Authorizes Concealed Carry For Its Schools

- Reynolds On Gun Free Zones, The Left's Mistrust Of Armed Private Citizens, & Our Problematic Mental Health Laws

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Canine Therapy In Newton . . .

The bonds between humans and wolves date back over tens of thousands of years. Those wolves we adopted, we now call dogs. Every dog alive today shares 99% of their DNA with wolves. At any rate, it is not hard to see why the bond developed. For their part, dogs get security, they are fed, taken care of, petted, played with and loved. For our part, we get a companion that that can brighten even the worst of days . . .

From the NY Daily News:

A pack of sympathetic groups bearing supportive canines spent much of Monday with bereaved Connecticut residents affected by last week's Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, providing children and adults alike with the cuddly comfort that only a four-legged friend can give.

The "comfort dogs," or "therapy dogs" as they are sometimes called, were brought in by at least three groups late Sunday to help kids and adults alike cope with last week's horrific shooting in Newtown that left 20 first graders and six school officials dead.

Among the groups was the Hudson Valley Golden Retrievers Club, whose members spent the afternoon at a makeshift memorial near the town center, where both kids and adults in need of compassion stopped to pet and cuddle the dogs.

Mourning or otherwise devastated children and parents said that petting the dogs gave them relief from their sadness.

"I just love dogs, so whenever I'm around them, they make me feel better," said 12-year-old Ryan Williams. "When they come over and you pet them you kind of forget about what's happening for a little bit."

Jenna Stuart, a school bus driver from Newtown, said the dogs were an enormous help to her four-year-old daughter, Kylie, who attends preschool at the Children's Adventure Center in front of Sandy Hook Elementary and lost friends in the tragedy. . . . .

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When Seconds Counted, The Police Were 20 Minutes Away

From the CNN Sandy Hook timeline:

At the police station, dispatchers began to take calls from inside the school. Authorities say the first emergency call about the shooting came in at "approximately" 9:30 a.m.

"Sandy Hook school. Caller is indicating she thinks someone is shooting in the building," a dispatcher told fire and medical personnel, according to 911 tapes.

Police and other first responders arrived on scene about 20 minutes after the first calls.

Police report that no law enforcement officers discharged their weapons at any point.

The gunman took his own life, police said. He took out a handgun and shot himself in a classroom as law enforcement officers approached, officials said.

Twenty students, ages 6 and 7, and six adults were killed at the school.

The murder of 26 students and teachers at Sandy Hook is both a massacre and a tragedy. The fact that the murderer met no armed resistance during the 20 minutes of his massacre is an obscenity.

The solution to this problem seems pretty simple. The only way to stop a person with a gun is another person with a gun at the time and place of the crime - and, as former police officer Mike McDaniel writes at PJM, because of response times, that will rarely, if ever, be a member of the police. Allowing school staff and teachers to be trained and authorized to carry concealed weapons, as already occurring in some places and called for in others, is the "school solution."

But the left wants our nation disarmed. They do not trust anyone with a gun - unless, of course, its the people directly providing security for them. So, for them, the solution is to take more guns away from the law abiding and designating more areas free fire gun free zones.

Links: - Ace of Spades: Penn & Teller On Gun Control

- Instapundit: The questions to ask to start the debate on gun control . . .

- Sowell: Gun Control Ignorance

- PJM: States With Stricter Gun Control Laws Are Less Safe

Related Posts:

- St. Louis Police Chief Calls for Arming School Personnel

- John Fund essay on Mass Murders, Gun Control & Our Treatment of Mental Illness

- Luby Cafeteria Massacre, Testimony of Suzanna Hupp, Texas School District Authorizes Concealed Carry For Its Schools

- Reynolds On Gun Free Zones, The Left's Mistrust Of Armed Private Citizens, & Our Problematic Mental Health Laws

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