Pat Brown Responds

From the comments:

Wasn’t it just a few months ago when I got wailed on by the left during the Virginia Tech massacre for suggesting kids should carry guns to school to protect themselves? Sometime during the many interviews I did that week I said something to the effect that if we allowed concealed carry on campuses maybe someone would have taken Cho out. I am a big fan of concealed carry because I know criminals carry concealed weapons all the time and I would like to even the field with some honest citizens carrying a few themselves so criminals don’t think no one will shoot back. I think of how many lives would be saved if only someone in the school or company could defend against mass murderers instead of allowing these killers from mowing down a bunch of sitting ducks who are desperately try to hide behind furniture to save their lives.

Now, after doing interviews on the Jesse Davis murder, those from the right are taking one statement out of context and going nuts about it. It seems they think that I believe any man who owns a gun is a danger to women. If I thought that, I guess I would be talking about my own father and my own son. They have guns for personal protection. For that matter, my daughter has guns for personal protection and I also own firearms for personal protection. I am all for gun ownership for personal protection. Clearly, I was not saying a man with a gun is a psychopath.

Nor was I saying a man who might have a collection of guns is a psychopath. I know many of these men as well. They are hunters or lovers of antiques or do a lot of target shooting. What I was talking about during the Paula Zahn Show was the combination of psychopathic behavior and an obsession with weaponry as psychopath love weapons as it gives them a feeling of power and control. Psychopaths do indeed have a fascination with guns and knives and just because the rest of us might happen to own weapons or even have a number of them as a hobby doesn’t eliminate the fact that psychopaths may also be shopping at the gun store with us.

Women must learn to differentiate between psychological healthy men and unpsychologically healthy men if they want to keep from getting into a dangerous life threatening situation. No one trait will be proof that an individual is a psychopath but add a bunch of traits together and this is a warning. A kind, honorable, honest man with a gun collection is not a psychopath or a danger to anyone but a lying, manipulative, arrogant creep who has a cache of twenty weapons is someone a woman wants to get the hell away from. A man who teaches history at the local junior high school and happens to have a collection of Asian swords is not someone a woman should be frightened of but a man who obsessively watches ninja flicks, brags about how he used to be in the CIA, can’t keep a job, calls women sluts and whores, and owns a huge collection of swords and daggers, now there is a guy a woman wants should avoid like the plague.

Anyone who watched the actual Paula Zahn Show and paid attention to the whole conversation and intent would clearly know I was not labeling gun owners psychopaths. Unfortunately, when words are taken out of context and printed on the Internet, often the meaning of those words get misunderstood. I apologize to any gun owners (who aren’t psychopaths) who thought they were the target of my statements. I respect your constitutional rights to own firearms and would never want to see those taken away. I, like you, want to be sure I can protect myself and my family. I wouldn’t want it any other way.

Criminal Profiler Pat Brown

I’m glad she responded.   For the record, I don’t think I took her statement out of context.   The context was pretty much in tact in the video.  I think she misspoke.  In other words, said something that sounded different than what she really meant.   That’s fine.   I can’t imagine I wouldn’t say something the wrong way on camera if I was in the media spotlight a lot.   Now that she’s clarified, I don’t think her sentiment is unreasonable or that she meant to malign gun owners.

Bitter Better Dump Me Soon!

Or, if CNN is to be believed, I’m going to kill her any minute! Criminal Profiler Pat Brown says that having guns should be a “big red flag” that any guy they are dating is a potential psychopath.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDZUSN8_o3M[/youtube]

Oh well, at least they didn’t mention that we also all have small penises, as long as they were dragging out the unfounded stereotypes. But someone who does criminal profiling for a living, should at least know that just because criminals have an interest in weapons, that doesn’t translate into an interest in weapons making one a criminal. It’s statements like these that made me reluctant to tell any dates that I owned guns and enjoyed shooting.

UPDATE: Turns out she has a blog. Perusing through, it seems she falls into the “reasonable restrictions” category:

While I personally believe in the right to own guns and the right to carry them to protect yourself, I also believe we have a responsibility as a society and as citizens to be serious about gun ownership. We should be required to have a background check, one which checks criminal, behavioral, and mental status. In other words, this should be a solid check so that people like Cho who exhibit frightening behavior and are on antidepressant meds aren’t considered citizens safe enough to be gun owners. The owner should also have to go through strong training in gun safety and sign a document that accepts full responsibility for the gun, that if the weapon is used by anyone other than the owner in a criminal act, the owner will also be liable for prosecution.

I know plenty of people who are on anti-depressants that are no danger to anybody. She should think about what she’s saying! Is someone who breaks into my house and steals a gun going to cause me to be responsible for his criminal acts? Or does she just mean knowingly transferring a firearm to someone else to commit a crime? In the former case, that’s just ridiculous, in the latter case, that’s already illegal. It’s doubly illegal for those of us in Pennsylvania, and a lot of other states.

UPDATE: If anyone has problems viewing the video, please say so in the comments. I’m aware of at least one person who can’t view it, and if there are others it would help troubleshoot the problem.

UPDATE: Pat Brown has responded in the comments.  In light of her clarifications, I think we can safely say she just misspoke, and didn’t intend to malign gun owners.

Just Print Brady Press Releases

News 10 in San Diego’s article reads like a Brady Press release.  Notice they fail to mention that two very key groups support the Tiahrt Amendment, notably the Fraternal Order of Police, which is the largest police organization out there, and the BATFE, who is the agency that collects this data.  Having a laundry list of law enforcement organizations who mostly represent politically appointed police brass does not impress me.

The Spin Already Starting

This seems to be the typical article I’m seeing in the international press:

DEMOCRATS have struck a deal with the National Rifle Association to tighten gun laws in the US for the first time in 13 years, as the nation was shocked by another mass shooting that left six dead and a toddler clinging to life with a gunshot wound to the chest.

To be fair, the article also mentions the concessions we got, but I’m still curious exactly what new gun control law is coming out of this deal?  As best as we know so far, it’s a funding bill to encourage states to keep NICS records up to date.   The only change to the actual law, it seems, is the ability to challenge prohibited status for certain offenses.

More BS From Philadelphia Media

Eric has a good post about the Philadelphia media trying to paint the rest of Pennsylvania as having a growing problem with “gun violence”, so they can help the city pass stricter gun laws at the state level. As I’ve said before, the rest of the state, without Philadelphia, has a lower crime rate than most of Western Europe.

He also calls out the Philadelphia media for ignoring this little fact:

As it turns out, the police made an arrest in the recent spate of Lancaster shootings. Despite yesterday’s front page story, the story appeared on page B-5. Little wonder, because you don’t have to be a gun-toting NRA maniac with a handlebar mustache to read between the lines and see that what’s being called small town gun violence isn’t necessarily as small townish as it appears. The arrested man was a career criminal from Philadelphia.

Philadelphia not being able to control it’s criminal problem is clearly starting to affect the rest of the state.  Before I agree to gun controls, I want to see Philadelphia institute criminal control.   Then we’ll see how the state’s crime is affected.

Note To Media

I don’t generally post on crime news, but in this case I’d like to correct the media on something I see all the friggin time:

Weapons used in the bank robberies included a .380 handgun, an SKS assault rifle and an MDL assault rifle, according to the U.S. Attorney.

I guess I need to correct the US Attorney too, but, aside from the fact that I’ve never heard of an “MDL assault rifle”, the SKS is not and has never been considered by anyone to be an assault rifle.  The correct term would be semi-automatic carbine, or self-loading carbine.  There is no version of the SKS that’s natively capable of fully automatic fire, so it’s missing a key part of the definition.

Progressive Secularist

It’s really good that we have folks like Bill O’Reilly to sort everything out for us people who don’t think right. After all these years of reading Dave Kopel’s scholarship on the gun issue, I had no idea he was a “secular progressive”, until I heard O’Reilly unmask Dave on national TV. For those of you who didn’t hear the debate, here’s a paraphrased summary:

DK: You’re taking stuff out of contex,t Mr. O’Reilly
BO: We are not! Let’s roll this tape, that my producers have pulled out of context, that clearly shows I’m not taking anything out of context.
DK: Go read the entire transcript on the independence institute web site
BO: I don’t need to read the context, when we have these tapes, that take what they are saying out of context! Roll it!
TAPE: blah blah blah… some psychologists use ecstasy … blah blah blah.
BO: Are you defending that? Any good parent would see this panel was out to turn their kids into communists who love drugs and gay sex. You’re not a bad parent, are you Dave?
DK: I prefer to talk to my children about things they hear.
BO: You’re out of touch with America.
DK: But…
BO: Secular progressive! You’re s secular progressive!
DK: You don’t know anything about me.
BO: Shut up you secular progressive!

I don’t know what scares me more, that fact that Bill O’Reilly actually has a prime time show, or the fact that people actually seem to take this guy seriously. To me, his show is just more proof that the main-stream media is a cesspool of ideas.

The O’Reilly Factor is the only show on TV that when someone tells me to watch it because someone is going to be on it that I might want to see, makes me feel like drawing my pistol, and putting a bullet in my television.   I can’t stand 10 minutes of that guy!

Harsh Words From the Times

The New York Times’ article “The Next Big Thing in Law? The Harsh Jurisprudence of Justice Thomas.” is a fine example of why I tend to be conservative when it comes to law. This article evinces a longstanding problem I have with the left’s view of the courts; as a mechanism for implementing their sense of social justice, rather than deciding what is the law.

The article is also not even attempt to seriously look at and criticize Justice Thomas’ jurisprudence.   It’s a juvenile screed of a quality I’d expect of a college newspaper, not the New York Times.