Category: Anti-Gun Folks

Paul Helmke stands in disbelief how anyone could oppose the Brady agenda, and brings up the judiciary committee meeting hosted by John Conyers, a meeting where Conyers had one of those “Don’t you realize who I am?” moments with Todd Vandermyde, who apparently isn’t allowed to attend hearings as a concerned citizen. Personally, I don’t understand how the Bradys can associate with gangster rappesr whose rap lyrics promote gun violence, but that’s just me.

In China, where guns for ordinary people are banned:

China Daily, in a story on Wednesday about the gun trade in the remote area where Hunan province borders Guizhou province and Chongqing, said the region’s underground gunsmiths and their homemade firearms flow mainly from Songtao, an autonomous Guizhou county.

We’ve always said that’s what would happen if total prohibition were enacted, and we’re laughed at by the prohibitionists. But that’s exactly what’s happened in China.

The Chairman of the Socialist Party in Germany, a party that is avowedly pacifist and supports prohibiting civilian possession of firearms, stands accused of illegally selling machine guns. Interestingly enough, the German media seems to somewhat get the distinction between a machine gun and a submachine gun. Almost. The Uzi they mention is also a submachine gun. But our media would probably have called the AK-47 a submachine gun, or just said all the guns were AK-47s.

Now Paul Helmke is getting in on it too, speaking about a force-on-force training exercise Phil Van Cleave went through in West Virginia. The kind of training Van Cleave was describing is more appropriate for law enforcement officers, who have to confront armed criminals and take them into custody, rather than citizens trying to defend themselves. The main lesson Van Cleave is stressing here is that it’s a bad idea to go on the offense with an opponent who is or could be armed, because we have police, who can arrive with overwhelming force, and who also have the advantage of body armor. I think most sensible people understand this. Paul Helmke, however, draws inappropriate conclusions from Van Cleave’s wisdom:

I know Phillip Van Cleave is still a strong believer in gun rights.  But his story should be a cautionary lesson. After tragedies like the recent one in Manchester, Connecticut, when a disgruntled employee shot and killed eight coworkers, there are usually comments from the gun love community about how the tragedy could have been avoided if only someone else there had been armed.

The problem, Paul, is the defender would have been in the opposite position Van Cleave was in with his training. The active shooter would be the one in Van Cleave’s position. In this kind of scenario it’s the aggressor who has the disadvantage. No one believes no-win scenarios don’t exist. If someone rounds the corner of my office door with a drawn gun, and with intent to kill, I could have a flame thrower right next to me and it’s not going to do much good. But that doesn’t mean there’s no situation where having a gun isn’t helpful.

If there’s a raging fire upstairs blocking my exit, using one of my fire extinguishers is going to be about as effective as pissing on it, but just because a fire extinguisher can’t put out all fires, isn’t a reason not to have them around. People can still be killed in automobile accidents despite the presence of seat belts and air bags too, yet we mandate both be in automobiles. Helmke is obviously worried about people carrying guns for the wrong reasons, as is evidenced by his description of “many” who carry guns who “think they are ready for a showdown, and ready to be a hero.” It’s a legitimate concern. But is that a many? Is it most? Is it even few? No doubt there are some, but I would think most people carry because a) they are comfortable with firearms, and b) want to be able to protect themselves.

Again, it boils down to “Do you trust your fellow citizens to do the right thing most of the time.” We say, “yes.” They say, “no.”

Dennis Henigan would like to remind you of a few things about guns, all of it spoken like a person who is unfamiliar with them. Henigan notes that an NRA certified instructor accidentally discharged a firearm in an instructor class, noting, “I think it’s safe to say that the NRA instructor in this case is unlikely to appear in future ‘I’m the NRA’ promotional ads.” He’ll probably lose his certification, given that NRA courses don’t allow for live rounds in classrooms. He goes on to note that trained police officers have made these mistakes too, but then goes off the rails here:

First, because of the nature of guns, accidental shootings remain a constant threat. Yes, individuals can be trained to be extremely careful around guns and most gun owners no doubt regard themselves as very safety conscious. But human beings are prone to mistakes – they can be clumsy, or distracted, or rushed, for example – and guns are sufficiently complicated mechanisms that even the slightest mistake can result in tragedy.

This is not the nature of guns. Guns do a very simple thing. When you pull the trigger, it fires a bullet. There is absolutely nothing “sufficiently complicated” about this. It’s one of the simplest user interfaces known to man.

That’s why there is seldom such a thing as an accidental discharge. The vast majority of unintentional discharges are negligent, including this one. The DEA agent that Henigan mentions, the poster child for the “only ones,” made his act of negligence when he removed his side arm from his holster for no good reason, in front of a group of school children. This instructor obviously violated a number of fundamental rules. Henigan seems to suggest that guns are really too complicated and dangerous for everyone, and though he does not say it, one can read into his statements that he would even include police in that.

I think this illustrates the difference in Henigan’s view of his fellow citizen as opposed to our view of our fellow citizen. Guns are not the complicated devices Henigan is making them out to be. It is completely possible to teach the vast majority of people how to live with them safely. What anti-gun people like Henigan do is take the very small minority of stupid or careless individuals who probably shouldn’t handle anything dangerous, and hold them up as examples as to why no one should have something dangerous like a gun. Because some can’t be trusted, none of you can be. This is not a recipe for a free, and certainly not a recipe for an adult society. Henigan is suggesting the infantilization of America, which raises the question of who gets to be the parent?

Henigan once again makes the comparison to automobiles, a favorite of our opponents:

When it comes to cars, we tolerate the risk of accidents because we regard automobile transportation as essential to our daily lives (though, unlike guns, we have extensive safety regulations on cars and drivers to reduce the risk of death and injury). We are told that we must similarly tolerate the risk of gun accidents because of the overriding protective benefit of guns in enabling self-defense against criminal attack.

We have such regulations on firearms too. There’s not much end user regulation on cars, only driving in public, much the same with firearms. And I would point out that the legal and safety issues surrounding driving an automobile on public roads are far more complex than carrying a firearm in public. The training reflects that.

But to demonstrate what a loss of freedom Henigan’s logic would lead to, and the levels of infantilization it would create among the American populace, we can compare the risks of accidental firearms deaths to other activities. I’ll pick activities that don’t involve necessity, just to help make the analogy with Henigan’s way of thinking. Firearms have a yearly accident rate in this data of approximately 1 in 350,000. That’s comparable to the completely unnecessary activity of being a private pilot, which also carries significant external risk, air transport having about the same accidental death rate as firearms. Not much higher than that is water transport accidents. Are private pleasure craft really necessary? Drowning in a swimming pool is roughly comparable, and swimming pools are not necessary at all. Combine that with other household drownings and it’s far higher than firearms. Off road motor vehicles have about the same one year odds as firearms do as well. But how many households have a private plane? Or a boat? An ATV? A pool? Far fewer than have firearms. It’s safe to conclude all these activities are more dangerous. Would Dennis Henigan bemoan an increase in boating activity? Does he celebrate that we’ve had a serious decline in private pilots over the past two decades?

Of course he doesn’t. The reason is that Dennis Henigan doesn’t hate or fear any of these things, only guns. If accidental deaths were really his concern, he’d be railing against boats, swimming pools, and private planes, and all-terrain vehicles as unneeded menaces to society. But he doesn’t. That’s one thing the anti-gunners seriously need to explain if they want to have any credibility in complaining about the dangers of guns.

Looks like Senator Gillibrand’s conversion over to the Dark Side is complete.

John Richardson has a VPC video that maligns the Ruger SR9, and Ruger’s advertising. John notes that they have a good case for copyright violation. I think the VPC’s is on pretty solid fair use grounds, so I don’t agree in terms of violation. But VPC does meet the criteria Righthaven would be looking for; a poorly funded non-profit that’s barely scraping by, and that would be more interested in a quick settlement than fighting an expensive lawsuit. Fortunately for Josh Sugarmann, Ruger is more ethical than Stevens Media LLC, so he has little to worry about. It would have been a real tragedy for Josh to have to cut back his six figure salary, or cut into his Google research budget, in order to fight a baseless lawsuit.

Thirdpower notices another anti-gun group web site masquerading as an ordinary Joe. I think I noticed this one before too, but as usual, they engage in Reasoned Discourse by not allowing comments.

John Richardson takes a close look at the Joyce Foundation’s giving this year. It seems to be pretty highly focused on shaping the media environment. I suspect Joyce realizes the loss of media interest in gun control over the past decade has been a real problem for the movement. Notice the 400,000 dollar grant to Media Matters, which will no doubt begin covering the gun issue. The other prong of their giving seems to be in the public health realm.

Joyce would seem to believe they are in “hearts and minds” territory, which is where we would like them to be.

One of Joe’s cartoons got me thinking. Our opponents say we need special rules for guns in urban areas, because what works in Cheyenne doesn’t necessarily work in Chicago, or something like that (because everyone knows Cheyenne isn’t a real city, like the ones wealthy lefties live in). But yet when we pushed to get some very large tracts of rural areas opened up for firearms possession, we’re mocked, told we’ll shoot people, and invading their quiet sanctuaries with our gun nuttery. If our strategy is any gun, anywhere, any time, as our opponents suggest we’re struggling for, they are at least guilty of no gun, nowhere, none of the time.