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Denial – It’s their current state…

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Via Tango I came across this wonderful study done by Harvard in 2007.  Lately I have reiterated more and more that our opponents are living in a serious state of denial and this is yet another nail in their coffin.

The money shot from the conclusion:

This Article has reviewed a significant amount of  evidence from a wide variety of international sources. Each individual portion of evidence is subject to cavil—at the very least the general objection that the persuasiveness of social scientific evidence cannot remotely approach the persuasiveness of conclusions in the physical sciences. Nevertheless, the burden of proof rests on the proponents of the more guns equal more death and fewer guns equal less death mantra, especially since they argue public policy ought to be based on that mantra.  To bear that burden would at the very least require showing that a large number of nations with more guns have more death and that nations that have imposed stringent gun controls have achieved substantial reductions in criminal violence (or suicide). But those correlations are not observed when a large number of nations are compared across the world.

(Emphasis mine.)  Even more entertaining though was this comment after that shot.

Over a decade ago, Professor Brandon Centerwall of the University of Washington undertook an extensive, statistically sophisticated study comparing areas in the United States and Canada to determine whether Canada’s more restrictive policies had better contained criminal violence. When he published his results it was with the admonition:

If you are surprised by [our] finding[s],  so [are we]. [We] did not begin this research with any intent to “exonerate” hand‐guns, but there it is—a negative finding, to be sure, but a negative finding is nevertheless a positive contribution. It directs us where not to aim public health resources.

Are you grinning yet?  If not you should be because remember this is coming out the liberal bastion of Harvard.  Not to mention the comment made about a study done by the University of Washington, another liberal bastion out of the Peoples’ Republic of Puget Sound.  Back to Harvard though, this is the same Harvard who said the following about the 4th of July in 2011.

 “Fourth of July celebrations in the United States shape the nation’s political landscape by forming beliefs and increasing participation, primarily in favor of the Republican Party,” said the report from Harvard.

Even 5 years ago Harvard saw the writing on the wall and indicated the burden of proof is on the anti-rights cultists.  Further often as of late we see the following across twitter from our opponents how gun ownership is at its lowest rate ever.  That guns are not being bought in record numbers, yet the facts clearly state otherwise.  Again, some of it comes right out of their own back yard such as this piece out of a New York CBS affiliate:

Statistics show a new trend — an increasing number of gun owners are now women.

For reasons ranging from sport to protection, the number of females buying guns has seen a spike in the last few years, CBS 2′s Ann Mercogliano reported.

Yet remember, gun ownership is at an all time low.

Sturm, Ruger & Company, Inc. (NYSE: RGR) is on pace to beat its own record of 1,114,700 firearms produced in one year, set in 2011. On August 15, 2012 Ruger produced its one millionth firearm of the year, a Ruger® SR1911™ pistol which will be hand-engraved by Baron Technology, Inc. and auctioned off to support the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action.

Yet remember, gun ownership is at an all time low.  Not to mention “fewer and fewer people are interested in owning firearms”.

So I have a question.  If ownership and interest is at an all time low, who pray-tell is buying all these firearms?  Where are all these firearms going.  I know the ATF bought bunches of them and were sending them over the border to Mexico, but that little hole has been plugged up for a while now.

Our opponents do not understand their logical fallacies.  They cannot grasp that just because there are fewer gun deaths they’re not actually safer.  They cannot comprehend that violence is violence no matter the tool.  The honestly believe that you’re safer with more crime as long as guns are used less often.

Denial is a stage of grief and honestly this abundance of Peterson Syndrome is a symptom of their grief.  They have lost and not just by a bit either.  We dropped a 105mm Howitzer in the middle of their happy parade and have exposed them for the evil bigots that they are.  The worst part about those evil bigots though is they prey upon the fact that many people honestly want to do good and help people.  They then spread their lies, misinformation, and logical fallacies corrupting good people.

Honestly though, I wouldn’t mind if a majority of our opponents forever remained in the first stage.  If they do progress I want them to rapidly progress to bargaining and skipping over anger.  Given their propensity towards violence, especially when on the losing side, it would be a very bad and dangerous thing.  Doubly so if they started trying to engineer failure in an attempt to “aid” their cause.

Denial, it’s not just a river in Egypt.  It is the current home of our opponents and will remain so for the foreseeable future.  I can live with that.

I’m totally doing this…

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So on my way to a meeting this morning I was talking with some coworkers and the subject of these stupid decals came up.

I said it was stupid, explained why and hit the end with the classic comment of,

My family walks single file to hide our numbers.

I am not the only one to agree with that sentiment.  Then I had an epiphany and said the following immediately there after.

Me: You know something though, they have those zombie decals and I would totally put those on my rig….

Coworker: But you just said it was stupid and listed off numerous valid concerns.

Me: I never said it would be representative of my family.

Coworker: What the hell would it be then?

Me: Confirmed Kills.

Considering CSGV’s current decent into PSH over the zombie meme(link safe), I seriously will put them on my truck once I get my hands on some.

Repeat After Me…

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If I carry a concealed weapon, I will not be a dumbass and will use a holster unlike this individual.

A Flagstaff man accidentally fired his gun inside a crowded McDonald’s into a wall, which ended with debris hitting fellow customers, police said.

The 24-year-old man had the firearm in his waist band, the police report states, and when he leaned against the back wall, the weapon discharged.

Young man, tell me you aren’t a sports fan because you should have learned from Plaxico’s mistake.  This is not how responsible people carry firearms.  We use a good sturdy holster.  Not that cheap nylon crap from Uncle Mike either.  It should be in a real freaking holster.

You were aware of the mass shooting and you did not want people freaking out about your gun, yet you couldn’t be bothered with using a real holster?  Tell me, how did that negligent discharge work for keeping it all on the down low?

I would like to point out however this is yet another example of the hole in “training requirements” assuming boy wonder here had a CCW, which he probably is, obviously satisfied the training requirement but evidently he skipped class on buy a holster day.*  The bottom line is there are many people that live in states that have no training requirement and they don’t do this type of crap.  Then within states with the training requirement you still have people who do.  Maybe it isn’t as much the training but the attitude of the person carrying the gun.  You can lead a horse to water but you can not make him drink.

My guess on what happened given the description is that clothing got within the trigger guard and when he leaned back it applied pressure and went bang.  The other option is he violated rule 5 but I don’t think he would have put a hole through his jeans without also penetrating himself.

*Though it seems that military service satisfies the requirement, maybe they never told him to use a holster for sidearms.  About the best alternative option is participation in organized shooting sports.  I do not know specifically what sports they consider acceptable, however if it’s IDPA or USPSA they don’t let you do Mexican carry.  They tell you to use a freaking holster and what happened is exactly why.  Small-bore rifle and bullseye on the other hand, that just means you can hit the broad side of a barn, not that you know how to carry.

In Which I Think We All Know Why

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Given the following incident, I think the answer as to why his roommates did not renew his lease becomes obvious.

When he came to collect his belongings on Saturday night, the two residents were escorting Simpson out of the house when Simpson grabbed a shotgun, racked it, and pointed it at them. The residents ran to the back of the house and called Pullman Police Department.

I wasn’t kidding when I said this was a lively time of year for little old Pullman.  Though this year so far has been considerably more lively on the firearm front than usual.  Now I don’t have specifics but I know it’s safe to say that pointing a shotgun at someone is against the law.

I have a feeling there is more behind the scenes here, however the answer is not to the shotgun.  Incidents like this though are what our opponents grab and latch onto as a reason why college students should not have firearms.  Many students, as well as employees are disarmed by the schools policies yet things like this still occur.  Yet this incident occurred only a half mile from the last incident.  Not to mention that students have been attacked walking home after class through these neighborhoods.  It’s as if all those policies and laws don’t really do anything except prevent responsible law-abiding people from having or carrying arms legally*.

So I would like to stand up, applaud, and thank this moron, James Simpson, for supplying ammunition to the enemy and furthering their goals to keep their honest law-abiding fellow students disarmed to be easy prey.

*After VT,  I know for a fact that there was a decent number of people who started carrying against school policy to class.  They did so after they discovered there was no real legal bite to the policy.  At worst they could be expelled if caught and the individuals felt, “Concealed means Concealed” and if they need it expulsion is the least of their worries at that time.

Doubly interesting is a good chunk of those who carried were engineering students.

Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid Prizes

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Honestly I don’t weep or feel sorry for the kids involved in this:

A boy, who was a passenger in the carjacked vehicle, was pronounced dead at the scene.  The other three juvenile occupants in the vehicle were apprehended at the scene by Irvington officers.  They were a 14-year-old, a 15-year-old and a 17-year old.

Except it goes from bad to all around unpossible.

Police say they found a weapon in the carjacked vehicle.

Underage minors can’t legally have a firearm.  Carjacking is against the law as well.  So is threatening someone with a weapon.  Why didn’t the law stop them?

It’s almost as if the law is merely a tool to punish bad behavior.  Nah, that couldn’t be it because the anti-rights cultists keep insisting laws help prevent and stop violence.  Never mind the fact they merely provide a method of punishment.

Bummer for the car owner that probably now has a totaled Jaguar.  It’s a good thing that NYC is so restrictive on their distribution of Concealed Pistol Licenses as well.  That car owner could have effectively defended his life and property from those kids wielding an illegal weapon.  It’s a good thing someone else made the decision for that car owner to disarm him.*

*If you can’t tell, I’m being  sarcastic the fact is it is not the states job or role to tell be how they should be defending themselves and their property.  The state carries no liability when you’re shot by a carjacker so what right do they have to sit in the back and force you to be shot?

The Plot Thickens – Unpossible I Tell You!

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So last Friday I made a post regarding an incident of an unpossible nature.  Well today the plot thickened!

A man was arrested Thursday morning in Pullman for assault in the first degree and unlawful possession of a firearm.

For those who aren’t aware, here is the beginning of RCW 9.41.040:

(1)(a) A person, whether an adult or juvenile, is guilty of the crime of unlawful possession of a firearm in the first degree, if the person owns, has in his or her possession, or has in his or her control any firearm after having previously been convicted or found not guilty by reason of insanity in this state or elsewhere of any serious offense as defined in this chapter.

It continues on this way throughout the entire law.  This is basically the state equivalent of “felon in possession” and would be listed as prohibited by the state of Washington.

So it begs the question where did he get the weapon?  Not that it really matters because it is yet another nail in the coffin of “laws controlling criminals.”  The fact is criminals don’t care about the law, it is only the law abiding that actually pay attention.

So here’s the skinny, we have a college bar, next to a college campus that forbids concealed carry.  When I say next to, we’re talking a block from the WSU Presidents house, 2 blocks from the WSU Campus Police station and the main bust stop for campus, 2 blocks from numerous on campus dorms, and centered smack dab in the middle of Greek housing.  The state forbids carrying firearms into bars, as well as being intoxicated while carrying a weapon.  Lastly this individual was a prohibited person under Washington State law.

Tell me, what in the name of god would another law have actually done in this instance?  All those laws have effectively done is ensure that any responsible person that would be in that area would be disarmed and lacking the most effective tools when criminals don’t bother to play by the rules.

That’s right, not a damn thing.

(Misc Rant/Story/Joke)

As an FYI, that area on campus is by no means my favorite.  I had friends that went to many of the bars in the area but for the most part I just went to friends places when they had parties.  The reason being is because one should avoid dangerous situations and those bars are exactly that.  When I spent some time with Pullman PD and did a couple ride-alongs I found out how bad that little part of campus really is.  There are numerous people who hang around the area to prey upon people leaving the bars.  Now I’m going to leave the user to apply the term prey how they would like because it applies to both genders.  Assault is the main issue, but other incidents abound as well.

About the only way I’d go in those dives is with a bunch of buddies from back in the unit, mainly two particular Sergeants come to mind.  One of whom is the only man that has ever really intimidated me.  That man made our Gunny look like a baby and that’s just not right!  The other one got kicked out of Burma while he was a Embassy Guard.  Yeah, I had some awesome friends going through my college career.

Though me and some other friends did think it would be funny to come out of some of the college hill bars acting drunk and kick their ass.  We just realized it would be pretty hard to explain it all away after.

Cop: So why were you all at the bar?

Us: Because the food is that awesome!

Cop: This is a campus bar, wanna try that again?

Because: We were studying human physiology?

Cop: You’re all stone sober yet everyone said it looked as if you were drunk as you all left?  They also said you left one by one headed in the same direction with regular spacing, why?

Us: Well we wanted to blend in!

Cop: Why?

Us: Umm, would you believe us if we said so you’d follow us instead of our drunk buddies driving away?

Cop:Wanna try again?  Besides, you were all armed in different manners as to remain legal, why?

Us: Because we were playing a game!

Cop: And what game is that?

Us: Induced Victim Selection Failure

Cop: What the hell is that?

Us: It’s where you try and get a wolf to go after a sheep-dog thinking it’s a sheep.

Cop: What happens to the wolf when he bites?

Us: Well that’s his own damn fault, should have just stayed his ass out of the kitchen if he can’t take the heat!  All he had to do was let us walk on by!

Yeah, I don’t think I would have been able to stay out of a jail cell if we tried that.  I have a feeling it would be treated as hunting over bait.  Not to say it wouldn’t have been worth it.*

*As an extra note, these assaults were done predominately by 3 to 4 individuals with one person leading the attack.  As one group leaves Pullman another one usually fills its place.  Seriously the group could be considered along the misfits from A Clockwork Orange and for that reason if we did it, I wouldn’t have shed a tear.  Again, that wouldn’t have been good for my court appearance.

The Numbers Say Fight Back and Do Not Worry

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So through various posts there has been a smattering of information that honestly should be stitched together so it’s more easily found.

First up is this number which reiterates what many of us in the pro-rights community already knew.

Like Linoge I feel the sample size is a bit on the smaller side but there are a couple of reasons for that.  First he made sure to only include data points that are relevant and applicable.  Second though is better explained by this piece from Chicago Magazine.

This has to be weighed against perceptions of crime which, as Matt Yglesias has written, have in recent years become “unmoored from reality.” Crime has dropped; the perceived rate of crime has not. Is the same possible for rare cases of mass murder? Grant Duwe, research director for the Minnesota Department of corrections and author of (to my knowledge) the only longitudinal book-length study of mass murder in America, suggests it is: “the 1966 massacre committed by Charles Whitman in Austin, Texas marked the onset of a wave of mass public shootings that lasted until the end of the 20th century. Although it may seem that mass public shootings are still on the rise, the data show that 26 occurred between 2000 and 2009, a significant drop from the 43 cases in the 1990s.”

It causes an extra realization that validation needs to be performed on the actual numbers as appearances can be deceiving.  The media blasts about any and every incident because it does well for their ratings as well as a decrease in frequency makes them more news worthy.  (You watch the news not to know what is constant, but what has happened that is unexpected.)  Reporting on a decrease in the frequency doesn’t bring ratings or viewership.

Further someone has examined the odds of dying in a mass shooting.  Unsurprisingly they aren’t high.  Here are the conclusions but I suggest reading the whole thing, it’s definitely worth it.

We should always strive to continue to reduce all risks of death, especially the preventable risks of other humans, wherever possible. But the risks will always exist. If your chance of dying in a mass shooting is 0.000003% and your chance of dying in a car accident is 0.9%, with a whole lot of other risks in between, I think it’s reasonable to ask if there aren’t a lot of easier and more effective ways to try to use the government’s limited resources to save lives than trying even harder to prevent the next shooting tragedy than we already are.

The odds aren’t quite as low as say being struck by lightning within a year, except that his numbers are for lifetime odds.  In which case your lifetime odds of being struck by lightning is 1/10000 or 0.01%.

So why is it that mass shootings appear to be such a common occurrence?  The answer is simply visibility.  The media made terrorist attacks look unbelievably common despite the fact that again lightning is a bigger threat to your personal well being.  The media can scream so loud and for so long on the same topic that it often seems like the problem is worse than it actually is.

There are those of us who will take our time, do our research, and find the facts on a topic before moving forward.  Our opponents on the other hand want the media to scream and yell.  The more the media makes this look like a common occurrence, because it makes them look relevant.

The facts are in though.  Our opponents are irrelevant and those facts are becoming obvious to all the adults in the room.  The adults in the room are having a conversation and we all wish the children throwing the tantrum would shut up so the adults can continue speaking.  It’s not worth spending time worrying about a statistically unlikely event.

Is life, is not safe.  I know that, most everyone knows that.  Frankly I’d rather go out, live and enjoy my life without some nanny trying to control my every action.  Even if they do, I could still be struck by lightning, is congress going to ban lightning?

Unpossible – That’s against the law don’t ya know?*

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Let me start off by pointing out this is probably the most dangerous time of year in the area.  All of the following dangers increase greatly: the road, general stupidity, and criminality.

Students have been coming back into town since early last week, school doesn’t start until next Monday meaning idle hands.  Further you have people who are transiting through the area while dropping friends off, other people just generally unfamiliar with the town, as well as other things.  Not to mention the rush coincides with the University of Idaho which is merely 10 miles away.

The population grows by 30,000 in a matter of a week and with it goes a shift in demographics.  It also means we start seeing stuff like this again.

A 29-year-old Pullman man was arrested early Thursday morning after he allegedly put a firearm to an acquaintance’s head near Stubblefield’s on Colorado Street and pulled the trigger.

Pullman Police Cmdr. Chris Tennant said the Ruger semi-automatic pistol didn’t fire when Joseph Hopkins allegedly put it to another man’s head following a drunken confrontation around 3 a.m.

Umm, didn’t you get the memo, carrying a concealed weapon, or even an open weapon is illegal while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.  Not to mention the fact I’m reasonably sure the individual in question was within a bar consuming alcohol.  This is significant because in the state of Washington:

(1) It is unlawful for any person to enter the following places when he or she knowingly possesses or knowingly has under his or her control a weapon:

…

 (d) That portion of an establishment classified by the state liquor control board as off-limits to persons under twenty-one years of age;

That right folks, unsurprisingly someone violated the law, and then topped it off with what ultimately could be considered attempted murder.  Last I checked, murder was still against the law right?

Yup, still is.

As always, what would have another law done in this case?  Not a damn thing.

So how many laws does it take to restrain a criminal who has no will to follow them?  Who is really affected by all those laws?

The answer to that second question is honest law-abiding citizens.  See often I go into bars but not to drink, but to pick up a friend who called for a ride, or meet up with old college friends for a bite to eat.  According to the state I can’t carry because walking through that door will make my brain go off its rocker and start shooting people.  Being around those evil spirits will cause me to want to drink and lose my judgement.

Never-mind that people are ultimately responsible for their behaviors and actions. If I get drunk it’s my responsibility not to get behind the wheel of a car.  If I’m carrying a gun it’s my responsibility not to get drunk and hinder my ability for sound judgement.  It all comes back to the individual and responsibility.

I want to be respected and treated like an adult.  The CSGV and Brady Bunch would prefer that I be treated like a child.  Pardon me, but f-off, I prefer being an adult and having responsibilities, it results in the ability to have fun and create awesomeness.

*Make sure to read that title with a nice thick “Fargo” accent.