Let’s Pry Open Those Cold, Dead Hands

.45

Be my guest.  I did not intend the list to be all inclusive. 

Your comments on the Jihadist situation in Europe are well taken.  We have gone into Europe twice in the last century to clean up their mistakes, and I firmly believe we will go in again to clean out the Jihadists.

Posted by scorp on Oct 18, 2007 at 8:02 PM

Major Major -

Oh, come now.  You have gone from faulty interpretations of Lott, to irrelevant comparisons with Canada, to illiterate and irrational confusion of polar opposites. 

Patriots and tyrants, indeed.  If you can’t make a coherent argument, and can’t distinguish between, for example, George Washington and Robert Mugabe, you must be the educational product of the Neocommunist NEA.  Just how old are you, anyway?

Posted by scorp on Oct 18, 2007 at 8:08 PM

Hi Scorp,

It does no harm (and probably no good either) to remind the likes of “MM” about the 100M odd (probably more, Mao & Stalin together give over 110M) disarmed citezens who became victims of state genocide in the 20th century.

Perhaps a few people capable of thinking beyond:

“4 legs good: all guns bad” will read it and begin to think for themselves.

It is interesting that the British Govt, with its law abiding part of the population disarmed, is still terrified that if a predominantly Moslem area errupts into rioting, that the surrounding white population will go in and burn them out.

There are any amount of good honest Moslems who deserve the ability to defend themselves and there loved ones, and who would almost certainly have kept the minority wahabiist element down, now they are facing the posibility of being petrol bombed out. shame.

You’re completely correct about Europe messing up. Hitler was democratically elected.

I’m sure everyone has seen the ww2 adverts for guns to be donated to protect British homes ?

Britain dis-armed the law abiding part of it’s working class in the 1920’s (naturally the comunists who were the real targets, and the criminals who were the claimed target, did not comply).  Therefore faced with a genocidal dictatorship with plans for invasion, Britain’s population was defenseless.

You know what happened to those guns which were kindly donated?

The Govt rounded them up at the end of the war and they were dumped at sea.

When I’ve run out of fluff to extract from my navel, and there’s really nothing better to do (on long flights and that sort of thing), I sometimes wonder where the strange “shiboliths” of the left, such as the weird metaphysical, quazi religious property of “Progress”, and the all out belief in gun control come from. They seem to be taken as religious articles of faith, received wisdom rather than being ideas which are open to debate or logic.

So much for the left being “government by scientific principals”...

I don’t think any of the leftists who contributed here (least of all MM) will be capable of answering but, its worth asking anyway.

Posted by alpacca45 on Oct 19, 2007 at 2:58 AM

“One man’s patriot is another man’s tyrant.”
  - Major Major

“Is it just or reasonable, that most voices against the main end of government should enslave the less number that would be free?  More just it is, doubtless, if it come to force, that a less number compel a greater to retain, which can be no wrong to them, their liberty, than that a greater number, for the pleasure of their baseness, compel a less most injuriously to be their fellow slaves.  They who seek nothing but their own just liberty, have always the right to win it, whenever they have the power, be the voices never so numerous that oppose it.”
      - John Milton

Posted by jdege on Oct 19, 2007 at 6:21 AM

jdege -

MM does not care what Milton said.  Milton is a dead white male.  Dead white males are not politically correct. 

The wisdom and insight that inspired the creation of our world have given away to political correctness, appeasement, pacifism, and globalism which are the defining values of the Neocommunists. 

The Communists and Neocommunists have an unrelieved history of death, destruction, and failure, all of which are irrelevant to True Believers who think that political correctness will bring a new Utopia, and Americans will become the New Soviet Man. 

Not as long as you and I enforce the Second Amendment.

Posted by scorp on Oct 19, 2007 at 12:09 PM

Firearms are the second leading cause of traumatic death related to a consumer product in the United States and are the second most frequent cause of death overall for Americans ages 15 to 24. Since 1960, more than a million Americans have died in firearm suicides, homicides, and unintentional injuries.

Public health research has shown that firearms violence is directly related to firearms availability and density. What separates America from other Western, industrialized nations is not our overall rate of violence, but our rates of lethal violence

Posted by Major Major on Oct 19, 2007 at 2:58 PM

Replace the firearms stats with automobile stats (about as many cars in the US as guns).

“Automobiles are the leading cause of traumatic death related to a consumer product in the United States and is the most frequent cause of death overall for Americans ages 15 to 24. Since 1960, more than two million Americans have died in autombile suicides, homicides, and unintentional injuries.

Public health research has shown that automobile violence is directly related to automobile availability and density. What separates America from other Western, industrialized nations is not our overall rate of violence, but our rates of lethal violence—which can be directly traced to automobile availability. In 2004 alone, 45,153 Americans died by automobile: 108 in automobile suicides, 51 in automobile homicides, 44,933 in unintentional driving deaths, and 51 in automobile deaths of unknown intent, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. More than ONE HUNDRED TIMES that number are treated in emergency rooms each year for nonfatal automobile injuries.”

Gee, aren’t stats so horrific when stated in a vacuum?

In Japan they had more non-firearms suicides than all firearms related deaths in the US COMBINED! Thay have half as many people, and no firearms, yet they have more deaths and about three times the suicide rate. The LIE that firearms suicides would have been prevented if there is no suicide looks pathetically ridiculous when we look at the handgun free UK and Japan much higher suicide rates.

“The most common scenario for homicide in America is an argument between two people who know one another. ” ANother out of context trick. The most common scenarios for murder really is an argument between two people who know each other by at least aquantance or familiarity, BUT that is for ALL homicides and not just homiceds using firearms. They slip that little line in there hoping suckers don’t double check the facts.
Murders and suicides will happen regardless of if there are a firearm present or not…just look at Japan, the UK and Russia. Russia has NO handgun ownership, but SIX times the murder rate of the US!!

Major Major, think for yourself and stop cutting and pasting lies. Once you look into the figures you will discover the gun control nuts are wrong and are doing nothing but trying to scare you with mistated figures and lies.

This liberal did, and this liberal approves of this message.

Posted by Novus on Oct 19, 2007 at 3:17 PM

So, according to your “illiberal” logic, not only should we not license gun owners and register their firearms, but we should also abolish auto licensing and registration.

Suicide in Japan is a culturally accepted practice, regrettably, and almost completely irrelevant to the issue of gun ownership, and like homicide would be much higher if firearms were as endemic to the Japanese as they are to Americans.

Novus, if you could think for yourself you’d be dangerous.

Posted by Major Major on Oct 19, 2007 at 4:57 PM

Besides mentioning the fact that many deaths are caused by unlicensed and unregistered drivers driving illegally in public, car licensing and registration is only required when driven on public roads. You and I can own a car and drive it on our own property in most states without licensing or regisration.
If someone owns a gun and never wears it loaded in public, then that is no different. Most murders occur in public.

Your argument about Japan with a culturally accepted practice of suicide….well that argument can just as easil used here now can’t it! It would be a culture of suicide and not the availability of guns in America leading to the prevalence of suicide by your very own logic.
Also for that matter, you would also have to argue that suicide in the handgun free UK is part of a culuture of suicide too because their suicide rate is ALSO much higher than the OVERALL (including non-firearms related) suicide rate in America.

If you could think for yourself and check on some simple facts, you might be intelligent Major Major.
Too bad you choose to follow a one location, severely partisan and biased source to do your thinking for you.

I am a liberal, and probably a much liberal than you liberal, and I approve of this message.

Posted by Novus on Oct 19, 2007 at 5:22 PM

“Public health research has shown that firearms violence is directly related to firearms availability and density.”

Sorry, but no.  The public health literature is full of politically-motivated fraud. 

http://www.guncite.com/journals/tennmed.html

“The abysmal quality of the anti-gun health advocacy literature may be explained by six conceptually discrete factors: intellectual and locutional sloppiness; intellectual confusion; ignorance of criminological or other facts; fraudulent omission of material fact, or statement of part of the fact calculated to deceive by the suppression of the whole;[63] overt misrepresentation of facts; and what we call gun-aversive dyslexia—a reading disability engendered by a fear and loathing of guns so profound that health advocate sages who encounter adverse facts may be honestly unable to comprehend them.”

One recent example of how the anti-gun advocates in the public health community engage in fraud is David Hemenway, Deborah Azrael , and Matthew Miller’s

Posted by jdege on Oct 19, 2007 at 7:08 PM

Right, Doo-, er, Novus.  Thirty thousand Japanese suicides per year for the last ten years, and not one American manufactured pistol to profit from their loss.  No wonder Smith and Wesson went bankrupt.. But don’t despair.  We still have high hopes for our junior Japanese partners.  After all, they’ve only just begun to understand that suicide can be painless.  Scrap your traditional corporate policy of lifetime employment and wait for the returns on your investment to roll right in.  Another twenty years of American sponsored corporate productivity and they, too, can dispose of their surplus population with American ingenuity.

It’s not a “culture of suicide.”  It’s a culture of competition, American style.

American roulette.

Posted by Major Major on Oct 20, 2007 at 7:42 AM

Give us your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
And we’ll throw them on the streets and sell ‘em the guns to kill each other.

Posted by Major Major on Oct 20, 2007 at 8:19 AM

For those who may think that only violent people believe they should be armed.

Posted by xmountie on Oct 20, 2007 at 8:50 AM

M/M said”

Suicide in Japan is a culturally accepted practice, regrettably, and almost completely irrelevant to the issue of gun ownership, and like homicide would be much higher if firearms were as endemic to the Japanese as they are to Americans.”

For a person who likes to make reference to the Canadian Firearms Act S/he should also be well aware that it was suicide stats that Cukier, Rock and the gun grabbers here kept referring to when quoting the total number of people killed per year by Firearms. 1200 deaths of which 1000 were suicides is hardly justification for following the German design of gun control.  While Hitlers regieme is commonly credited with that , it was actually the former Government that started it in the early 30’s It was a useful tool for Hitler, however , when he began to exterminate people.  A ready made shopping list for a Government bent on eliminating all but pure bred Germans in their country.
While politicitians here along with the Coalition for Gun Control like to point out that suicide by firearm has declined ,they fail to finish the sentence.  The overall suicide rate remains unchanged, which begs the question, why to gun grabbers feel that it is more acceptable to hang yourself or use any of the other methods of committing suicide.  Before you get all self righteous and remind me that guns are often used to take someone with you , consider the number of persons who, because of a history of mental illness, that prevents them from legally owning firearms yet hold a valid driver’s licence and a motor vehicle.  Now think of the number of multiple vehicle “accidents” in which many persond are killed including all those in the original car or truck that started the chain reaction.  Seldom does anyone look at these as possible suicides.  We could not have them look too close at a person’s past mental history there now could we?  Perhaps it is because too many of us may have a past that could be cause for worry or even current work or marital problems that would remove our driving priviledges.

Posted by xmountie on Oct 20, 2007 at 9:35 AM

Major Major,
If the logic that the prevalance of handguns affects the suicide rate is true, and because there are no handguns in Japan, nor legal ones in the UK, then more legally owned handguns in Japan should save thousands of lives every year.

Now of course to suggest that more handguns in Japan will stop suicides is ridiculous…..just like it is it is preposterous to suggest more handguns in the US leads to more suicides.
The people who did the “study” with the intent to find the conclusion they already determined before the “study” even started, ignored some perspectives they chose not to see.
Ideation is a part of suicide and it can progress to an actual attempt. Some people with suicide ideation will stop daydreaming about it when they are confronted with an actual opportunity early on such as standing on a tenth floor balcony, or standing curb next to fast moving traffic, or standing on a Japanese bullet train platform, or having access to a gun. For some of these people actually having an available means when suicide ideation had begun, the ideation ceases because it is easier to imagine and then dismiss instead of the ideation continuing and leading to deeper depression which can lead to actual suicide.

Suicide in Japan among children is many times higher than in the US and the Japanese are no longer teaching a culture of suicide to their young so your “culture of suicide” theory falls apart.
In the UK the suicide rate went up in the years following the total handgun ban, so it can be argued using the VPC “study” logic that handgun bans leads to more suicides…....remember, this is using the anti gun group VPC’s logic.

Posted by Novus on Oct 20, 2007 at 10:00 AM

When guns are banned, then the law abiding will have none and the criminals will have these: http://www.thehomegunsmith.com/introduction.shtml

In inner cities where the law abiding minorities are banned from owning handguns, they are made defensless from the still armed criminals. Gun control laws have a history steeped in racism.
http://www.blackmanwithagun.com/site/dbpage.asp?page_id=140000780&sec_id=140000845

Posted by Novus on Oct 20, 2007 at 10:06 AM

Smith & Wesson’s bankruptcy had nothing to do with lack of sales in Japan.  It had more to do with their climbing into bed with the anti-gun nazis in an effort of appeasement in order to avoid lawsuits from cities bent on trying to break their backs in court.  Prior loyal Smith & Wesson fansserved them notice of their displeasure by cancelling orders, notifying the company that since they wanted to bed the Brady crowd et al, that they would take their business elswhere.

Posted by xmountie on Oct 20, 2007 at 12:07 PM

Please.  Spare me your tortured rationalizations with respect to the fundamental causes of suicide and homicide.  Healthy, employed, educated people, with strong social ties to family and community, don’t kill themselves or their relatives or their neighbors.  Even the chronically unemployed and uneducated victims of pathologically dysfunctional families and neighborhoods are less inclined to kill themselves or anyone else than those with easy access to firearms, which is why the highest rates of homicide and suicide occur among the ranks of white, rural Southern males.  Farmers who lose their farms, bankrupt ranchers, loggers and small, family businessmen, who lack the education or the health to obtain comparable employment to support themselves and their families, but own a veritable arsenal of arms and ammunition, are the people most likely to resort to homicide or suicide as the only imagined alternative to their loss of pride or self-respect.  People who would otherwise reach out for a helping hand, if one was available to them, reach instead for a gun to terminate their sorrow and shame.  And what’s even more obscene than all of this is the fact that the rest of us simply shake our heads and mutter, “Aint it a shame.”

Posted by Major Major on Oct 20, 2007 at 3:21 PM

Now you are just shamelessly making crap up Major Major.

If there was any truth to the idea that the access to guns leads more people to commit suicide, or that they would not kill themselves if they had no access, then explain the UK, Japan and the Ukraine which all have no handgun ownership, yet much higher suicide rates than the US.

The link source you cited earlier claimed the handgun and firearm regisration in Canada has had great success at reducing suicide or something like that, but my Gawd man, the suicide rates are higher in Canada than in the US as WELL as being higher in strict gun control countries like Australia and the handgun free UK than it is in the US.
To make the more-suicide-to-gun-availability claim in the face of these facts is extraordinarily bizzare and ridiculous.

Want to know why the gun control nuts are losing in the public information game? Because they have been using bogus information, comparisons and facts for decades, but now with the internet anyone can discover their lies within moments.
That is of course if people WANT to open their eyes and fact check they will see all the lies and mischaracterizations of figures the gun control nuts have been using.

Be a liberal like me Major Major, think for yourself. Double check the “facts” the gun control nuts propaganda machine has fooled you into repeating for them.

I am a liberal and I approve this message.

Posted by Novus on Oct 20, 2007 at 3:53 PM

I’m full of crap?  I can’t believe any of you idiots are actually arguing that throwing more guns into an already socially volatile environment will do anything other than increase the rate of injury or death among the people who possess firearms.  Even the hunters occasionally kill or maim each other, as our Fearless VP has so dramatically demonstrated for us.  You survey your selective “facts” and conclude that we live in a culture of “suicide” when in fact it’s just another hyper-competitive shooting gallery, populated by people who would rather kill or die than surrender their “superior” status and the property (including their wives and children) which embodies that status for them.  You’re the living proof to Mao’s cynical testament that “Power flows from the barrel of a gun.”

Posted by Major Major on Oct 20, 2007 at 5:38 PM

About more people kill themselves without a gun than do using a gun in this country. Even if all guns were removed from socitey and even if all those people who used a gun did not find a way to kill themselves without using a gun, then we would still have a rampant suicide rate in this country. Guns do not cause suicide, mental illness does and the inflicted will find a way if they have a gun or not. There is no way for you to prove otherwise without looking like a fool.

Guns are used between a low estimate of 108,000 times a year to a high estimate of 2,500,000 times a year by law abiding citizens defending against criminals in this country. Guns save lives and much more than criminals use them to murder.
Of the number of murderers, it is estimated that over 80% had previous felony conviction and therefore could not own a handgun to begin with if they weren’t already disqualified for other reasons. So it is true that only an infintessimally small percentage of lawful gun owners murder anyone with a gun or without.
Now, some gun murders are committed by previously law abiding citizens but most, if not all, would have found other ways to commit their crime. Now compare a few murders by previously law abiding gun owners compared to 2,500,000 times the law abiding have used their guns to stop a violent crime or attack.
LAWFULLY POSSESED guns in America SAVES lives and more LAWFULLY possessed guns saves more lives!!!
Law abiding minorities possessing a gun are incredibly many more times as likely to use a gun to save their lives or their familiy’s lives than their gun would be used by them to commit suicide, to murder or accidentally kill someone all combined.
Using the fake reasoning that guns cause suicide, cause murder or that accidental gun related death is more than a few hundred a year in order to disarm millions of law abiding minorities in this country is dispicable and makes one’s motivations very suspect.

I am a liberal and I approve this message.

Posted by Novus on Oct 20, 2007 at 6:27 PM

Foolish me.  I was under the naive impression that protracted unemployment, chronic ill health, inadequate education, mortgage foreclosure, business failure, spousal and child abuse, racial discrimination (including the playful deposition of symbolic representations of mob rule), to name just a few, all contribute to the collective apprehension of a progressively paranoid population.  Making more guns available to the general public is tantamount to throwing gasoline on a smoldering fire.  Criminals steal their weapons from an increasingly larger pool of legal owners, or they buy them from disreputable dealers who fail to register their entire inventory.  The unemployed and divorced seek to avenge themselves for real or imagined grievances.  Children play with unlocked and loaded guns, despite their parents’ prohibitions.  What you call “mental illness” is commonly endemic to a deliberately, continuously frightened public, where the media and politicians pander to our collective insecurities to further their own economic and political agendas.  Killing yourself or someone else is not an easily accomplished event, either psychologically or physically.  Guns make it that much more easily, irrevocably, possible.  Guns do, in fact, kill people.

Posted by Major Major on Oct 20, 2007 at 10:38 PM

Doom and gloom and scary claims means nothing nowadays coming from the anti gun ownership crowd. All the fears of yesteryear of what will happen if we have more guns not only did not come true, but the OPPOSITE often actually happened.
Accordin to ATF estimates, since 1993 there have been about 70,000,000 more legally owned guns in the United States. According to the FBI the murder rate is almost half of what it was about fourteen years ago. More guns did not make a smouldering fire blaze up as your analogy claims and the fear is more than unwaranted and disproven.

According to the CDC, the number of children (children are pre-pubescents usually under the age of fourteen) dying in 2004 from unintentional firearms deaths was 64.
While 64 children dying is a tragedy, it is far from a pandemic problem. More kids died an unintentional death from suffocation (963 in the year 2004), more died from unintentional drowning (761),  more died from walking (171), and more died while walking and being hit with a car (406).
http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate.html

As far as the ease of suicide, it is as easy as walking out the front door and stepping in front of a bus, a truck or an SUV. It is MUCH easier than shooting oneself because it takes nerve to pull the trigger and with walking in traffic one just has to close the eyes and wait for the bus to hit them.

No gun has murdered anyone, ever. It requires someone to pull the trigger and by that the person committed the murder.
If you are so fearful of guns and the prevalence of guns in our society, then what in blue blazes makes you think criminals won’t be making their own more dangerous guns in their basements?
In Baltimore a few years ago a white supremacist was arrested and when they searched his house they found a dump truck load of modern firearms he made in his row house.
Ted Kazcinsky, the Unabomber, made his own pistol that they found in his cabin made out of scrap parts.
In the Philipines they have a huge problem with home made shotguns used by criminals. In WWII they even made their own ammo out of brass curtain rods to fight the Japanes with.
In Pakistan they make full auto AK47s from scratch using scrap and no power tools using charcoal furnaces to smelt, weld and braze (called Khyber Pass guns).
For about fifty dollars in parts and handtools a criminal can make a fully automatic submachine pistol. http://www.thehomegunsmith.com/introduction.shtml
In the friggen UK they have a huge problem with people making handguns. Just where in the Hell do you think all the handguns used in handgun crime in the UK came from if there are no handguns to steal from gun owners (as you put it)? Some are smuggled in, the rest are made by the criminals.

Disarming the law abiding will do no more than make us defensless against a still armed criminal element. The nation’s demographics are that minorities overwhelmingly live in poorer areas with the highest violent crime in those areas. To disarm the law abiding minorities of handguns which are the ones that need them the most, just because some people have an unreasonable fear of an inanimate object, while the criminals still have knives, bats, fists and guns is criminal and racist.
Even during the civil rights movement in the South there was a need for the minorities to be armed to defend against the local government supported KKK. Ever hear of the Deacons for Defense and Justice? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deacons_for_Defense_and_Justice

Posted by Novus on Oct 20, 2007 at 11:33 PM

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. - Benjamin Disraeli

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_lies,_and_statistics

Let me ask you major major. If I or another of the gun nuts posting to this never ending morass promise to teach you to shoot and over come your fear of guns will you promise to commit suicide?

Just tell me where you live and I’ll even travel to see ya’ if you do.

When guns are outlawed I’ll be an outlaw and I hope I get to see you when “Liberal” season is in full swing.

Don’t you ‘pro gunners’ see that a percentage of these creatures will still be lying when hell thaws out again? Telling the truth to a “Liberal” freak is like Dorothy pouring water on a witch. Well I wish it was. But I guess that would make it too easy.

Study the front page of this rag. Have they changed? Will they change? Authoritarianism is their drug. They can’t imagine a world in which they don’t control every aspect of their neighbors’ lives.

It’s about Liberty, not guns. And those who seek to decide who amont their neighbors has ‘too much’ so their wealth can be ‘redistributed’ will eventually get around to you.

Posted by waypasthadenough on Oct 21, 2007 at 5:55 AM

“I was under the naive impression that protracted unemployment, chronic ill health, inadequate education, mortgage foreclosure, business failure, spousal and child abuse, racial discrimination (including the playful deposition of symbolic representations of mob rule), to name just a few, all contribute to the collective apprehension of a progressively paranoid population.”

Yep.  There it is again.  Bigotry and prejudice.

Posted by jdege on Oct 21, 2007 at 6:47 AM

Guns have killed more people during the last century than all the “knives, bats and fists” combined throughout the preceding nineteen centuries.  Stop trying to obfuscate the issue with your selective reliance on misleading statistics (check out the previous citation to Disraeli).  Your cute reference to “prepubescent” children “dying…from unintentional firearms deaths” doesn’t factor in the thousands of children dying from intentional gang-related deaths, which are typically the result of a pandemic spike in the ownership of guns.  According to your logic, the solution to urban gang-related homicide, which occurs primarily among the gang members themselves, is to provide them with even more guns to “defend” themselves against each other.  Moreover, you would provide everyone else in the neighborhood with additional weapons.  Forget about genocide.  You’re an advocate of auto-genocide.

Guns kill people.  Get rid of them.

Posted by Major Major on Oct 21, 2007 at 7:20 AM

My, my, my Major Major, I knew you would try the exageration of children dying by being murdered. According to the CDC it was not “thousands” of children that die every year by being murdered by someone using a gun, it was 279 in 2004 and that includes non-gang related murders.
You have no shame.
The total combined children deaths a year where a firearm was involved, including being murdered by criminals that were not even allowed to own a gun legally in the first place (which is the majority) is in the low hundreds (358 in 2004).
The number of children dying when a firearm was involved including by murder in 1993 was 957. The number of firearms in the US in 1994 was 195,000,000. In 2004 when only 358 children died when a gun was involved (including being murdered by criminals) there were a 100,000,000 more guns in this country (about 290,000,000 firearms in 2004) with millions more housholds with firearms in them. Once again your claim that more firearms leads to more children, or any, deaths is proven to be bogus.

Whenever the gun control nuts use figures and stats, and then their stats are exposed to be misrepresentations or just simply false, they alsways then make the claim that stats mean nothing and anyone can twist them to their argument. It is as guaranteed that the antis use this desperation tactic as it is for people to use Godwin’s law. If you do not trust any stats, then why did you trust the ones from the anti gun VPC?
My so called “selective” statistics was in direct response to the VPC’s selective and misrepresneted stats. I was simply revealing the rest of the stats the VPC selectively chose to exclude because it would disprove their choice stats.

Guns have killed no one. It takes a living human being to pull the trigger to kill.
Half of all murders are committed with a method other than a handgun and much less before the 1960s in the US.
At between 108,000 and 2,500,000 times a gun was used defensively to stop a violent crime or attack a year in the US, the number of lives saved by a law abiding person is probably in the tens of millions in the past two hundred years in the US.

The gun cannot be uninvented and as long as we have criminals in our society criminals are just going to make them or smuggle them in. No one ever has advocated arming criminals and it is a common tactic of desperation by the gun control nuts to claim anyone is advocating selling violent criminals firearms.
No, we only want the law abiding be armed so they can defend themselves from the violent criminals.

All gun prohibition will do is to disarm the law abiding and innocent making them targets. The vast majority of the minorities living in the poor communities are law abiding and it is also where the most violent criminals dwell. To disarm the masses of law abiding minorities in most need for protection based on the actions of a few criminals is bigoted at it’s core.
Innocent minorities living in inner cities have a human right to self defense and people like you are trying to make them defensless. You are advocating the slow meticulous genocide, not me.

I am a liberal and I approve this message.

Posted by Novus on Oct 21, 2007 at 8:56 AM

“Guns have killed more people during the last century than all the

Posted by jdege on Oct 21, 2007 at 11:41 AM

xmountie,

Thanks for the info on registration up there. I remember reading stories both ways

Posted by whattheheck on Oct 21, 2007 at 2:04 PM

MM,

If stats should determine what we do away with perhaps you should consider that between 40,000 and 50,000 die in auto accidents annually.

I don’t know how that compares per capita with horse drawn deaths prior to the car’s invention — but I wouldn’t be surprised if you do.

Posted by whattheheck on Oct 21, 2007 at 2:12 PM

Hi

looks like MM is off on another spin.

Suicide:
perhaps MM can explain to us why countries like Lithuania and Bealarus have the highest suicide rates (aroungd 70 / 100,000/ year) and no handgun ownership?

There is no correlation between gun ownership and suicide rate, go google the WHO suicide stats and see whether Switzerland with about the highest firearms ownership in the world has a significantly higher suicide rate than its more controlled neighbours, France, Germany and Austria?

I left Italy out of that, as a Mediteranean country, it enjoys the same low suicide rate as its mediteranean neighboursdo, something about sunshine and good food.

What is correlated is firearms ownership and suicide with a firearm.

again, the hard of thinking get hung up on this, but are unable to offer any explanation of the benefit to society of the suicides occuring by say asphyxiation, electrocution or poisoning… Go on MM, I know you like a challenge, you still haven’t told me what “progress” is, have a go, I’m waiting.

Why does gun ownership not impact on total suicide rate?

Is the presence of a gun going to cause a normal person to decide to end it all?

Nope

Is the absence of a gun going to persuade someone who really can’t face another day, that perhaps life really is worth living after all?

I really don’t think so!

MM brings out another oft repeated half truth:
“Murderers know their victims”

I think the statistic is titled “Known to”:

This includes:
Members of a rival street gang / drugs gang
A prostitute and his / her “client” who met 5 minutes earlier
Rival dealers / pimps / protection racketeers
....and of course their “customers”

I addressed a componant part of the myth way back near the top of page 1:
Normal people just don’t commit murder. About 90% of murders are commited by people with 3 or more previous convictions for violent offences. Those mutants are well known to the justice system and really should be behind bars until they no longer pose a risk to society.

Oh, incidentally, violent fellons are not legally allowed to own a firearm, but since when have violent fellons obeyed a law.

Motoring
Car registration is for taxation purposes, any law enforcement benefit is incidental.

The US has a v high motoring death rate compared to simillarly developed nations. At least 1 reason is poor driver training and testing. The answer to that is with you the people.

The lack of “car control” comes down to one of the founding principles of socialism:

“of course i would gladly give you something that I do not have, but you’re certainly not getting anything i actually own”

come on progressives, what does progress actuall mean?

and how about answering some of the very good points the “People of the Gun” have been putting up here, but answer with facts figures and analysis, not bleeding heart half baked emotion.

Posted by alpacca45 on Oct 22, 2007 at 5:38 AM

Isn’t it rather absurd to let a ‘criminal’ out of prison who society feels can’t be ‘trusted with a weapon?’

That’s what “LIberal” freaks like. A ‘Justus’ system that doesn’t work so they have an excuse to pass more laws, taxes, control.

They have infiltrated everything on every level. That’s the ‘everything’ that’s in the dictionary. That’s probably what’s wrong with the NRA.

They have sleeper agents in most or all organizations, with one assignment.

We are at war. Make no mistake about that. Unless we value our Liberty as much as they value their ‘revolution’ we will be their slaves.

Want to know the “Liberal” version of a ‘criminal?’

“Anyone with a gun should be in prison.” - Rosie O’Donnell. (paraphrase)

Better get ready for the inevitable. Supply, train, target.

Posted by waypasthadenough on Oct 22, 2007 at 6:01 AM

Hi Waypast,

Looking at the broader “creed” of the “left”, it does look a lot more like a religion than a rational and logical set of policies to govern by.

I’ve touched on the “progress” thing which Laura seems so keen on mentioning in the editorial.

None of the critters has been able to tell me what the left means by “PROGRESS”!

What is “PROGRESS”? and what is the process by which an Idea, action or person gains this mysterious property of “PROGRESS”?

Laura is very keen on spouting about opinion polls. One factor which repeatedly comes out in opinion polls, is the general public’s distrust of politicians (they normally rank somewhere close to journalists).

Why then, does the “creed” of the left insist that even the most basic human right, that of self defence, should be surrendered to a monopoly controlled by those whom the public trust least?

Actually, the creed of the left looks more like a recipe for producing the sort of chaos from which a Bolshevik revolution can succeed in seizing power and holding it, than a recipe to actually govern a country by for the long term.

For the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat” to hang onto power, it needs to eliminate any armed oposition. Is that us?  Is that what the people of the gun stand in the way of? ( as the Finns did in their war of independance).

Perhaps the “left” should have a long hard look to see what their ideas actually mean and where they came from.

What is quazi religious Victorian bullshit?

What came out of Com-Intern agents working for Stalin’s GRU / KGB in the 1930’s and was all to do with allowing world communism (by Stalin) to take over and nothing about making life better for people?

What was the first attempt at subjective analysis of a problem, which has now been thoroughly dis-credited by later research but is still held too as an almost religious truth?

Perhaps the likes of MM would like me to put them in touch with some people who actually lived under the dictatorships that called themselves “communist” to tell them about the violence, the shortages of the basics of human existence, the massive useless and self serving bureaucracy.

The massive criminality in the former Soviet Union is nothing new, people don’t learn those skills so fast,the criminality was an intrinsic part of Communism.

Come on MM and your friends, some reasoned answers for “the people of the Gun”  please?

Posted by alpacca45 on Oct 22, 2007 at 8:48 AM

As a matter of fact, it would be more reasonable to assume that tens of thousands of children have died over the last thirty years after you factor in gang-related intentional firearms deaths, which you carefully avoided by restricting your data to children under fourteen and unintentional deaths.  Knowing your distaste for liberal exaggeration, I gave you the conservative benefit of the doubt and limited my estimate accordingly.

As for Lott’s conclusion that between “108,000 and 2,500,000 times a gun was used defensively to stop a violent crime or attack a year in the US”, well, that’s a huge interval clustered about a mean of 1,304,000, and implies the existence of either a very small sample size or a very large variance in the data, or both.  In fact, Lott has yet to verify to anyone’s satisfaction that he actually did conduct the survey, as compared to, say, simply cooking the data.  One of you bozos once stated that his “studies were peer-reviewed.”  Well, you’re right (no pun intended).  They were peer-reviewed and rejected.

“Guns have killed no one. It takes a living human being to pull the trigger to kill.”

It takes a brain dead moron to believe that arming an entire population of “law-biding citizens” will do anything other than accelerate the social pathology of fear, hatred, hostility and paranoia that currently afflicts the people of a country obsessed with terrorism, unemployment, eroding standards of education, inadequate health care and the insurance required to finance it, home foreclosures and business failures.  Every “criminal” was once a “law-abiding citizen”.  Your dumbass reactionary “solution” simply ensures that all of us will eventually become criminals.

But, hey.  It’s a great wedge issue to divide the electorate for the next election.  Karl Rove must be rolling in his political casket.

Posted by Major Major on Oct 22, 2007 at 7:32 PM

<b>New Harvard University Study Shows Direct Link Between Gun Availability And Gun Death Among Children

Most Comprehensive Study Ever Conducted on Impact of Gun Availability Sends Simple Message: IT’S THE GUNS, STUPID

Louisiana Among Top Five in Nation in Gun Ownership

Posted by Major Major on Oct 22, 2007 at 7:34 PM

The five states with the highest levels of gun ownership were: Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and West Virginia. The five states with the lowest levels of gun ownership were: Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Delaware.

Matthew Miller, MD, MPH, ScD, associate director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center at HSPH and lead author of the study, states, “In states with more guns, more children are dying. They are dying in suicides, in homicides, and in unintentional shootings. This finding is completely contrary to the notion that guns are protecting our children.”

The Violence Policy Center is a national non-profit educational foundation that conducts research on violence in America and works to develop violence-reduction policies and proposals. The Center examines the role of firearms in America, conducts research on firearms violence, and explores new ways to decrease firearm-related death and injury.

Posted by Major Major on Oct 22, 2007 at 7:35 PM

Yes, major marxist, things may well get worse. In fact they likely will. It will take a brain dead moron to turn its weapons in to the govt. when the cities are burning at the hands of the third or fourth or fifth generation of young men raised without fathers because the ‘great society’ paid their mothers to have them.

It will take a moron to sit by and hope ‘it doesn’t happen to me,’ as many European Jews did in the 1930s.

It will take a brain dead moron to pretend that “Liberal"ism isn’t evil enough to eventually have people digging ditches and at the last moment, when the machine gun bolts slam home, realizing the ditches weren’t for the other guys this time.

It will take a brain dead moron to do anything but hunt your cowardly pitiful kind when it elects someone to hire someone to stick a gun in its neighbors’ faces and demand they render themselves defenseless in the face of rampant crime and government tyranny, all brought about by your ‘progressive’ ideology.

I may wind up dead, in fact I don’t expect to live through the first day or maybe even the first firefight, but at least I will not be like you, or like those who pretend that you are not evil and can somehow be converted by any means other than a healthy application of hemp or lead. But at least I won’t have lived my life as a brain dead moron.

That sir, is what they mean by ‘progress.’

Posted by waypasthadenough on Oct 22, 2007 at 8:22 PM

Major Major, your obsession with Lott has rotted your brain . Not one of my figures has come from Lott and he did not conduct any of the surveys I referenced.

The low estimate of 108,000 defensive gun uses a year was conducted by the United States Department of Justice….....they funded another study that estimated 1,500,000 defensive gun uses a year.

The 2,500,000 defensvie gun uses a year estimate came from a survey Gary Kleck, a well respected researcher for Florida State University, conducted. Gary Kleck is a card carrying member of the ACLU by the way, and a liberal too.

There have been other studies which actually estimated over three million defensive gun uses a year, but they are not often cited. Out of about a dozen studies, the lowest is 108,000 defensive gun uses a year and I hear even the Brady Campaign has accepted that figure.

Lott cited the USDOJ and Kleck studies, but he did not conduct these. You are obsessed with the man.

Posted by Novus on Oct 22, 2007 at 8:36 PM

My oh my Major Major, once again you failed to double check the “facts” you copy and pasted.

“The study shows that children living in the five states with the highest levels of gun ownership were 16 times more likely to die from unintentional firearm injury, seven times more likely to die from firearm suicide, and three times more likely to die from firearm homicide than children in the five states with the lowest levels of gun ownership….

....Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and West Virginia. The five states with the lowest levels of gun ownership were: Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey, and Delaware. “

A quick, easy and simple check of the figures shows how you fell for the misrepresentation of figures….once AGAIN!

Overall causes of suicide rate among 5-14 year olds in Virginia in the time period of 1999-2002 is 0.66 per 100,000
In Hawaii it was 0.74 per 100,000

In Lousianna the rate was 0.44
In Delaware the rate was 0.90

Suicide rate among that age group by using a firearm during those years in Virginia was 0.25 per 100,000
In Delaware the rate was 0.45

WOW! A simple fact check that took me five minutes to look it up and type it here proved the figures you cited to be lies.

Shameful lies Major Major, and you fell for them.

The internet is your friend. Use it and stop letting yourself get hoodwinked by fear tactic propaganda that uses the line “but think of the children”.

Oh, and let me stop you before you make yourself look foolish. I got the figures from the Centers for Disease Control and not John Lott.
I got them from here: http://webappa.cdc.gov/sasweb/ncipc/mortrate.html

Posted by Novus on Oct 22, 2007 at 8:57 PM

There is something drasticly wrong with people who believe that keeping track of persons who own inanimate objects such as firearms is a good thing if they have never violated the law..  We are not allowed to change addresses without notifying the Canadian Firearms Center.  To do so would be a violation of our two billion dollar farce.  Yet for some strange reason , it is considered a violation of a persons rights if a convicted felon is required to do the same thing.

Go Figure MM,  live out your entire life without so much as a speeding ticket and be required by law to notify the police or CFC of your change of address.  Molest some child, rape and kill a young woman, serve a couple of years and get out of prison and be allowed to freely move about the Country without being required to notify anyone at all!

I am beginning to wonder if MM is that FF Michael Moore given his total lack of knowledge and willingness to put whatever spin he likes on this issue.

Posted by xmountie on Oct 22, 2007 at 9:14 PM

“Every “criminal” was once a “law-abiding citizen”. Your dumbass reactionary “solution” simply ensures that all of us will eventually become criminals.”

Let us apply your “logic” to women.  Given that all prostitutes were once innocent young girls, should we ensure that this does not happen by locking them all up at a young age before they become prostitutes?

‘

Posted by xmountie on Oct 22, 2007 at 9:36 PM

“New Harvard University Study Shows Direct Link Between Gun Availability And Gun Death Among Children”

Yep.  That’s the one I was talking about. The one that used gun death as an estimate of gun availability, and then “found” that there was a link between gun availability and gun death among children.  What the study really found was that there was a link between gun death and gun death among children.

It’s impossible for anyone who understands the slightest about statistics to read the details of the methodology used and to not conclude that this was an intentional fraud.

http://www.keepandbeararms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?id=3208
Cooking the Numbers
Why the Harvard “Study” on Kids and Guns is Bunk

http://www.haciendapub.com/faria6.html
Statistical Malpractice—- ‘Firearm Availability’ and Violence (Part I): Politics or Science?
Miguel A. Faria, Jr., MD

Posted by jdege on Oct 23, 2007 at 5:16 AM

“The five states with the highest levels of gun ownership were: Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and West Virginia.”

Except, of course, that they weren’t.  The states with the highest level of gun ownership are Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Vermont, and South Dakota.  Unfortunately, all have very low rates of deaths involving firearms. So Hemenway invented a measure of “gun availability” that discarded them in favor of states with lower levels of gun ownership and higher rates of firearm-related death.

Posted by jdege on Oct 23, 2007 at 5:24 AM

Using death by shooting as a measure of firearms availability while trying to study the effect of firearms availability on death by firearms….

That, unfortunately is about the level of some of the studies we have to put up with,

Then some bright spark finds 10 studies, 8 of which support an anti gun argument but all 8 of which contain that type of bullshit flaw, trouble is that piece of vital info on the flaws is not passed on to the decision makers.

An example of this was evidence presented to the Cullen enquiry in Scotland (1997) on firearms availability and suicide. Trouble was the vital paper did not control for firearms availability…

some of the better current papers are available at :

http://www.garymauser.net/papers.html

No doubt some will only read filtered and distorted snippets available from the sources that MM is so fond of posting.

In answer to MM’s comment:

“It takes a brain dead moron to believe that arming an entire population of “law-biding citizens” will do anything other than accelerate the social pathology of fear, hatred, hostility and paranoia that currently afflicts the people of a country obsessed with terrorism, unemployment, eroding standards of education, inadequate health care and the insurance required to finance it, home foreclosures and business failures.  Every “criminal” was once a “law-abiding citizen”.  Your dumbass reactionary “solution” simply ensures that all of us will eventually become criminals.”

Actually, that population (most states in the US) has been armed, and murder, armed crime and total crime all fell.

Contrast that with most of the rest of the developed world, where generally firearms restrictions have increased, but violent crime, armed robbery and murder rate have increased.

The points which set the US aside are:
Increased issue of concealed carry permits
Increased length of jail sentences
increased use of execution.

I’m personally against the death penalty, but those appear to be the key differences which have lead to falling crime in the US, dis-entangle them if you can.

oh, yes, Laura, MM & the rest of the anti crowd, what does “PROGRESSIVE” mean? no one has explained it to me yet.

Posted by alpacca45 on Oct 23, 2007 at 9:03 AM

Harvard Injury Control Research Center

Guns and homicide (literature review).
We performed a review of the academic literature on the effects of gun availability on homicide rates.
Major Findings:  A broad array of evidence indicates that gun availability is a risk factor for homicide, both in the United States and across high-income countries.  Case-control studies, ecological time-series and cross-sectional studies indicate that in homes, cities, states and regions in the US, where there are more guns, both men and women are at higher risk for homicide, particularly firearm homicide.
Publication:  Hepburn, Lisa; Hemenway, David.  “Firearm Availability and Homicide: A Review of the Literature.” Aggression and Violent Behavior: A Review Journal.  2004; 9:417-40. 

Gun availability and state homicide rates, 1988-1997
Using a validated proxy for firearm ownership, we analyzed the relationship between firearm availability and homicide across 50 states over a ten year period.
Major findings:  After controlling for poverty and urbanization, for every age group, people in states with many guns have elevated rates of homicide, particularly firearm homicide.
Publication:  Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David.  “Household Firearm Ownership Levels and Homicide Rates across U.S. Regions and States, 1988-1997.” American Journal of Public Health. 2002: 92:1988-1993.

Gun availability and state homicide rates, 2001-2003
Using survey data on rates of household gun ownership, we examined the association between gun availability and homicide across states, 2001-2003.
Major Findings: States with higher levels of household gun ownership had higher rates of firearm homicide and overall homicide.  This relationship held for both genders and all age groups, after accounting for rates of aggravated assault, robbery, unemployment, urbanization, alcohol consumption, and resource deprivation (e.g., poverty). There was no association between gun prevalence and non-firearm homicide.
Submission:  Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. “Homicide Victimization of Americans in Relation to Household Firearm Ownership, by Age and Gender.” Social Science and Medicine. in press..

Homicide followed by suicide in Kentucky.
We analyzed data from the Kentucky Firearm Injury Statistics Program for 1998-2000.
Major findings:  While less than 7% of all firearm homicides were followed by a firearm suicide, in two-thirds of the cases in which a women was shot in an intimate partner-related homicide, the male perpetrator then killed himself with the firearm.  Few of these female victims had contact with the Department of Community-based Services. 
Publication: Walsh, Sabrina; Hemenway, David. “Intimate Partner Violence: Homicides followed by Suicides in Kentucky.” Journal of Kentucky Medical Association. 2005; 103:667-70.

Homicide in Jamaica.
We read the police narratives for every homicide in Jamaica, 1998-2002.
Major findings:  The murder rate has been increasing steadily in Jamaica, and most of the murders are with firearms.  The principal motives are disputes and revenge.  Drugs, gangs, and political killings are no longer the main factors associated with murder.
Publication:  Lemard, Glendene; Hemenway, David.  “Violence in Jamaica: An Analysis of Homicides 1998-2002.” Injury Prevention. 2006; 12:15-18.

Posted by Major Major on Oct 23, 2007 at 4:19 PM

Maybe it was the availability of children which was the problem. How about a push for government enforced infanticide to lower the stats in those states?

More government = less freedom.

Stats without knowing how the question was posed is useless.

Posted by whattheheck on Oct 23, 2007 at 4:59 PM

Oh my Major Major, you are following the persistent pattern the antis always have. They never think for themselves and they just repeat what some gun prohibition group repeated some extremely anti gun biased doctor group claims.

Think for yourself and do some basic and extremely simple research on your own.
For instance, your unchallenged by you link mentions himicide using guns in Jamaica in the years of 1998-2002.
News flash oh unthinking one, firearms have been prohibitted in Jamaica since the 1970s and so every single person with a gun in Jamaica that is not a cop is a criminal and by the very nature of committing a serious crime just having a gun, they are violence prone criminals.

Now, think for a minute. How many homicides in Jamiaca were committed by a law abiding gun owner? The answer is NONE because only criminals have guns in Jamaica.
Where in the US about 80-90% of all murderers using a gun were priorly convicted felons or persons prohibitted from owning a gun making them UNLAWFUL to own a gun and NOT lawful gun owners, the one thing we know with absolute completness about the murderers who used a gun in Jamiaca is that they were ALL prohibitted from using a gun and NONE were LAW ABIDING gun owners.
Since the Gun Court Act of 1974 in Jaimaica, one can get up to life in prison for violating the gun or ammunition prohibition laws.

How many law abiding handgun owners in the UK have committed homicide with a firearm in the past ten years? the answer is NONE because only the criminals have handguns in the UK…..and since the handgun prohbition handgun murder and handgun violence is much higher.
Remove guns from law abiding hands and gun violence goes up. The “studies” you have cited are specifically skewed. They have the conclusion before they start the study and they seek the results they want while ignoring the data contradicting their predetermined conclusions, and that is junk science. The comparisons they use themselves actually disprove their assertions when looked at with an impartial mindset….like the Jamaica reference does.

If you only trust doctors and doctor studies, then read what these Psychatrist and medical doctors have to say about gun control. http://www.dsgl.org/Articles/flick2.htm

The reason the gun control nuts are losing ground in the arena of public opinion is because we are no longer as trusting of figures fed to us and America has quick access to alternative information to fact check the lies and misrepresentations that have been fed by the gun control nuts and prohibitionists for many decades.
Your side is losing because people are discovering the truth. Some day you will look beyond the fear mongering and hysteria inducing anti gun ownership propaganda for the truth too.

I am a liberal because I research facts for myself and I am for protecting lawful gun ownership because I am not a mindless, trusting fool. Educating oneself is the key to enlightenment and to purposely remain ignorant letting others think for you will only hurt the liberal causes and allow demagogues to lead our party into the ground.

While there may be, or may not be a reduction in crime with more lawfully owned guns, the one thing we do know after decades of social experiments in a number of countries is that complete gun prohibition has done nothing to eliminate, or even reduce gun violence and overall violence and suicides actualy goes UP!
The great gun prohibition experiments have failed, it is time for a complete rethinking of the gun control logic, is it not?

Posted by Novus on Oct 23, 2007 at 7:51 PM

Harvard Injury Control Research Center

Guns and suicide (literature review).
We performed reviews of the academic literature on the effects of gun availability on suicide rates.
Major Findings:  The preponderance of current evidence indicates that gun availability is a risk factor for youth suicide in the United States.  The evidence that gun availability increases the suicide rates of adults is credible, but is currently less compelling.  Most of the disaggregate findings of particular studies (e.g. handguns are more of a risk factor than long guns, guns stored unlocked pose a greater risk than guns stored locked) are suggestive but not yet well established.
Publication:  Miller, Matt; Hemenway, David.  “Gun Prevalence and the Risk of Suicide: A Review.” Harvard Health Policy Review. 2001; 2:29-37.

Gun availability and state suicide rates, 1988-1997 (cross sectional analysis)
Using a validated proxy for firearm ownership rates, we analyzed the relationship between firearm availability and suicide across 50 states over a ten year period.
Major Findings:  After controlling for poverty and urbanization, for every age group, across the United States, people in states with many guns have elevated rates of suicide, particularly firearm suicide.
Publication:  Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David.  “Household Firearm Ownership Levels and Suicide across U.S. Regions and States, 1988-1997.”  Epidemiology. 2002; 13:517-524.

Gun availability and state suicide rates, 1999-2001 (cross sectional analysis)
Using survey data on rates of household gun ownership, we examined the association between gun availability and suicide across states, 1999-2001.
Major Findings: States with higher levels of household gun ownership had higher rates of firearm suicide and overall suicide.  This relationship held for both genders and all age groups.  It remained true after accounting for poverty, urbanization and unemployment.  There was no association between gun prevalence and non-firearm suicide.
Publication:  Miller, Matthew; Lippmann, Steven; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. “Household Firearm Ownership and Rates of Suicide across U.S. States.”  Journal of Trauma. in press.

Posted by Major Major on Oct 23, 2007 at 8:53 PM

Gun availability and state suicide rates, 1981-2001 (time series analysis)
Using survey data on rates of household gun ownership, we examined the association between gun availability and suicide over time, 1981-2001.
Major Findings:  Changes in the levels of household firearm gun ownership was significantly associated with changes in both firearm suicide and overall suicide, for men, women and children, even after controlling for region, unemployment, alcohol consumption and poverty. There was no relationship between changes in gun ownership and changes in non-firearm suicide.
Publication:  Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hepburn, Lisa; Hemenway, David; Lippman, Steven.  “The Association between Changes in Household Firearm Ownership and Rates of Suicide in the United States, 1981-2002.” Injury Prevention. 2006; 12:178-82.

Gun availability and suicide in the Northeast
We analyzed data on suicide and suicide attempts for states in the Northeast
Major Findings:  Even after controlling for rates of attempted suicide, states with more guns had higher rates of suicide. Case fatality rates ranged from over 90% for firearms to under 5% for drug overdoses, cutting and piercing (the most common methods of attempted suicide).  Hospital workers rarely see the type of suicide (firearm suicide) that is most likely to end in death.       
Publication: Miller, Matthew; Hemenway, David; Azrael, Deborah. “Firearms and Suicide in the Northeast” Journal of Trauma. 2004; 57:626-632.
Publication:  Miller, Matthew; Azrael, Deborah; Hemenway, David. “The Epidemiology of Case Fatality Rates for Suicide in the Northeast.” Annals of Emergency Medicine. 2004; 723-30.

Gun availability and regional suicide rates (cross sectional analysis)
We analyzed the relationship of gun availability and suicide among differing age groups across the 9 US regions.
Major Findings:  Levels of gun ownership are highly correlated with suicide rates across all age groups, even after controlling for lifetime major depression and serious suicidal thoughts. After controlling for divorce, education, unemployment, poverty and urbanization, the statistically significant relationship holds for 15 to 24 year olds and 45 to 84 year olds, but not for 25 to 44 year olds.
Publication:  Birckmayer, Johanna; Hemenway, David.  “Suicide and Gun Prevalence: Are Youth Disproportionately Affected?”  Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior.  2001; 31:303-310.
Publication:  Hemenway, David; Miller, Matthew. “The Association of Rates of Household Handgun Ownership, Lifetime Major Depression and Serious Suicidal Thoughts with Rates of Suicide across US Census Regions.” Injury Prevention. 2002; 8:313-16.

Posted by Major Major on Oct 23, 2007 at 8:54 PM

Major Major said. “Stop trying to obfuscate the issue with your selective reliance on misleading statistics (check out the previous citation to Disraeli).”

....and then he goes and dumps a bunch of figures he copied and pasted directly from the anti gun VPC websight without checking on a single one to see if they are guilty of being selective and/or misleading.

You talk about discreditting Lott because he supposedly used a small sampling size, and here you go repeating studies that did what you accused Lott of doing.

You are either fooled, or a hypocrit thinking everyone who sees what you are doing is a fool.

Posted by Novus on Oct 23, 2007 at 9:16 PM

Hi,
I think I might look up some of those “studies” which MM quotes for a game of “spot the fraud”.

I think Laura and every one else (‘cept for MM) has probably got the message by now that far from legal gun owners being the problem and consisting of an industry funded rent-a-mob of child killing, racist, knuckle dragging bubbas…

we are individuals, and capable of winning all of the arguments on the facts, and without sponsorship by a bunch of multi billionaires (Soros, Bloomberg et al).

We are unfairly denied access to the mainstream media, who also grossly under report defensive use of firearms (e.g. reporting of the Appalachian law school shootings without mention of the two ccw holders who confronted and disarmed the mutant)...

- but what the hell, we’re still winning, and we will win, internationally as well. you’ve probably noticed the Irish flag (Irish murder rate up 24% on last year and very few legally held firearms).

I’m a Brit by birth, I lost 2 legally held pistols following the children being shot at Dunblane, only to see “gun crime” double in the 10 years since then.

This IS an international fight.  we’ve a lot of work to do in Britain and Ireland, but we’ll do it, persuading one individual at a time.

So, see you guys for choir practice along with the other “People of the Gun” at the gay gun nut’s place?

Posted by alpacca45 on Oct 24, 2007 at 3:16 AM

Why, that’s mighty neighborly of you, Pilgrim.  Twenty-four per cent?  Between the Brits and the Protestants and the Catholics in Northern Ireland, Ireland’s been awash with firearms for at least the last century.  But most of those weapons were hidden and cached in Ireland and used by the IRA in Northern Ireland.  Now that British military and Irish paramilitary operations are terminated or reduced, some significant share of those weapons are being circulated among the public.  There’s your 24% increase in the murder rate right there.  Peace breaks out in Northern Ireland and all hell breaks loose in Ireland.  That’s one of the reasons nations wage war to begin with: to unite an otherwise mutually antagonistic population and focus their combined hostility on some suitably, socially appropriate opponent.  That strategy was applied by the British for several centuries, at the expense of the Irish, among many others.  In fact, it’s a universal, all-purpose strategy employed by the leadership of every nation that ever existed, in order “to ensure domestic tranquility…” and secure the legitimacy of the leadership which employs it.  The transition to peace is necessarily correlated with a sufficiently comprehensive confiscation of weapons.

Guns kill people.  Get rid of them.

Posted by Major Major on Oct 24, 2007 at 3:42 PM

Major Major, I will tell you once again what the British have learned the hard way.
The gun cannot be uninvented.

Disarm the law abiding and the criminals will still have guns, but now the law abiding are defensless.
To disarm law abiding minorities in the inner cities will cause more death, rape victims by armed rapists and maiming attacks by armed robbers infictied upon American minorities.

Once again, the gun cannot be uninvented. It used to be zip guns and sawed off shotguns and cut down rifles, but now with the internet and/or a few entenpreneurial criminals, they will have these in short time.
http://www.thehomegunsmith.com/introduction.shtml

Try defending your family with a baseball bat against a rapist/robber with one of the home made, full auto maching pistols in that link.

This is all that is needed to make one:

A HOMEMADE .32/.380 CALIBRE MACHINE GUN
The whole firearm was constructed by hand from steel tubing, shaft lock collars and a few nuts and bolts!

TUBE SIZES

The tube sizes shown below are those required to construct the major component parts for the expedient machine pistol, i.e. receivers, barrel, magazine and breech block etc.

1. 30x30x2mm UPPER RECEIVER
2. 30x30x1.6mm LOWER RECEIVER
3. 25.40x12.70x1.6mm + 12.70x0.91mm MAGAZINE
4. 14.29x3.25mm BARREL
5. 12.70x2.03mm BREECH BLOCK
6. 15.88x34.93x1.6mm MAGAZINE WELL
7. 40x20x1.6mm GRIP
8. 50.80x1.6mm TRIGGER GUARD

The ERW (Electric Resistance Welded) tubing is very useful for the construction of receivers and magazine, or as sleeving to reinforce or increase the diameter of another tube. It should not be used as gun barrelling - unless nothing else is available - due to its welded-seam construction. The SMT (Seemless Mechanical Tube) is ideal for improvised gun barrels. Because of the many different tube sizes available, it is possible to construct a barrel to suit almost any calibre of firearm. Where possible, heavy-gauge tube should be used for barrel or a lighter gauge suitably reinforced with a second tube or steel collars. While many tubes will be of perfectly adequate strength on their own, it is only common sense to make the tube as strong as possible, providing the design of the gun will allow it.

.
.
.

If you ban handguns from law abiding hands, then what next? A ban on scrap yards and harware stores?

Posted by Novus on Oct 24, 2007 at 5:38 PM

MM and others may be interested in the following link and its information on defensive use of firearms at school shootings.

http://freestudents.blogspot.com/2007/04/when-mass-killers-meet-armed-resistance.html

I have been aware of the Pearl incident for quite some time now and despite evidence, the media refuses to print truth.  They prefer to print their version of any incident involving firearms rather than admit that firearms can actually be and are used as a benefit to society.  Given this fact, it calls into question any article involving firearms printed by any person in the employ of a newspaper.

Posted by xmountie on Oct 24, 2007 at 6:56 PM

Novus wrote:

“If you ban handguns from law abiding hands, then what next? A ban on scrap yards and harware stores?”

Yes. There is no end to “:Liberal” insanity. They will seek to control every aspect of our lives. The eco-commies want us all corralled into the cites and ‘villages’ with many areas returned to ‘wilderness’ and no human contact allowed. Don’t believe me? Look up the “Wildlands Project.”

Now the nutbars are working on smoking bans, even in tiny Podunks like our county seat. Later it will be fast food, soft drink machines, bubble gum, red meat, and on and on.

A decision must be made as to when enough will be enough and that line in stone is crossed, then filled with “Liberal” blood.

Posted by waypasthadenough on Oct 24, 2007 at 9:03 PM

“If you ban handguns from law abiding hands, then what next?”

Good grief, Goofus.  It’s like, I say that 9+7=16 and you say no, dummy, it’s 10, and then you accuse me of using a base ten number system.  If you ban handguns from general circulation, then you reduce the number of weapons available to the criminals.  No one’s talking about “uninventing” the pistol; we’re talking about drastically reducing the production and distribution of pistols.  Legitimate manufacturers churn out millions of them every year.  If you think some cottage industry of criminal craftsman can pick up the slack, then you’re wrong.  Throw in some severe restrictions on the production and purchase of ammunition and your local thugs will eventually resort to less lethal methods of intimidation.  It’s not the best of all possible worlds but it beats the hell out of your “pistol in every pot” model of political organization.

Posted by Major Major on Oct 24, 2007 at 9:05 PM

Waypasthadenough,
A good portion of the conservatives are also for radical control of all our lives. For instance, the right to die by euthanasia if terminally ill has been attempted to be denied on a national level by the theocons as one example. Or the continuing illegalization of personal drug use is another.
In my experience it is the Libertarians that are for personal freedoms with minimal government involvment and it is the far left as well as the far right that want to impose their opinions of how we should all live by increasing government controls and power.

Posted by Novus on Oct 24, 2007 at 9:30 PM

I sincerely hope, major marxist, whomever or whatever you are, that a superior physical specimen of a criminal, whether from the govt. or the street, provides you with an opportunity to learn first hand and personally, very slowly and painfully, what kind of ‘less lethal methods of intimidation’ can be applied to morons such as yourself.

The best of all possible worlds will exist when the general population, or at least the real patriots left among us, subscribes to the statement: “The only good “Liberal” is a dead “Liberal”.”

Posted by waypasthadenough on Oct 24, 2007 at 9:34 PM

You are right Novus. But I can live in a world with fewer playboy magazines and less liquor and a few more churches. I will not exist in “Liberal” hell on earth. I will hunt them first.

Posted by waypasthadenough on Oct 24, 2007 at 9:36 PM

Major Major…...the UK.
I repeat, the UK.
Got it? The UK tried your experiment and it failed proving your theoretical ideas and assertions are wrong….very well proven to be wrong as a matter of fact. Can’t argue with the blaringly obvious failure of incredibly higher gun crime in the UK ten years after a ban.

In 1996, the year they started the handgun ban there were 200,000 legally owned handguns either destroyed or deactivated.
According to studies, in 2006 there are now extimated to be from 200,000 to 2,000,000 illegally owned firearms in the UK.
Remove all handguns from society and a few years later there are more than before. (i.e. it failed to work!)
Where did the handguns come from? It is estimated about half were smuggled and about half were MADE!!!

Fer cryin’ out loud, I am not a gunsmith and I even made my own handgun!
Ted Kaczinski, the Unabomber made his own handgun in his cabin in the woods.
Pakistani sheep herders make fully operational AK47s from scratch out of scrap metal with no power tools.
A white supremacist in Baltimore made a dumptruck load of firearms in his rowhouse a few years ago.

You mention the “slack”. Newsflash! While many, or even most guns were legally purchased at one point, according to the BATF the average time from legal purchase to being recovered in a crime is over ten years on the national average. There are a crapload of handguns alrready illegally possessed out there.
There will be a heck of a long time before any “slack” occured, but in the meantime, even if your assertions were correct about the supply, millions of law abiding Americans will be immediately defensless whileat least the ten years goes by where the majority of violent criminals are STILL armed.
Combine this with smuggling and illegal manufacture, and that will negate any supposedly good effect you claim will occur.

Only an incredibly small fraction of legally owned firearms in this country will ever be used in a crime. However you want to remove all the legally owned firearms to decrease violent crimes using guns by how small of a fraction? You will only disarm the victims.
Just how easy do you think it is for an unarmed 110 pound woman to fend off a 210 pound rapist? Would you really rather see her raped because you think a few people a year “might” be saved by making us citizens unarmed?

Your experiment will result in many law abiding and innocent people suffering while your experiment is being conducted…..and looking at the UK it has been proven your experiment will fail!
YOur good intent to save lives will only result in greater human strife and more deaths of the innocent because it is the wrong approach.
It is time we stopped striving for that which has been proven to be false. You are chasing a pie in the sky that is really a path to demise and you want to take millions of minorities and the rest of us down with you.

Posted by Novus on Oct 24, 2007 at 10:04 PM

“Ireland

Posted by jdege on Oct 24, 2007 at 10:18 PM

“If you ban handguns from general circulation, then you reduce the number of weapons available to the criminals.”

The number of weapons available to the criminals so greatly exceeds the number they need that no conceivable reduction in their number will make any difference.

It’s not like there aren’t places where guns aren’t banned.  Jamaica is a wonderful example.  It’s an island.  A small island.  With no gun factories.  And with the strictest gun laws in the world - at one time prison without trial for being caught with a single cartridge.

There hasn’t been a legal gun on the island for 30 years - yet the level of violent crime is astonishing.

Despite the laws, and the draconian punishments, the criminals still manage to find all the guns they need.

They always will.

Posted by jdege on Oct 24, 2007 at 10:23 PM

Major Major, you poo pooed the idea that between 108,000 and 2,500,000 times a gun is used by the law abiding in self defense. It is estimated that only about 8% of all defensive gun uses (DGU) resulted in an injury or the attacker, so for every DGU seen in the news, there are more than ten more DGUs you will most likely never see in the media.
Here are a few recent DGUs:

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 10/23/07
An employee of a Stone Mountain nonprofit association that helps war-torn refugees shot and killed a robber who forced his way into the office Tuesday evening around closing time, authorities said.
The robber collapsed and died near a rear door of the World Relief, an immigrant resettlement agency at 655 Village Square Drive, according to DeKalb County police spokesman Marcus Hodge.
as two male employees, described as older men, were preparing to leave and lock the front door.
Both robbers were armed with handguns, and one of them acted as a lookout, Hodge said.
The other demanded the victims’ wallets, then put his gun to one employee’s head and ordered him to open a safe, Hodge said.
When the robber turned his back, the other employee grabbed a gun from his desk and fired several shots at the robber, Hodge said.
Hodge said he did not know how many times the robber was struck, or where he was wounded.
Both robbers ran, though the wounded robber did not make it far. Police were still searching for the second robber late Tuesday.
charged late Tuesday, Hodge said, because the shooting appears to have been in self-defense.
World Relief, which is the humanitarian arm of the National Association of Evangelicals in the U.S., has resettled more than 200,000 refugees for nearly 30 years and helped thousands of immigrant families across the country, according to its Web site.
http://www.ajc.com/services/content/metro/dekalb/stories/2007/10/23/robbershot_1024_web.html?cxtype=rss&cxsvc=7&cxcat=13

GREENVILLE, S.C.—Though he was slashed several times, a retired pastor who lives in Greenville County managed to shoot and kill an intruder Tuesday night, deputies said.

Deputies said they were called to the home on Lake Shore Drive, just down the road from the Donaldson Center Airport, at about 11:30 p.m. The homeowners, 70-year-old William Willis and his wife Judith, were at the home when they arrived. They said Judith Willis was sitting on the side porch in her nightgown, her arms covered in blood.

Investigators said Judith Willis told them that she woke her husband after she heard a noise in another room. William Willis grabbed a gun that he kept in the bedroom and went to investigate.
Willis said he confronted a man that was in another room. Deputies said Willis was cut several times during the scuffle, the most serious wound to his arm.
Deputies said Willis shot the intruder several times.

http://www.wyff4.com/news/14046962/detail.html

SPARTANBURG, S.C.—Spartanburg County deputies said two home invasion robbers were shot early Tuesday morning by the homeowner they tried to burglarize.
Deputies said that the men forced their way into the home on Harley Court about 4 a.m.
Lamont Dawkins, the homeowner, said that he heard glass break and someone kicking at his back door.

Dawkins told WYFF News 4 that the men were shouting that they were from the “Spartanburg County Police.”
Spartanburg County does not have a police force. Dawkins said that he grabbed a pistol gun and hid behind his refrigerator.
When the men came into the home, Dawkins fired what he says was about five rounds. There was a bullet hole in the fence outside the home.
The men ran away.
“I was scared at first, but now I feel good, I just didn’t want nothing to happen to me,” Dawkins told WYFF News 4

Posted by Novus on Oct 24, 2007 at 10:23 PM

According to police reports, Lewis told police he was embalming a body when a man entered the business through a back door and demanded money. He had his face covered by a piece of white clothing, with only his eyes showing, Gault said, and white fabric wrapped around his hands. The man then told Lewis he had a gun and would kill him if he didn’t give him money, Gault said.
Lewis offered the man his wallet and credit cards and said he had no money, but the man demanded cash, again threatening his life, according to police reports. Lewis told him he had a key to the safe in his van. Once inside the van, Lewis grabbed a .357-caliber handgun, turned and fired three shots at the robber, who began to run away and yell for help.
Lewis ran to a nearby EMS base and asked paramedics to call police.
“He was fearing for his life,” Gault said. “He was very scared.”
Police found Bishop shortly thereafter on South Pinckney Street. He was taken by ambulance to Wallace Thomson Hospital in Union and later to Spartanburg Regional.
Officers continue to investigate whether Wednesday’s incident was related to a robbery within the past year at Carolina Mortuary on Enterprise Street. During that incident, a funeral home employee was beaten with a pistol.
http://www.goupstate.com/article/20070927/NEWS/709270343/1051/NEWS01&source=rss

Monday, October 22, 2007
By Torsten Ove, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
An armed man was shot and killed early this morning after he and another man broke into a residence in East Liberty, police said. Shawn Davis, 18, of Duquesne, died of a shotgun blast to the head inside an apartment at 300 North Negley Avenue. He was shot at 3:15 a.m. and pronounced dead at the scene 10 minutes later. Police said he and his accomplice, Rashawn Gibson, 20, of Garfield, tried to rob the occupants of the apartment.

“It was definitely a home invasion,” said Cmdr. Thomas Stangrecki, head of Major Crimes. “We’re still sorting it out.”

Detectives said Mr. Davis pointed his gun at the occupants and ordered them onto the floor. He and Mr. Gibson walked one victim to the rear of the apartment at gunpoint, then returned to the living room and approached the other victims who were hiding in the kitchen.

When Mr. Davis pointed a gun at one of them, the man shot him in the head with a shotgun.
http://www.postgazette.com/pg/07295/827483-100.stm

By The Tribune-Review
Monday, October 22, 2007

A man in a East Liberty apartment fatally shot one of two men who broke into the home early this morning, Pittsburgh police said.
The two invaders, one of whom had a gun, entered the apartment at 300 North Negley Avenue about 3:15 a.m., Cmdr. Thomas Stangrecki said. A man in the apartment grabbed a shotgun and shot one of the intruders in the side of the head, Stangrecki said.

The man died at the scene, Stangrecki said. The other intruder ran away and was still being sought. Police did not identify anyone involved and no charges were filed this morning

http://pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/news/breaking/s_533986.html?source=rss&feed=2

10/20/2007 07:42:13 PM
By: Eyewitness News 4
Pizza delivery man kills assailant
Police will not bring charges against a pizza delivery man who shot and killed a man trying to rob him Friday.

The Roswell Police Department said the delivery man, who has not been named, acted in self-defense.

A witness said the delivery man was approached by several people. She said the group attacked him and tried to take his money.
http://kob.com/article/stories/S232355.shtml?cat=519

Posted by Novus on Oct 24, 2007 at 10:24 PM

waypast, do you really fancy the idea of shooting “liberals”?

Is all that “good/dead Liberal” stuff just hype?

Posted by Kuya on Oct 25, 2007 at 12:24 AM

Kuya, are you really that dense, or just acting?

I view “Liberals” as being on the same level with Nazis, Soviet KGB, and any other murderers through history. What do you think?

This should answer your questions:

http://www.willowtown.com/reality/friends.htm

...if you’re not too stupid to understand it.

And I find it funny that two mainstream comedians ‘get it’ about the Second Amendment, while so many ‘pro-gunners’ waste time on the crime argument with “Liberal” freaks:

http://tinyurl.com/26mtb6

Posted by waypasthadenough on Oct 25, 2007 at 6:12 AM

Why are we discussing accidents, suicides, and domestic thugs?  Thirty thousand gun deaths a year represents one/ten-thousandth of the people of the United States.  And some of those gun deaths are quite commendable.

There are tragic and regrettable gun deaths, but they are not a threat to our cultural survival.  Totalitarians are a threat to our survival and to our cultural survival. 

In the last century, Russia and particularly Germany were Western cultures in which totalitarian terrorism became dominant.  Millions of innocents died at the hands of the Fascists and Communists, not to mention the millions more that died in combat.  Communism alone accounted for some one hundred million dead.  Not to mention the odd-ball murderers; Idid Amin, Saddam, Mugabe, Pol Pot, Che Guevara, and such.

A free and disciplined people can protect themselves from enemies foreign and domestic, and it works quite well; just look at the United States.  This is the purpose and effect of the Second Amendment.

Anyone who attacks the Second Amendment is suspect, of being a soft-headed fool at best, or a Leftist totalitarian thug (Clinton, Reid, Pelosi) at worst.

Posted by scorp on Oct 25, 2007 at 8:57 PM

“It is estimated that only about 8% of all defensive gun uses (DGU) resulted in an injury or the attacker, so for every DGU seen in the news, there are more than ten more DGUs you will most likely never see in the media.”

Of course, you meant “of the attacker” rather than “or the attacker”.  Your sympathy for offensive gun users (OGU) is commendable.  But of those estimates of defensive gun uses, how many respondents actually admitted that they were injured or disarmed by their attackers?  The ones who were killed weren’t capable of responding to the poll, but the survivors would be likewise less inclined to admit they were robbed and disarmed despite the possession of a pistol.  So the estimates of unsuccessful defensive gun uses (UDGU) are either absent or underestimated, or misclassified as simple murder, assault or robbery, if the attacker decided to steal the weapon as well.  In fact, 500,000 to 1,500,000 firearms are stolen every year, including UDGU.  In fact, one could just as easily argue that the defensive possession of a pistol has and would increase the number of criminals who carry weapons because they anticipate that many of their victims will do likewise, that it would increase the number of criminals who “shoot first and ask questions later”, and that therefore the crimes of murder and aggravated assault are radically multiplied by any corresponding increase in the legal possession of firearms.  Factor in the escalation of minor marital or barroom disputes into homicides or assaults, accidental deaths or injuries, and more successful suicide attempts, and the social costs of possession of a pistol can quickly outweigh the individual benefits, however you decide to estimate those benefits.

Posted by Major Major on Oct 25, 2007 at 9:37 PM

How many people are disarmed by the attacker and then had the gun used against them? You tell us. If you can find some examples I would like to see them because I never see them in the news…....hmm, must be another one of those gun control nut urban legends.

But let’s look at the numbers. There are about ten thousand murders where a gun is used a year, but between 108,000 and 2,500,000 succerssful defensive gun uses a year. Even if ALL ten thousand murders were law abiding victims that had their guns taken away and used on them, that would still mean the number of lives protected by the defensive use of a gun by a law abider is outnumbered ten to one.

But since we know that many of the murder victims were criminals to begin with, and since it is obvious that an armed victim has a much better chance at living than an unarmed victim, it is preposterous to assume ALL the murder victims were law abiding people that had their guns taken away and then used against them.
So let’s say that excluding the criminals because the DGU studies didn’t include criminals using guns defensively, and since most law abiding murder victims were unarmed, and let’s say for argument’s sake your myth was true and a thousand people a year die after their gun was taken away and used against them. That would make the humber of law abiding lives protected by the use of a gun 100 to 2,500 times as much as the lives lost due to lack of successful DGU.
So even by the worst account which you basically made up anyway, the use of a gun is one hundred to two thousand five hundred times more likely to save your life.
Lawfully possessed guns save law abiding lives.

Another figure you made up is the number of firearms stolen a year. The FBI keeps stats on stolen firearms and in the worst possible years for stolen firearms which was in the early 1990s the average of stolen firearms nationwide was a few hundred thousand with 60% being handguns and that does not exclude the number that are recovered a year which is about half. So your figure of 1,500,000 firearms stolen a year is a laughavle lie!
The number of stolen firearms also incudes the firearms stolen from the police, military and the FBI. The FBI alone has lost over a thousand firearms. Are you going to call for a ban the military and law enforcement having firearms too?
The gun cannot be uninvented and to disarm the police will just make the police defensless against still armed criminals…....like in the UK.
....like constable Sharon Beshenivsky a few years ago.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bradford/4451508.stm

.
.
Now about your scenario about your scenario about when more law abiding are armed the criminals will be more likely to shoot and murder. And about your claim about barroom disputes escalating to murder if there are more non-felons carrying guns…..gee, it is so easy to argue with you gun grabbers.
First of all, since 1993 when only 19 states issued carry permits without discretion to law abiding, another 20 states now do making the number of states 39 and MILLIONS more Americans now legally carry a handgun in public…..but the number of murders, gun crime and victimization is HALF now compared to 1993.

Now I do not prescribe to Lott’s claim that more armed citizens reduces crime even though there is a correllation suggesting it, but the one thing we do know for sure is that your fears about more crime victimization where more victims are shot and more barroom brawls escalating to a shooting are completely and utterly wrong.
More lawfully and publicly armed citizens has not led to the increase in murder and violence. If anything evidence shows it to have the opposite result.

Also another statistic fact that proves your fears are unfounded is that since the early 1990s the number of lawfully owned guns has increased by about 100,000,000, the number of housholds with firearms in them has increased by the millions, and yet suicide, murder and accidental gun death has gone DOWN immensley.

Posted by Novus on Oct 26, 2007 at 1:41 AM

THe reason the gun control freaks are being ignored by the public these days is because the use of hysteria inducing doom and gloom scenarios and claims have eventually been shown to be false by actual results and decades of statistics.
Major Major, you and people with your position are increasingly becoming the minority because anyone can google a simple fact or figure to see more lawfully owned guns did not increase the murder rate, suicide or even accidental death.

http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/wisqars/
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm

The internet is your friend. Use it before you make preposterous claims that are so fricken easy to shoot down with the click of a mouse by anyone who can read or do a search.
Stop reading just the literature put out by anti gun sights….start thinking for yourself….be a true free thinking liberal for once.

I am a liberal and I approve this message.

Posted by Novus on Oct 26, 2007 at 1:42 AM

Pete Seeger repents of Stalinism
Folksinger’s life celebrated in new movie
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58352

How interesting. Imagine a “Liberal” being blinded by ideology.

Idid Amin, Saddam, Mugabe, Pol Pot, Che Guevara all started out as or remained socialists. Now the socialists call them selves “Liberals,” ‘progressives,’ and other various cute names to hide their evil.

“The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But under the name of ‘liberalism’, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without ever knowing how it happened.”—Norman Thomas, U.S. Socialist Party Presidential candidate

And it matters not major marxist, whether ‘gun control’ reduces crime or not. I may need my handguns to kill “LIberals” some day. That is all I care about.

Posted by waypasthadenough on Oct 26, 2007 at 5:45 AM

Oh, and how could I forget, you need to be reminded of what your master said on the subject of pacifism:

“The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.”- Karl Marx”

Posted by waypasthadenough on Oct 26, 2007 at 5:48 AM

I will admit I haven’t read all of the comments here, so if someone else has taken this position, sorry I didn’t acknowledge your contribution.

Those of us on the Left (and no I’m not trolling for the right, I’ve contributed to both Dennis Kucinich and Cindy Sheehan’s campaigns and in the past have given to the Brady campaign) may be too hasty in calling for ending most gun ownership.  I have a couple of reasons for this position.  First, if nobody in the political opposition to BushCo. is armed, it makes it that much easier for them to round us all up and lock us up - or worse.  What if the residents of the Warsaw Ghetto had been armed?  Would the outcome of that massacre have been different?  Maybe not, but at least they would have taken a bunch of the Nazi bastards with them! 

I know, I know, a rifle or shotgun doesn’t do much good against a tank.  However, it’s amazing what a lot of small arms can do in the hands of a determined insurgent movement.  Big armies are ill-trained and equipped to deal with Guerilla tactics - think Ethan Allen and his Green Mountain Boys.  With small arms, raids on armories to seize larger arms, rockets, missiles, high explosives, etc. are possible.  I’m not calling for revolution or insurrection, but the time may come when it is the only option to take back our Country and government.

The other reason for not totally giving up personal small arms is the very real possibility of societal breakdown in the face of coming resource depletion, climatic catastrophes and the resulting droughts, famines, plagues, etc.  There are those of us who are at least in the planning stages to personally deal with these looming crises, and need a way to fend off those who either fail to recognize the coming problems, or are in denial as to the seriousness of the problems facing us and refuse to make changes to head it off.  When the time comes, and those I am with have the capability of feeding and caring for ourselves and others around us don’t, we’re not just going to roll over and let them come and take from us without resistance.  I know this smacks of a “Mad Max” scenario, but if you look at what happened in places like Rwanda when population outstripped resources (the underlying cause, according to Prof. Jared Diamond in his book, “Collapse”), I think being able to defend yourself against desperate or hateful “neighbors” is not an unreasonable desire.

Posted by truthteller on Oct 26, 2007 at 10:56 AM

A famous democrat once said:
“We have four boxes with which to defend our freedom: the soap box, the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box.”

Posted by Novus on Oct 26, 2007 at 11:11 AM

Save the unimaginative insults, waypast. I’m not vulnerable to you.

I did like the Penn & Teller bit, though. They amuse me.

My question really is, Are you sincere in thinking that shooting a person like, say, Hillary Clinton, will actually serve the cause of freedom in America? And if you do, do you have the sand to actually draw down, get her or someone like her in your sights, and squeeze the trigger?

To really assassinate a US Senator? Or the Speaker of the House? Do you authentically believe America will be a freer nation, if you or anyone carries out those crimes?

You need to think that one through. Consequences, man.

As long as you’re defending an important Constitutional amendment, maybe you should direct your ire against the faction who had a bill to cripple several of those treasured amendments within weeks of 9/11, and who whisked it through a stunned and/or complicitous Congress and signed it into law so fast it makes the head spin, slicker than snot on an ice cube. Taking advantage of people’s fear to nullify their rights. Are they on your hunting list?

America is already a well-armed citizenry who would be a bitch to conquer and occupy. If you’re such a defender of the Bill of Rights, the 2nd is a hell of a lot more secure in practical terms than, say, the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th, which have been under constant assault during this presidency.

“Liberals are Nazis”, for God’s sake. “Liberals are KGB.”

If you want to take on force-collectivists, there’s a big batch of anti-pluralist political evangelists who fit the description right well.

Don’t imagine me to be a pacifist, chappie.

Posted by Kuya on Oct 26, 2007 at 12:23 PM

“Are you sincere in thinking that shooting a person like, say, Hillary Clinton, will actually serve the cause of freedom in America?”

Someone else put it better than I could

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

We’re still in the “patient suffering” phase.

And we’re still in a situation where the government can be changed through the democratic process.

So at this time, the appropriate task is democratic change, and the appropriate tool is education.

—
That rifle hanging on the wall of the working-class flat or labourer’s cottage is the symbol of democracy. It is our job to see that it stays there.
          - George Orwell

Posted by jdege on Oct 26, 2007 at 1:03 PM

First of all I’ve been doing this for 15 years.

The first few months I was naive. Very naive. I didn’t understand how I could get the reactions I got just by saying, on a college campus, or anywhere in this ‘land of the free and home of the brave,’ that we have the right to be armed and the right to overthrow the govt. if we have to.

Then with time I began to understand how evil America’s enemies within are. How evil the kind of people who run rags like this are. How stupid the sheeple had become because the Amerikan Communist Insurgency had long infiltrated the schools, colleges, newspapers, TV newsrooms.

And no, I don’t imagine they’re all pacifists. Did you bother to read anything on my website? Many of them will have no problem killing to force their evil on all of us.

And yes, I know without doubt that I can remove vermin from my country if I am forced to. In fact I could provide a long list of vermin I would enjoy removing. I have volunteered to show up in DC and help tug on the rope, flip the switch, pull the trigger, if they ever get the nerve to arrest, try for treason and execute every member of the socialist caucus as so desperately needs to be done.

At one point during WWII the allies decided they were better off with Hitler alive than dead, for all the damage he was doing to his own war effort. By the same token Bill Klinton sold more guns and woke up more patriots than any president since Lincoln. I think his alter ego, or boss, Hitlery, is exactly what Amerika needs, or rather deserves.

I’m tempted every presidential election cycle to vote for the Demoncrat just to speed up the process. And I didn’t vote for Dubya. See earlier comments.

And yes, when they tell me I must live under the tyranny that the British sheeple live under, who can go to prison for defending themselves in their own homes, I will begin to kill “Liberal” scum and enjoy it. The Brits are paying a high price for not killing their “Liberals” when they were told to turn surrender their guns. Their misery at the hands of “Liberal” govt. has likely just begun.

And yes, for gods sake:

Posted by waypasthadenough on Oct 26, 2007 at 6:43 PM

waypasthadenough , Lincoln was not a socialist by any stretch of the imagination. The South’s aristocracy did not call for secession from America because they did not want socialism, they did it because they were afraid slavery would be abolished.
The South’s soldiers were overwhelmingly fighting for their land and state and not for the preservation of slavery after the war started, but what they fought for or against had absolutely nothing at all to do with socialism.

While taxes had something to do with the American revolution,  it was about taxation without represntation. Jefferson even believed in taxation of the people.
A Thomas Jefferson quote about taxation: “Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.”—Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1785.

As far as tyrants go, I agree I cannot live under one, but tyrants can be liberal or conservative just as easily.
If I had to make the choice between which type of tyrant I had to live under, I would much rather live in Communist Cuba than to live in fascist Spain under Fransisco Franco’s rule. But all tyrrany should be met with opposition and overthrow so the choice would not be taken by me.

Castro and his allies were able to overthrow the tyrant Batista with the initial help of privately owned firearms which were hidden from the government. It is modern example of privately owned firearms being successfully used to overthrow an oppressive government.
It is too bad that they got a totalitarian government in the end again anyway, but it still shows that ragtag rebels armed with sidearms can change history and a good example of how the 2nd Amendment can still be used to stop government oppression.
If Castro ruled like Batista and did not try to make all the masses equal, then he too may have been eventually overthrown by people with privately held firearms as well. But even though he was a totalitarian ruler, he was just benevolent enough that a grass roots overthrow was not properly organized.

Posted by Novus on Oct 26, 2007 at 7:22 PM

Some people want this elderly blind African American man to be completely defensless:
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12:00 am, October 27, 2007
Arthur Williams is 75 years old and blind, but still managed to shoot an intruder who broke into his southeast Gainesville home early Friday.

“I keep my gun on me,” he said. “That’s my protection - I can’t see.”

http://www.gainesvillesun.com/article/20071027/NEWS/710270315

.........And the attacker wished he was defenseless too.

Posted by Novus on Oct 27, 2007 at 6:24 AM

Novus, what about Franco vs. Stalin, or Pol Pot?

Remember, it’s all a form of the same disease, socialism, or collectivism.

Remember that The Communist Manifesto was published in the 1830s and based on ideas much older.

I will refer you to my reading list concerning Lincoln and what his war was about:

http://tinyurl.com/2vp6rm

and to Lew Rockwell.com for articles written by DiLorenzo:

http://www.lewrockwell.com/dilorenzo/dilorenzo-arch.html

It is a deadly mistake to think ‘it ‘can’t happen here,’ when it already has.

And for something extra, here’s a little quote to show the arrogance of our enemies:

“You don’t like the fact that you can’t have a gun on your college campus? Drop out of school,” said Peter Hamm, a spokesman for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,304806,00.html

Now let’s imagine for a moment, if the “Liberal” freaks put all the time, money, sweat equity, into creating real charities to help people who are truly in need instead of spending billions to elect their evil candidates, there’d be no need for welfare or ‘social security’ or socialized medicine.

But that’s not their real goal is it?

Posted by waypasthadenough on Oct 27, 2007 at 6:25 AM

A little sampling of what demoncrat leaders really are:

http://prisonplanet.com/articles/october2007/261007_b_shamed.htm

Posted by waypasthadenough on Oct 27, 2007 at 6:51 AM

Ronald Reagan signed FOPA which banned registration of new full auto.
George Bush 41 passed the “assault rifle” importation ban.
George Bush 43 said he would sign a new “assault weapon” ban.
Half the Republican presidential candidates support some form of excessive new gun control legislation.
The Bradys are Reagan Republicans.

Sarah’s past activities include Chairing the Building Committee for the Republican National Committee Annex, serving as a delegate to five Virginia Republican State Conventions, and serving as an Honorary Regent of the National Federation of Republican Women.

As far as Lincoln goes, I will admit, being a Marylander, Lincoln acted as a tyrant unlawfully suspending habeaus corpus during the war. But let’s get something straight here. Lincoln was willing to compromise in the beginning, but the rebels in the South attacked federal forces before he was even president. He was forced to respond to Southern aggression.

As far as Brady Campaign Hamm’s bonehead remark about college students, his boss, Paul Helmke, the president of the Brady Campaign is a Republican too.
Clean your own house of Republican gun control freaks before you go off liberal bashing.
While there are more misinformed about gun issues among liberals generally speaking, and the overwhelming majority of democrat politicians are not gun rights friendly, they would be neutered in their intent if there weren’t gun control freak Republicans or gun control friendly conservatives helping them.
Stop them in your camp, and I will try to deal with mine. With our efforts together we may reverse the decades of impractical, misdirected, excessive and unreasonable gun control laws that have been passed nationwide.

As long as they were also a civil libertarian, yes, I would vote for a progun rights socialist over any conservative candidate any day since I have socialist tendencies. But I would also vote for a progun rights conservative over any democrat candidate that isn’t.
I would even vote for Ron Paul if he ran against anyone other than Bill Richardson, but if I had to choose between Republican Giuliani and any Democrat candidate other than Richardson, I would call it a wash as far as the gun rights issue is concerned.

Posted by Novus on Oct 27, 2007 at 7:54 AM

Way Past, I am considering the possibility that you are a troll who is pretending to be a blood thirsty gun owner because with your statements like “I may need my handguns to kill “LIberals” some day. That is all I care about. “ you are doing an excellent smear job making gun owners (and conservatives) look bad.

Posted by David in Canuckistan on Oct 27, 2007 at 5:15 PM

To all:

Yeah I’ve heard about you Canuckistanis. You play both sides.

I’m sure I look bad to the stupid. I quit worrying what I look like to the stupid some time back. I’m preaching to the aware who haven’t come to grips with what’s really in our future and how evil our enemies really are.

When the southern states seceded the Yankees tried to maintain some of their forts on southern soil. Lincoln did this for a reason, besides arrogance. The officers of Sumter were buying supplies in town but Lincoln sent in supply ships, that he knew the southern army would be forced to fire upon, as the Fort didn’t belong ON THEIR LAND to begin with.

Lincoln knew this would provide him with an excuse to start the invasion, and decimation of the southern states. After the first battle of Manassas, the yankee civilians ran back to DC in a panic. They had expected a picnic while watching the Confederates lose and thus give up on their dream of an independent homeland. It didn’t work that way that day.

The Confederate General in charge should have gone on into DC and hung Lincoln from the handiest tree. But he didn’t. So Lincoln survived to commit his war crimes and the bad guys won the Second American Revolution.

Lincoln founded the republicrat party. That should tell you lots about it. If I could have all the RINOS, McCain, et al., arrested tried and executed I’d do it.

I haven’t voted for a republicrat for president in years. I’m only registered republicrat because we had a real candidate for gov. here a few years back. Of course he only got about 3 percent of the vote in the primary.

I’d like to see Ron Paul or a man of similar character win the presidency, but I know as soon as the rats on federal aid find out he might endanger their checks they’ll come out in droves to vote for the devil himself, or herself, if need be.

Even if Paul does get elected the powers who want to always be will probably shorten his life expectancy considerably. They can’t have ‘unofficial’ candidates in the White House. It just won’t do.

That’s the country we live in. And it ain’t gonna get better till the sheeple get desperate and mad enough to develop the backbone and the guts to get off their asses and do something real about it. I don’t expect to live long enough to see that.

And please note my earlier post on ‘civil rights.’ I’m not fighting for my ‘civil rights.’ I am willing to kill for my natural rights. How about you?

And which version of a socialist are you? Fascist? Communist? Modern “Liberal” or ‘progressive?’ They are all versions of the same evil.

Posted by waypasthadenough on Oct 28, 2007 at 6:58 AM

And a little funny add on just for giggles:

KKK’s 1st targets were Republicans
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58295

Of course WND leaves a lot out of their ‘article.’

Posted by waypasthadenough on Oct 28, 2007 at 7:12 AM

“Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Canada anymore.”

Posted by Major Major on Oct 28, 2007 at 9:39 AM

Way Past, I took some time to read some of your essays on your website and had a few good laughs (with you - not at you). And I agree with much of what you have to say regarding natural rights. But when you start talking about hunting and killing liberals I feel that you are detracting from what could be a good message. So you shouldn’t be surprised if people dismiss you as a blood thirsty gun nut (with an unhealthy obsession with liberals) considering some of the statements you make.

I might be willing to kill for my natural rights but having practical pacifist tendencies I hope and pray that I am never in a situation where I have to make such a decision. But I have to say that you seem more than willing to kill ... you seem eager to kill (especially liberals).

As for slapping on a socialist label; I am sorry but I can’t define myself with a political label but must say I am (mostly) happy living in a socialist country where even the “right wing” party has socialist influences. I have stood (voted) on both sides of the fence and stood on the fence too but always made my choice based on the person I was voting for and not on the party they happned to be running for.  But nowadays I am more into knocking fences down. We are people first and political labels are fairly low on the list of credentials by which I judge people.

If the Rhinoceros Party of Canada was still around they would definitely get my vote.

Posted by David in Canuckistan on Oct 28, 2007 at 3:58 PM

Waypasthadenough’s posts have steadily left the bounds of rational political discourse. Assuming that Waypasthadenough is serious, then here is my serious opinion:

There are many gun owners who are pretty much “liberals” in all aspects of their politics except for the fact that they own guns and support the civil right of gun ownership wholeheartedly.  Assuming that gun-owners represent a monolithic political viewpoint simply because decades of support for the right wing in this country has come from gun owners is to proceed from a deeply flawed axiom. Many gun owners vote conservative not because they like the conservative platform but because the liberal platform threatens a civil right that they hold more dear than their other political beliefs. If the liberals promised a gun and a box of bullets in every closet in addition to chickens in all pots and universal health care while the conservatives had a solid reputation for being gun-grabbers, the right wing in this country would have very much less political power than it does now. I guess then that Waypasthadenough or someone similar would be ranting about the “conservatives” and advocated guerrilla war against them instead of those damn liberals.

There’s a reason the quote “soapbox, ballot box, jury box, cartridge box” proceeds in that order: First you articulate your position in public, then the people vote on the positions in elections, and if the law is repugnant to the people the jury nullifies it at trial, and if all of that doesn’t work or isn’t allowed, then the government really does need to be changed via the cartridge box. The problem with settling political issues with bullets is that the risk of someone like Waypasthadenough or Laura Washington getting control of government and dealing with political opposition solely with the cartridge box is all too real. That is one reason I advocate that all voters be armed, know how to use their arms, and know when it is appropriate to use them. That is very much what the phrase “...a well-regulated militia…” means in the 2nd Amendment, as opposed to only a collective right to keep and bear arms that may only be exercised by the state. Giving the state the sole right to keep and bear arms (and thus an unchangeable monopoly of violence) means that some form of totalitarian government, whether left or right wing, has very much improved its chances for coming into being.

Posted by KingKong on Oct 28, 2007 at 5:28 PM

waypasthadenough, Revisionists are ugly.
First of all you left out a little detail. The KKK started off killing “BLACK” Republicans.

As to the other, the North as a gesture of good will to try and make diplomatic resolution possible relinquished all forts but two in the seceding states. IT WAS NOT LINCOLN THAT DID THIS!!!!!!!!!!
Fort Sumpter was left occupied by Lincoln’s predecessor, Buchannan, NOT LINCOLN!!
The merchant and not mililtary re-supply ship under the federal flag that was fired upon by the traitorous rebels was sent by JAMES BUCHANNAN and NOT LINCOLN.

As to what kind of leaning socialist I am, I am not a progressive, communist, or fascist. I am a socialst leaning, gun totin and progun rights, pro self defense rights, pro human rights, civil libertarian, liberal.

To KingKong, about your post, damn well put!!!!!

Posted by Novus on Oct 28, 2007 at 6:02 PM

KingKong…..damn well put!

Posted by Novus on Oct 28, 2007 at 6:04 PM

Thanks Novus. I’d had enough of Waypasthadenough’s rabid posts about needing to shoot liberals to save America. It just seemed to me that Waypasthadenough hasn’t really thought out what it means to resolve differences with force. Not to mention the irony of descending to Laura S. Washington’s level in defending the 2nd Amendment rights of Americans.

Posted by KingKong on Oct 28, 2007 at 7:08 PM

That’s a clever quote, KK.  First, you express your grievance from the “soap box”, and then you ratify it at the “ballot box”.  And if that doesn’t work, you break the law and vindicate the injustice at the “jury box”.  And if that doesn’t work, you reach for the “cartridge box”.  Who did you have in mind, other than that hypothetical liberal majority that wants to confiscate your handguns?  That quotation, by the way, is attributed to Larry McDonald, former congressman from Georgia, past president of the John Birch Society, who died after his flight (KAL007) was shot down by Soviet fighters over Sakhalin Island.  That quotation was introduced to this thread by none other than Novus, the liberal who never fails to remind us that he approves of his own message.

So what’s a liberal doing quoting the president of the John Birch Society?

And while we’re at it, let’s clear the air about John Lott, who happens to be a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, the “propaganda mill” for American conservatives, and a “John M. Olin” professor at the University of Chicago.  The Olin family made their fortune from the production of armaments and ammunition.

So what’s an “unbiased” criminologist who advocates arming the “law-abiding” population doing getting his funding from the people who produce the weapons?

Posted by Major Major on Oct 28, 2007 at 9:12 PM

“Liberal” may be the most misused term in our language.  The Constitution of the United States of America is a pre-eminent liberal document.  Democracy is a liberal value.  Self protection is a liberal value.  Freedom of speech and religion are liberal values. 

So, why is it that gun opponents are almost exclusively Liberal Democrats?  Why does the Liberal ACLU attempt to restrict Christian expression, and not that of other religions?  Why did forty-one Liberal United States Senators attempt to restrict a private citizen’s freedom of speech?  Why are Liberals trying to restrict what is said on the radio, but not what the Liberal MSM prints?  Why, in short, are Liberals opposed to liberal values?

I accept that there are liberal gun owners on this thread, but are you sure you are in the same Party with the anti-liberal Liberals?

Look in the faculty directories of the East Coast and West Coast schools particularly.  Why do you suppose, more than a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there are so many Marxist professors, or Critical Studies (same thing) professors?  Is Marxism a legitimate academic subject, or are these Marxist professors just indoctrinating students?  Why is Gramsci so popular among these professors? 

Do you know who Antonio Gramsci was?  Before WWII, Gramsci concluded that economic communism would not succeed, and he advocated a cultural communism.  Gramsci said that to capture the world, you had to capture the schools, the political parties, the media, the churches, and the courts. 

So, do the UCLA professors, Senator Reid, the NYT, and the Episcopalians call themselves Communists?  No, they call themselves Liberals, thereby hijacking revered traditional value systems in order to mislead their intended victims. 

By whatever name they call themselves, Communists have been with us a long time.  There were Socialist activists in the USA in the nineteenth century.  Lenin’s horrific imposition of Communism in Russia gave Communism and Socialism a bad name, and Communists and Socialists could not win elections in the early years of the twentieth century.  Even in th depths of the Great Depression, when many piople were desperate, the Communists and Socialists could not get elected. 

So, they began calling themselves Progressives.  Henry Wallace ran for president on the Progressive Party ticket in 1948, and went nowhere.  Then they began calling themselves Liberals.  Recently, Hillary again referred to herself as a Progressive, and here we are. 

Democracy may be a liberal value, but today’s Liberals are not democratic, they are elitist.  Hillary and Rangel are making plans for the largest tax increase in history, because, as elite Liberals, they think they can manage the world, and your money, better than you can.

Americans have a long history of rejecting Socialists, regardless of what they call themselves.  But Socialists calling themselves Liberals has muddied the water, as intended.  I don’t expect that today’s Socialists will sweep to electoral victory, but be prepared for anything.

Posted by scorp on Oct 28, 2007 at 9:18 PM

“That’s a clever quote, KK.  First, you express your grievance from the “soap box”, and then you ratify it at the “ballot box”.  And if that doesn’t work, you break the law and vindicate the injustice at the “jury box”.  And if that doesn’t work, you reach for the “cartridge box”.  Who did you have in mind, other than that hypothetical liberal majority that wants to confiscate your handguns?”

Major Major many people who try to use the soap box in other countries are put into prison or executed for doing so. They never get a chance to use the ballot box, and they probably don’t get to use the jury box either. So we see that they resort to the cartridge box when that happens, which is a terrrible thing to do but when the alternative is certain death people will do it.

For an example of this straight out of the headlines look at Myanmar: It is illegal for anyone in Myanmar to protest the government’s actions, there are no elections, I have no idea if there are jury trials in the country (but I think not), and some ethnic minorities have resorted to the cartridge box since the government has decided to wipe them out. Effectively for the Karen minority it is illegal to simply exist.  Now, let us note that in Myanmar, all four boxes are prohibited, and they’ve had that foul, sadistic, genocidal government in power for decades.

For an example that’s closer to home: from 1776 to about 1864 it was legal to own black people and pretty much do anything you wanted to them. Property, after all, does not have human rights. So during this period of American history a large chunk of the population had rights to not a single one of the four boxes: Soap, ballot, jury, or cartridge. There were rare exceptions to the first two, but as a general rule blacks had no civil rights whatsoever. It was illegal in many areas to simply educate a black person. It is very much worth noting that many areas had laws prohibiting blacks from even knowing how to use arms, let alone keeping or bearing them. Seems like the proponents of the peculiar institution greatly feared their slaves resorting to the cartridge box to assert their basic human rights. To settle this issue the nation eventually resorted to the cartridge box at a horrific cost, and it became illegal to practice chattel slavery in this country. Many liberated slaves bore arms for the Union and fought to to bring the Confederacy back into the Union. After Reconstruction the blacks were again stripped of their rights to the four boxes by various means, such as poll taxes, segregation laws, KKK terrorism, poor education, and gun control laws. It may have technically been legal for blacks to seek redress of grievances, register to vote, serve on juries, or own guns, but in practice it was not. It was only until the civil rights movement beginning in the 1950s that their rights were gradually recognized by society. And although much of the civil rights movement was nonviolent, there was always the very real potential of the blacks resorting to the cartridge box and fighting for their rights (and some did) that motivated the progress and kept it from rolling back. People make a big deal about how the civil rights movement was nonviolent and hardly anyone seems to consider the possible scenarios had nonviolent protest failed.

One more example: In Zimbabwe right now it is prohibited to severely criticise Robert Mugabe’s regime. The elections they have are largely meaningless since they are rigged to reelect Mugabe, if they are even held. I am pretty sure that a Zimbabwean trial does not involve a jury, indeed, many victims of the regime are simply murdered. The government is well aware of the fact that it utterly lacks popular support so it enforces strict gun control laws. The government knows that it cannot credibly stand on a soap box, that it cannot win at the ballot box, that the jury box will not enforce its repugnant laws, and understands completely that the only recourse Zimbabweans have for changing their vile, sadistic regime is the cartridge box.

So, given these examples out of many of government gone wrong, I think it’s clear why I think the people should be able to gripe about the government, vote the bastards out, neutralize the laws in court as they see fit, and keep boxes full of cartridges around in case the other three don’t yield a humane, liberal government.

Posted by KingKong on Oct 29, 2007 at 3:06 AM

Major Major, McDonald was a Democrat, Lott is an economist and not a criminologist.
Gary Kleck, the one who did the survey showing 2.5 million defensive gun uses a year by law abiding citizens is the criminologist and he is also a member of the ACLU and a liberal.
Gary Kleck is a member of Amnesty International and Common Cause and avoids funding from gun rights advocacy groups.
Gary Kleck occasionally recieves funding for his research from places like Florida State University and the Us Department of Justice.

The doctors you cited when you copied and pasted right from the anti gun rights websight owned by the VPC however have been recieving their research funding from places like the VPC and anti gun groups and billionaires since the early 1990s after the National Institute of Health kicked them out.
YOu are obsessed with Lott, but I never cited a figure of Lotts.
You are obsessed with Hemmingway and Kellerman studies, but they never stood up well at all to peer review and they are paid hacks that are lackeys for the anti gun rights lobby.
Gary Kleck is an unpstanding liberal and well respected researcher and criminologist which has learned over the years that excessive gun control laws has little to none postive and most likely a net negative effect on society because it disarms the law abiding making them unarmed victims.

I am a liberal like Gary Kleck and I approve this message.

Posted by Novus on Oct 29, 2007 at 5:34 AM

Scorp, the ACLU protects free expression of religion and they have defended the rights of Chrisitans specifically to practice their religion many times. They even defended a Christian group’s right to practice their religion on government property.
You must be confusing the lawsuits keeping government from being inolved in religion as an attack on Christians. You are wrong.

About the Marxist professors and USSR. The USSR followed Marx’s principles as a guide, but the USSR was not Marxist, it was operated under Lenninist Communism.
In my university I only met ONE Marxist professor. The rest were a hodge podge of political ideology, but I will admit there did seem to be a few more liberals present. Maybe more education leads more people to liberal thought.

The ACLU fights for civil rights guaranteed in the Constitution. If the District of Colombia v. Heller case is determined by the Supreme Court in such a way so as to establish the legal interpretation that the Second Amendment is an individual right guaranteed to the People, then do not be too surprised if the ACLU starts defending that right too.

Posted by Novus on Oct 29, 2007 at 5:46 AM

part one:

Great job scorp. Hadn’t heard of that guy. I’ll have to look him up.

Do you know of a good book that actually explores the real history of communism in amerika?

King Kong, as the old song says, you’re so close yet so far.

Earlier someone quoted a small section of the Declaration of Independence. Let’s look at that.

When the Founders wrote and signed the Declaration, over a few months of time, they knew their actions would result in blood conflict and a sentence of treason and a sentence of death if they were captured by their enemies, their former brothers and neighbors.

Blood conflict had already begun, a year and 3 months earlier, on April 19, 1775. That date should be our most important holiday by the way because that’s the day they reached down, grabbed their balls, and developed the courage to shoot back. British regulars, meaning they were well-trained and ‘regular’ in their marching, advanced upon Lexington and Concord to seize cannon, powder, shot and small arms stored and held their by ‘patriot’ militia. Do the

Posted by waypasthadenough on Oct 29, 2007 at 6:59 AM

part two:

How many people have already lost their homes, businesses, Liberty, to this treason?

Has the Whoopi wanna be posted an apology on this comment page for her request that all gun owners be killed, or disarmed so they and their families and descendants can be victims of govt. or common criminals? No. And she likely never will. She is evil and will vote for the black suits to come to YOUR HOME, and endanger YOUR FAMILY and steal YOUR PROPERTY.

It

Posted by waypasthadenough on Oct 29, 2007 at 7:00 AM

Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death -  part one

Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775.

No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the House. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The questing before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings.

Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past. And judging by the past, I wish to know what there has been in the conduct of the British ministry for the last ten years to justify those hopes with which gentlemen have been pleased to solace themselves and the House. Is it that insidious smile with which our petition has been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask yourselves how this gracious reception of our petition comports with those warlike preparations which cover our waters and darken our land. Are fleets and armies necessary to a work of love and reconciliation? Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be reconciled that force must be called in to win back our love? Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation; the last arguments to which kings resort. I ask gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it? Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none. They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging. And what have we to oppose to them? Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves.

Posted by waypasthadenough on Oct 29, 2007 at 7:03 AM

Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death - part two

Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free—if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending—if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained—we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!

They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, sir, we have no election. If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable—and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come.

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace—but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/henry-liberty.html

Posted by waypasthadenough on Oct 29, 2007 at 7:04 AM

“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” -Samuel Adams

I wish I could think that I am wrong. But the day will come. They will make sure of it. Not us.

Posted by waypasthadenough on Oct 29, 2007 at 7:06 AM

Geez dude, even Jefferson understood the need for taxes of the people.

“Taxes should be proportioned to what may be annually spared by
the individual.”—Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1784.

“Many of the opposition [to the new Federal Constitution] wish to
take from Congress the power of internal taxation.  Calculation
has convinced me that this would be very mischievous.” —Thomas
Jefferson to William Carmichael, 1788.

“Taxes on consumption, like those on capital or income, to be just, must be uniform.” —Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Smith, 1823.

“Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is
to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.”—Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1785.

“Our revenues liberated by the discharge of the public debt, and its surplus applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings.”—Thomas Jefferson to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1811.

The founding fathers understood the need for courts, government, taxes to support government and the right of the People to be armed to prevent oppression from the government. Income taxes, national health care and smoking in bars does not rise up to the level being oppression.
We must be allowed to keep and bear arms as a civil right guaranteed in the Constitution as well as a human right that existed before the Constitution. Let’s keep this subject on that instead of expressing homicidal ideation of the murder of fellow Americans you seem prone to spout.
If you don’t like a democracy where the majority rules and can make any law as long as it does not conflict with the Constitution or the rights of the people, then you are free to leave.

Posted by Novus on Oct 29, 2007 at 7:47 AM

I wasn’t going to post anymore, but you guys are touching on a very interesting subject:

How the hell are ordinary citizens (I mean the central say 75% on an imaginary political spectrum) supposed to judge when to pick up their arms and start to let their oppressors know without doubt that they continue the opression at their own peril?

I think we are always going to have the odd head case on one or other extreme who thinks that the time is whenever they are.  If they are particularly stupid, they get helped along by an agent provocateur, and get to make the headlines, along with helping make the case to get some agency’s budget approved for next year…

The accounts of armed black people in the US, firing shots over the heads of the klan, give an example of where the opression and opressors were clearly identifiable, and the action was clearly just.

It isn’t always so.

Only a few saw the 20th century’s dictators for what they really were before it was too late, Mussolini and Hitler were both supported by large swathes of their populations (true, Mussolini later recognised that Hitler was mad, but by then it was too late for both of them).

With hindsight, we can criticise, and we know that the use of arms was right, but recognizing what was happening as it was developing, that is a different matter.

Once the decision is taken, then there is the question of who to target:

The jack booted thugs (e.g. the Irish killing as many “black & tans” as they could)?
Those who give the thugs their orders (Frag the “Ruperts”)?
The faceless bureaucrats who sort out the names and addresses for the thugs to go looking for?
The figure heads (generals, politicians, ministers of state)?

Or as Way-past is suggesting; targetting the whole population who support the veiws and policies which lead to the opression, in some sort of total war (don’t worry I don’t believe any war was ever limited or clean)?

I really don’t know the answers.

What I do know is that even genocidal dictators won’t go into a fight where they think that their side will get hurt:

Hitler did not try his luck with Switzerland (Napoleon was the last one stupid enough to try that trick).

After the Winter War, where Stalin only won by using twice as many troops as there were Finnish population, Stalin threatened, but never carried out another full scale invasion of Finland .

Stalin also backed down when Tito refused to give way to him (Yugoslavia had over 1M soldiers mobilized at that time and some seriously rugged mountains to fight in).

A possible exception to this is Mao, who was happy to see North Korea get bombed flat and then some, in the hope that Stalin would start to think Communism was threatened and give Mao nuclear technology. If on the other hand, the Chinese population had been slitting party members throats as they lay in their beds, perhaps Mao would not have had any party members or soldiers to cause trouble with.

Using those examples, it seems that the mere presence of arms in the hands of those who it is planned to oppress, and the perceived willingness of those people to use them can be enough to disuade a potential oppressor from proceeding, or to retreat.

I’d be interested in your thoughts on those.

Posted by alpacca45 on Oct 30, 2007 at 11:45 AM

.45

Your points are well taken.

We in the USA have a long history of rejecting Collectivists: Socialists, Communists, Progressives, Liberals, or whatever they are currently calling themselves.  But if these ideologues have exhibited atrocious, murderous, inefficient, and corrupt behavior, they do have a certain persistence.  So, can they establish themselves, much less prevail, by pretending to be other than what they are?  Can Marxists triumph by pretending to be Progressives, or Liberals?

In my previous post, I discussed Gramsci’s Cultural Communism, whereby he advocated taking over institutions (schools, churches, poitical parties, the media, etc.) in order to take over the world.  And we see this philosophy in action, coupled with the Neocommunists pretense that they are not such bad fellows after all, in spite of all the death and destruction trailing in their wake.

But the political, cultural, and economic environment in the USA is not the same as the environments found in Germany and Russia decades ago.  We have a history of preserving our values, in spite of foreign and domestic conflicts.

Academic fashion is a trailing indicator, and the radical faculties that grew up on Vietnam protests are beginning to retire and die off.  No one to the right of Markos believes or trusts the NYT or CBS anymore.  After all their falsehoods, exaggerations, and deceptions, the MSM are dying off as well.  The Episcopalians are having a hell of a fight between their Communist and traditional wings.  The highly touted Democratic Party victory in 2006 has not exactly led to the Communist victory they expected. 

So, I see no need to threaten armed defense of our values at a time when the Leftists are shooting themselves in the foot.

Posted by scorp on Oct 30, 2007 at 11:19 PM

Funny how I don’t see any support for a ‘direct tax’ in Jefferson’s quotes.

Are our domestic enemies shooting themselves in the foot? Here in Kentucky the Demoncrats just gained back the governor’s office, kept the atnny general’s office, and won one or two more, by pretty good margins.

While in Louisville, KY the voters defeated a Library tax by a wide margin.

Funny thing that. Is it because of the MSM’s constant harping on the war? Or are the govt. check rats coming out to vote more often?

Maybe Limbaugh and others are right when they say the Demoncrats are winning while their socialist policies are on the wane. Let’s hope they continue to shoot themselves in the foot.

Personally I’ve been hoping for a Demoncrat to get back in the White House. Billery, as I noted earlier, sold more guns and ammo than any president since Lincoln. The Patriot movement grew by leaps and bounds under his tenure, even if it was slowed a little by the OK City bombing propaganda.

It’s not the ‘threat’ of armed defense that we need, it’s the re-establishment in the minds of the sheeple that it’s even a possiblitiy. Most of them are so stupid and pacified they’ll do anything to keep their jobs, mortgages, 401ks , etc.

But then maybe the hordes of young people following Ron Paul will prove me wrong as well.  Or maybe it will be their generation who reaches down and grabs their balls and does what history shows will eventually have to be done.

Posted by waypasthadenough on Nov 7, 2007 at 7:03 AM

Please don’t limit the ownership of guns to white men in rural areas. Your bias shows. I live and report (photojournalist) in rural areas and every black man I know owns a gun. Many are rural farmers with shotguns and pistols for protection. Most hunt. Many are veterans. I’ve NEVER met an African American who supports gun control.

Those black gun-owners I end up reporting on are the black teens - usually from NY or NJ who come down here and stick their guns in people’s faces while robbing them. Crips, Bloods, MS 13, gangs - MOSTLY BLACK, have more guns and more powerful guns than those old white men you describe.

They sure oppose gun control! Talk to the African American women in any church in this town and they’ll tell you they want MORE guns in their house. They want their men, not their children, armed. But with the home invasions - mostly by black men in black neighborhoods, having a gun is a necessity. I don’t know what world you’re living in - but blacks in the south are tremendously supportive of gun ownership. They don’t want whitey knowing they have them but your ivory tower idea that only rednecks own guns is so far out of the realm of reality it’s sad. Why don’t you address black on black crime? Why don’t you write about how blacks are killing other blacks with their drug dealing, their gangs, their violence, their dropping out of school. Blacks do not, in my opinion/experience - unless they are rich, educated, priveleged African American elitists raised in girls schools and avid Oprah Winfrey fans and out of touch with the real world, support gun control.

Bill Cosby WAS/IS right..more than anyone knows….

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