Category: Guns

This Daily News editorial is a prime example of the Philadelphia media being clueless dolts:

Unable to concentrate. Unable to focus on anything other than . . . their next gun buy.

Pennsylvania’s gun addicts are already going through withdrawal, as the planned four-day halt on gun sales to allow the state to update its computerized background checks grows closer.

The Pennsylvania Instant Check System is used by gun store owners to do state and federally required criminal background checks on potential customers. It will be closed for upgrading from 6 p.m. Sept. 2 to noon Sept. 6. That means that no guns can be sold.

Gun store owners are hot. The shutdown coincides with the beginning of the early dove and goose hunting season, a popular time – at least in some parts of the state -for gun sales.

Seriously, most hunters I can promise you have no idea PICS is going to be down during that period, and this is a busy time for outfitters and gun shops. What do you expect from businesspeople who are going to have their business shut down for several days during a critical sales period? Would you expect restaurant owners to not be angry if there was a ban on food sales for several days? What makes gun shop owners different, other than the Daily News editorial staff doesn’t like what they sell? That this even passes for serious journalism in Philadelphia shows how far the news media in our city has fallen. I’ve seen C-list bloggers write better stuff.

Hat tip to k-romulous.

UPDATE: Clayton links:

The hunting weapons, with a few exceptions, aren’t the cause of the violence in Philly. It’s largely handguns. Maybe they should ask why it is that the hunting parts of Pennsylvania–which are awash in guns and Republicans–don’t have anywhere near the problem with murder that Philly and cities with the misfortune to be too close to Philly have? Hint: it’s the culture, and the unwillingness to send murderers away, not the guns.

Absolutely!  And just in case any Philly folks start thinking, “Well, then we can just restrict handguns, because they cause the crime rate in Philly,” Pennsylvania issues more than 600,000 licenses to carry firearms. Philadelphia only represents 32,000 of those. So the rest of the state is awash in handguns as well as long guns, and yet, if you take Philadelphia out of the equation, Pennsylvania’s crime rate is on par with most of Western Europe. That’s why I keep saying Philadelphia doesn’t have a gun problem; guns are everywhere in this state. I refuse to accept a condition where people in the city are judged unfit to have the means to protect themselves from people who will get guns anyway, and I definitely refuse to accept the rest of the state, which doesn’t have a problem with misusing firearms, has to pay for the fact that a minority of the population in Philadelphia have the self-control of Britt Reid.

David Codrea notices another interesting bit from ATF’s released data.   They don’t break up traces according to “assault weapon” and “sporting guns”.  So that does make one wonder how, exactly, the anti-gunners, back around 1994, were claiming that assault weapons accounted for a substantial quantity of firearms traces.   They do have a category for machine guns, but those are, despite what you see in the movies, almost never used in crime.

An important component to the ATF data, in addition to where the firearms trace to, and the time-to-crime, is exactly how many traces don’t resolve to any particular state. There are a few reasons this could happen. The firearm could have been smuggled into the country from overseas. The firearm could have been purchased prior to 1968, when the feds started requiring dealers to keep form 4473. Dealers are only required to hold 4473 for twenty years. A gun that gets sold, but stays with its legal owner for twenty years before being stolen or sold might fail to trace. Let’s take a look at Pennsylvania and some of the other surrounding states, and states of note, and see exactly how many traces don’t go anywhere.

• Pennsylvania traced a total if 9092 firearms in 2006. Only 5607 guns were traced back to a specific state of origin. 38% of firearms traced failed to trace back to a state of origin.
• New York traced 11893 firearms in 2006. Only 6085 traced back to a state of origin. 48% of firearms traces identified no state of origin.
• New Jersey traced 3543 firearms. Only 1878 traced back to a state. 46% of firearms traced identified no state of origin.
• Delaware trace 1023 firearms in 2006. 585 identified states of origin. 42% of firearms traced in Delaware had no identifiable state of origin.
• Maryland trace 7025 firearms in 2006. 4156 identified states of origin. 40% of firearms traced in Maryland had no identifiable state of origin.
• West Virginia traced 984 firearms in 2006. 628 traced to a state. 36% of firearms traced had no identifiable state of origin.
• Ohio traced 8627 firearms in 2006. 5695 traced to a state. 33% of traces could identify no state.
• Massachusetts traced 1644 firearms in 2006. 974 traced to a state. 40% of all traces could identify no state of origin.
• California traced a whopping 21223 firearms in 2006. States were identified in 11274 of them. 46% of all traces in California failed to identified any state.

These aren’t small numbers folks. In very significant numbers of cases, firearms are not being traced back to a legal source. Remember, the ATF tells us not to draw any conclusions from this, but when the anti-gunners start talking about what a huge problem trafficking is, such a huge problem, in fact, that we must pass one-gun-a-month, show them this. And if that doesn’t work, tell them this:

• Pennsylvania’s time to crime average is 9.50 years. 16% in first year.
• New Jersey’s time to crime average is 11.52 years. 10% in the first year.
• Maryland’s time to crime average is 10.95 years. 11% in the first year.
• West Virginia’s time to crime average is 9.29 years. 16% in first year.
• New York’s time to crime average is 12.00 years. 8% in the first year.
• Delaware’s time to crime average is 11.45 years. 14% in the first year.
• California’s time to crime average is 12.70 years. 12% in the first year.
• Virginia’s time to crime average is 8.34 years. 22% in the first year.

We’re told what a huge problem straw purchasing is by the anti-gun crowd. So much so, in fact, that they suggest we need to ration gun purchases. Virginia has one-gun-a-month, and has one of the highest time-to-crime rates of any state. What this would indicate is that the black market in guns is fed largely by existing supply, which has been in the black market for quite some time. It would suggest that more laws restricting the legal market in firearms would not have much of an effect on the black market supply of guns.

Today from Target Rich Environment:

When I saw the Headline “Student Suspended for Drawing Gun,” (link) I first thought “he should keep it holstered during the schoolday”. I didn’t realize that by drawing they meant he doodled a picture of a gun and got suspended for it…