Apparently more people legally acquiring firearms and enjoying the shooting sports is a cause for alarm across the pond. The Horror! Even children are joining in, apparently. Clearly something must be done.
Month: February 2011
James D’Cruz Dismissed from Case
He moved to Florida with his family, which pulls him off the case. He will be replaced by others. I guess he can return to being able to dress up for Halloween and quote books and movies without the Brady Campaign and CSGV shopping his Facebook entries around to the media.
Another Wisconsin Concealed Carry Case Tossed
They are quickly approaching Vermont carry judicially. I suspect Wisconsin is going to get fixed one way or another. All of these have been “as applied” though, so no court has yet tossed the entire concealed carry statute. A legislative fix is still preferable.
Important Gun Rights Bills Up in Florida
Robb Allen has the details, and is asking people to e-mail the committee members if you live in the Gunshine State:
In 1987, open carry was outlawed primarily because of the predictions of wild west shootouts, blood in the streets, gun battles over parking spaces, and normally law abiding people indiscriminately becoming homicidal maniacs. The main opponent of open carry was Janet Reno, then assistant state attorney. She was able to rally support from a vocal group of police administrators with the doom and gloom scenarios. Amazingly enough, the exact same arguments were heard against “shall-issue” concealed carry. Twenty-four years later, and none of the rampant bloodshed predictions about concealed carry have come true.
They are engaging in an effort to overturn the ban on carrying openly. Currently concealment in Florida isn’t a personal choice, it’s required by law.
Weak Case For High Capacity Magazines?
I guess the Steven Hunter op-ed hurt more than I realized, otherwise Josh Horwtiz wouldn’t have felt the need to respond to it. Our opponents need to explain the historical prevalence of magazines holding more than ten rounds, going all the way back to the Henry Rifle. They need to explain it since the bill they are currently pushing in Congress would see every historic Henry Rifle in this country destroyed within a generation.
More on Ung Defense
The Philadelphia Inquirer has their report on the Ung testimony. They note:
Keh said she approached the scaffolding as DiDonato’s friend Andrew DiLoreto was doing pull-ups. Keh said she tried to do a pull-up and was distracted by a loud argument.
She said she turned to see one of DiDonato’s group – she could not remember who – legs apart, hands gesturing to his crotch, yelling, “Well, come on!”
“What did you say?” was Ung’s reply, Keh said.
The Inquirer notes that we still don’t have any testimony that sheds light on what started it, but my guess would be DiDonato and his buddies started making rude gestures to Keh, which Ung took great exception to. Standing up for reasonable standards of public behavior is not invitation to a beating.
The Swiss Reject Stronger Gun Control
The referendum today would have been the beginning of the end of the Swiss shooting culture had it passed. Fortunately, they rejected it. The Swiss will still be able to keep army guns in the home. The vote was 56 against. But they will definitely, try again, I think:
The result is a blow for supporters – a broad coalition of NGOs, trade unions, churches, pacifists and centre-left parties.
But Alliance F, a leading women’s organization behind the vote, said progress had been made and the campaign had sensitised society to the gun control issue.
The “no” committee and Swiss army officers society welcomed the failure of the initiative, saying the people would not allow themselves to be disarmed. It was a clear vote for the army and protection, they said.
They will be back. You can bet on it.
Ung’s Friends Testify
It is unfortunate, or perhaps fortunate, that the media has lost interest in reporting this case, but Phillylacrosse.com is still on it. We now have testimony from Ung’s friends, who were with him that day:
“My attention was on Eddie,†Afsarmanesctehrar testified. “It was going fast and out of control. I had a feeling he was coming at us. Just my personal feeling
“I was really scared. At the last moment there was no way we could stop these kids from coming.â€
I have to hand it to both attorneys if they correctly pronounced that name every time :) More important I think is the testimony of the girlfriend that was with Ung.
Another defense witness, Joy Keh, who was with Ung and Afsarmanesctehrar, called DiDonato and his friends “a bloodthirsty gang.â€
She said she was extremely fearful because “the white hat guy (Kelly) was about to sucker-punch Gerald’s blind side. I blocked him. They were screaming and being aggressive; they wouldn’t stop.
I heard (Kelly) scream, I’ll kill you; you’re dead.†Then she testified she screamed back, “Stop, you’re a good person!†She claimed he rushed them again.
I seem to recall that one of DiDonato’s friend testified that she was flirting with them. Id like to know what kind of flirting makes a girl fearful. As far as I’m concerned Gerald Ung should walk, just based on this. You have five drunk, beefy athletic young men against two smaller guys and a girl, and the group of five have said “I’ll kill you; you’re dead?” What are the elements of a strong case for self-defense?
- Ability? This means that the attackers have the means to inflict grave bodily injury or harm. Five guys that big can kill with their fists and feet, and more importantly can prevent flight.
- Opportunity? Opportunity means they are in a position to inflict such force. They were in the process of rushing Ung. Ung was armed. He stupidly had told them so. Once the gun came out, he was charged by one of the parties. The party did not break the attack once the gun was displayed.
- Jeopardy? This means that the attackers were acting in a manner where a reasonable person might assume they have intent to inflict grave bodily injury or harm. You have that right here: “I’ll kill you; you’re dead.” I’m not going to demand Ung find out whether they are kidding or not, especially when they do not break off the attack when the party being attacked is known to be armed.
I don’t think Ung had a choice if he didn’t want to end up in the hospital at the least. Maybe he did make a crack that provoked the five young men. That was his mistake. But that’s not an invitation to beat someone. The only thing left is whether he violated a duty to retreat. Ung was in the process of retreating when it escalated to physical violence. By the time he was being physically attacked, the girl was engaged with the guy in the white hat, and Ung was engaged with three other men. The law requires that all members of the party be capable of retreating to complete safety.
If Ung is found guilty, I’ll read the transcripts before I render final judgement. Some key bit of information might be missing from this testimony, and we only have bits and pieces. But from what I see here if he is found guilty it’ll be one travesty of justice. The others will be that DiDonato and his friends haven’t been charged with simple assault yet.
Guns and Murder Internationally
Our opponents at the Brady Campaign, and other places, are fond of saying that the United States would be the safest country in the world if it were true that more guns meant less crime. They often cherry pick data from favored European Countries, and hope no one bothers to look at the whole picture. Thanks to the folks at Lucky Gunner, I decided to take a look. I’m using this data from the Small Arms Survey. We will take the most wealthy countries, which I’ll define as those who have a per capita GDP of $14,000 or more. We will toss out any countries that are very undemocratic (Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman), or that have instability problems (Lebanon), figuring these countries don’t have good incentives to report accurate crime statistics. That gets rid of most of the Middle East. We’ll also get rid of very small countries, like Luxembourg and Malta, figuring they are very small, and because I don’t want to compile that much data. We’ll keep the focus on major, reasonably democratic and wealthy countries. I’ll use the murder rate data found here. My raw data can be found here. But I’ll show the chart:
Each dot represents an individual country. See my data if you’re curious about which countries. If you do an r-squared correlation on the data, it does not correlate whatsoever. That means there is absolutely no correlation between the number of guns in civilian hands in any given country and the murder rate. Murder rates and GDP correlate slightly, and gun ownership and GDP per capita don’t correlate all that much either. Some might complain that I included African countries, which were above the cutoff I chose. That does not improve the correlation in the slightest if you get rid of them. Some might argue I kept the cutoff too low. If you draw the line above Russia, it improves the correlation slightly, but still no real correlation. If you draw the line at Hungary, you get some correlation. In order to get a strong correlation, you have to pretend that Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Portugal aren’t real counties. In order to get strong correlation, you have to cut the number of countries down to the point where the US can give you the correlation you’re looking for. If you just take the top European Countries (GDP/capita > 28,000) again, there’s no correlation, with only a very slight downward trend.
In short, our opponents can only get correlation by using a very small sample size, so that the United States (which legitimately does have a very high gun ownership, and higher murder rate than most other very wealthy countries) can drive a correlation. If you use more objective criteria, you don’t get what they want.
Ung Video Dissected
From the Inquirer. This largely matches what I saw.
Anyone who wants to take a close look, I would recommend screen capturing the video and slowing it down. You can pretty clearly see the following action happen:
On the video, the two groups walk toward the cameras mounted outside the Fox29 studios at Fourth Street and Market: Ung and friends, then DiDonato and his friends about 10 feet behind. Kelly, recognizable in a white cap worn backward, darts into Market and walks ahead to flank the trio.
Ung kicks at Kelly, backs up, and holds up a gun. Suddenly, DiDonato moves forward and appears to lunge at Ung.
Twice Kelly rushes to the sidewalk at Ung. The first time he is pushed away by the woman. The second time, he gets through.
And that’s the point where Ung starts firing. It looks as if DiDonato fell onto Ung, which can explain why Ung kept firing. It would be difficult to tell the difference between someone falling on you, and continuing to attack you.