What it took to get a legal firearm in Massachusetts

At the request of my brother, I've collected the stories I wrote in 2013 when I went through the entire process of getting a license to possess firearms in Massachusetts.

I was initially intimidated by the famously long process of getting a firearm in Massachusetts, but then I thought about pairing it with my job as a journalist. Gun control was a big political issue at the time and I felt the country would benefit from a fair account of how my state's gun permitting process actually works.

I was also hoping the online release of the series would lead to job offers, or at least national attention. I did get my biggest response from readers for anything I'd ever written, includes gun advocates out of state, but it didn't lead to any contact from the national press. I showed that a state agency broke state law by failing to return my background check within the 40 days the state requires, and there were no consequences.


May 5: I began the process

May 30: I took a firearm safety course

June 2: A long waiting list kept me from meeting with local police representative for application

July 8: Met with police representative and sent application to state

October 14: Received my permit 150 days into the process



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Weaseling around federal gun laws

I was all set to write a simple post about a series of bills filed by state legislators that declare federal law doesn't apply to them, much the same way local food supporters in Maine attempted to use municipal ordinances to overcome state and federal law. I was ready to declare it stupid, then pay myself a big compliment for overcoming my own biases and taking a nuanced position against my own allies.

Instead, I found a complex issue that reveals a lot of hypocrisy and double-standards. For the most part, this is about exploiting loopholes and weaseling around federal laws that themselves only exist because of a loophole.

Here's what Washington Post wrote about these bills:

Two types of bills are the primary vehicles for the movement, both based on model legislation introduced in statehouses from Tallahassee to Juneau. 

The first type holds that federal laws do not apply to firearms manufactured and sold within a given state, relying on the Constitution’s interstate commerce clause. It says Congress can regulate trade between states, but says nothing about trade within states. 

Under Utah law, for example, guns made, purchased and used in the state are exempt from federal laws. Commonly known as the Firearms Freedom Act, versions of the law have been debated during 78 legislative sessions across 37 states in the last decade. 

The other approach says gun regulation falls outside the scope of the federal government’s power, making it state territory. Such bills, often known as the Second Amendment Preservation Act, usually say state officials cannot enforce federal gun laws or limit the ability to do so, and some bills have tried to impose penalties on officers who help federal officials.

See the trick now? The federal gun control laws were written by abusing the commerce clause, the section in the Constitution that gives congress the power to pass laws on things that could effect trade between states. The commerce clause has long been twisted and stretched to justify the passage of virtually any federal law.

So some law makers are turning this around by saying, if we have guns manufactured within our state that never cross the border, than the commerce clause is irrelevant and the federal gun restriction is invalid.

Will that stand up in a federal court? No, but the sentiment is great. They are cheating the cheaters and playing the same stupid weasel game as the federal lawmakers.

So what about the second type of bill, where state lawmakers restricting their own agencies from cooperating with federal agencies who are enforcing federal gun laws? Well, this is clearly a weasel tactic, but it's nothing new.

Liberal states have been banning their police agencies from cooperating with federal immigration authorities for years, including my home state of Massachusetts. It's a practice I don't like one bit in any context, even though I want to see less restriction on immigration and gun ownership. If you're going to take a stand against one, you have to take a stand against the other.

State lawmakers can not overrule federal lawmakers, and these tactics are pretty lowly, but let's not pretend they are any worse than the existing laws on the books.

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The obnoxiousness of open carry

I'm a gun owner and I have a concealed weapons permit that I use occasionally. I generally support gun rights and oppose many gun control measures.

That being said, I don't understand the activists who insist on openly carrying long guns, such as magazine-fed rifles and shot guns.

Recently an NRA staffer penned an online post criticizing the practice, calling it "weird" and adding, "Using guns merely to draw attention to yourself in public not only defies common sense, it shows a lack of consideration and manners."

I agree, but the NRA officially does not. After a Texas open carry group got upset the NRA retracted the statement. They said was only one person's opinion and the organization disagrees with it.

Look, I can understand open carry for a handgun, as sometimes it's cumbersome to try to cover up my weapon with a loose shirt or jacket, such as during the summertime. It makes sense to have holstered handguns available as an option.

But what doesn't make sense is carrying an AR-15 across one's back and pretending to go about one's day as if it's perfectly normal.

The ability to posses a weapon for one's own protection is a human right that I believe strongly in, but this is just showboating. What happens when you try to sit down somewhere or drive? This is not a casual item one throws on loosely.

Open carry long gunners are the gun rights equivalent of gay pride parade dudes in speedos and platform shoes. Yes, they have a right to do so, but must they do that in public?

It's revolting to see police punish people for actions that are legal, and it's also revolting to see political fanboys giggle with evil glee as Americans are illegally arrested because the police fail to understand the law. But as Ken's Law states, just because one group is obnoxious doesn't mean the other side is clean. Open carry advocates are being unfairly targeted by the police AND they are inconsiderate freaks.
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America leads by example

I often hear anti-gun folks say that the Founding Father's idea of enshrining gun rights is outdated because America's modern military is too advanced to be overthrown by civilians with rifles.

I reject that idea, and I think a decade in Iraq has shown us just how formidable an enemy with rifles and no tanks or jet fighters can be. I also know that the effort to fight a civil war is a problem the government wants to avoid even if it expects it would win.

But what's not up for debate is that armed civilian uprisings in another nations stand a damn good chance against their militaries. Venezuela comes to mind, assuming they can be armed.

If America really did try to ban the possession of "war weapons" like magazine-fed rifles, wouldn't that promote a universal ban of those weapons in other nations, and make justified revolutions in other nations that much harder?

Being able to possess and carry a weapon for ones own protection is a universal human right, and America needs to continue to set an example for the rest of the world by protecting that right.
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Not surprising - armed progressives also support the second amendment

I just read an article about The Liberal Gun Club, a left wing pro-firearm group with a notable California branch.

This quotation sums it all up:

"If I walk into a gun store with an Obama T-shirt - which I wouldn't wear, because he's too conservative - I don't fit," joked Eric Wooten, a longtime California Democratic Party activist and member of the Liberal Gun Club.

There's even local purchasing preference shout-outs in the group:

"I grow my own vegetables; I bake my own bread," Hoeber said. She makes her own ammunition "for the same reason ... cost savings, more control and higher quality."

What I find most interesting is that while the members are against the NRA, they hold all of the same political positions about guns and gun control. They mock the term "assault weapon," as everyone should, and oppose efforts to put restrictions on weapons, such as the number of rounds allowed in a magazine. They also oppose registration and increased background checks.

The group also views monetary disincentives to gun ownership, such as ammunition taxes, as "class barriers" blocking the poor from exercising their constitutional rights.

What we can all learn from this group is how universal the views on gun laws are from the people who actually own and use guns. Even though these members are hardcore progressives, they all recognize the second amendment as an individual right, not a collective one, and see gun control as a farce that only restricts the freedoms of law-abiding gun owners.

When experience causes people from radically different perspectives to arrive at the same conclusion, outsiders should sit back and take note.

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The fear of bullet gouging

As part of a project at work I've been speaking with a lot of gun owners and I talked to a few of them about the ongoing ammunition shortage.

The basic idea is that across the board ammunition is hard to find right now. It flies off the shelves as soon as it comes in. Shooters openly declare that they are hording ammo because they are concerned about potential increases in gun control legislation.

Some manufacturers are making capital investments so they can produce more but parts like the primer for each round need precise equipment that take a long time to create so markets have been unable to respond to the demand quickly.

What I asked the shooters is why sellers don't charge more for ammo. It would discourage hording and divert the ammo to the people who want it the most. The answer I received was frustrating:

The shooters call that "bullet gouging" and would boycott sellers who "take advantage" of them by letting the price rise wit the demand. This resentment would continue after the ammo shortage ends.

Apparently there has been a limited price increase, but clearly it wasn't enough. It's obvious that the same irrational resentment of "price gouging" that holds back post-emergency recoveries is making this ammo shortage worse.
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Short and sweet

My go-to line to sum up the libertarian position has been "If two dudes want to get married I don't see why anyone has the right to stop them, and if they want to buy a wedding cake with trans fats in it I say let them."

This Glenn Reynolds piece says it better:

 Personally, I'd be delighted to live in a country where happily married gay couples had closets full of assault weapons.

In the ideal world Reynolds and I believe in, "When Americans aren't sure what to do about something, they give the tie to freedom."
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Glenn Beck makes retro mistake

Glenn Beck had an interesting choice of words with his reality-free accusation that the Newtown shooter thought he was playing Call of Duty.



For someone under 50 he's incredibly out of touch, as revealed by remarks like "He believed every kill would increase his score."

What score would that be, as they are often absent in modern games. The shooter had those video games because everyone his age has those games. It's like saying all the recent shooters were known to drink water on occasion.

Maybe Beck could have said the shooter was hoping to get an achievement?
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Gun control and the copy left

After reading yet another article about how 3-D printers threaten to make gun control obsolete I started to wonder: Will this issue blast a division in the pro-piracy, anti-copyright, Wikileaks-supporting Aaron Swartz-mourning community?

I associate the anti-gun control mindset with an older, more rural demographic than the young tech-savvy student demographic that wants file sharing to be unheeded and the two have little overlap. How would they handle this situation when files to make weapons get shared in 3-D printer collections?

I doubt they would be willing to turn to the authorities and risk having their whole ecosystem shut down. Would it be self-policing? I imagine that's how they handle child pornography now.

Does anyone have any insight on this inevitable issue?
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A pox on both your houses

Maine elected officials had a recent dust-up with the Bangor Daily News over concealed weapons holder data and both sides displayed armor-piercing grade arrogance.

Disclosure time: I was an intern for the BDN and I have friends that work there. As a result, I witnessed a more shrill tone from private communications than what Maine's second largest newspaper presented publicly.

The BDN made a legal request this month for the personal information of concealed weapons permit holders in the state. This includes names, ages and addresses. Under a Maine law passed in 1985, the state was required to hand the information over.

However, it didn't. Officials and critics referenced the time in December when a New York newspaper posted an interactive map of concealed weapon permit holders; presumably to capture more of the criminal reader demographic by "casing the joint" for them. This put a lot of people at risk, especially people without concealed weapons who were labeled easy targets.

I believe the BDN editors when they say they had no intention to produce such a map, a move they called "irresponsible." They wanted to use it in an analysis. Sadly, this is where they went wrong.

The attitude of BDN staff was that it was blindly irrational for the public to criticize their request because they honestly, truly weren't going to print it. One of my BDN friends posted on Facebook that the point of newspapers was always to "gather" information.

No it isn't, the point is to publish information, not hold secret data banks for our own records.

What irks me is the naive way the BDN expects trust to work. Trust must be earned, it can not be commanded or expected automatically. As a reporter I constantly have to earn the trust of people I wish to interview. Many of them have been burned by a reckless reporter in the past and they will hold that grudge forever.

Wasn't "Just trust us" the mentality of the Bush administration? The public is right to be distrustful of such attitudes.

The BDN editorials skew left and it's no surprise that gun lovers would take issue with the BDN obtaining their personal information. Just look what the BDN did intend to do with the data:

The BDN requested the records of concealed weapons permits as part of long-term reporting projects on domestic violence, sexual assault and drug abuse... We intend to use this information about permits, along with other information sets we are gathering, to analyze possible correlations relevant to our reporting projects.

With that sort of framing there's no way this could look good for concealed weapons holders. Newsrooms contain very few mathematicians and even newspapers as big as the New York Times make absurd Naomi Klein-style errors in their attempts at breaking down data. If the BDN analysis made concealed weapons holders look bad, it would run on the front page. If it didn't, the story could be "killed" or buried inside the paper.

Emergency legislation went too far

I can't blame law-abiding members of the public for objecting when a corporation wants their personal information. I can, however, blame Gov. Paul LePage, the house and senate for passing unethical legislation in response.

Even though the BDN caved to pressure and withdrew the data request, LePage pushed emergency legislation to make concealed weapons permit data private. I don't have a problem with that, but the legislation was applied retroactively and was stated as such before the BDN withdrew. I have a serious problem with that.

The BDN made a completely legal request and state law required public officials to hand it over. Retroactive legislation is sinister as it takes legal actions performed by members of the public and makes them illegal, inviting unpredictable results. I would like to see the data in question made private, but that should have been done decades ago and it was too late once the request was filed.

The state also got an e-mail request for the data when the issue got big and the retroactive rule impacted that request. It's plausible that the BDN would not have withdrawn the request if the insidious retroactive portion was not announced the day before.

By the way, the Democrats have a slight majority in both the house and senate The senate voted 33 in favor of LD 576 and 0 opposed. The house voted 129 in favor and 11 opposed. This is not just an issue of LePage and his pistol-packing GOP posse behaving badly. This is almost everyone in Augusta acting out.
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Drive-by blogging

It's been a busy week and I've blessed with too many links to write about them all at length.

Jezebel has taught us that feminists don't always believe that women should have control over their own bodies, as sometimes they will want to do things that they don't like.

I don't know if I should be proud of embarrassed that when I saw the title "How Much Are Mario Coins Really Worth?" for this video I immediately thought to apply the 100 coins extra life rule to the figure federal agencies use as a value estimate for an individual life, which is exactly what this video does about two minutes in.

The next time a Democratic Party apologist tells me that the donkeys are the party of science, reason and well-thought out policies I will think of this post from Matt Welch about the president's use of shallow, ill-informed emotional arguments to push gun control.

Nate, or N8r as he likes to be called, has been pushing the idea that advanced 3-D printers will eventually make gun control obsolete. I think he's right, but I see that as a negative overall while he sees it as a positive. I want to make it marginally harder for convicted felons and people with mental illnesses to acquire guns. While many will find ways around it and get guns anyways, not all of them do.
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Obama doesn't care about evidence

Today President Obama announced his list of 12 legislative recommendations and 23 executive actions for gun control measures to capitalize on the wave of enthusiasm following the Sandy Hook shooting. Some of the measures are ho-hum, such a call to nominate an ATF director and have the Consumer Product Safety Commission review safety standards for gun locks and gun safes.

But, of course, there was a lot of nonsense recommended by the president, such as a federal ammunition magazine cap at 10 rounds, a ban on so-called assault weapons and having the Centers for Disease Control conduct a $10 million study to answer a question we already know.

I'm reminded of a brilliant article David Bier wrote last week that questions the philosophy behind the gun-grabbers demand that we provide a reason why we should be allowed to possess semi-automatic rifles like an AR-15.

Free societies place the responsibility on those who would restrain the freedom of an individual to justify their action, not on the individual to justify his freedom. But the proponents of government action have completely inverted this premise - government power now requires little justification - it is presumed valid - and exercising liberty requires a great deal of justification.  

Russell's Teapot taught us the burden of proof is on the claim maker. If we apply this logic to government power, shouldn't it be up to the President Obama to show us the evidence that his policies will reduce the murders of innocent people?

Where is the evidence that restricting magazine sizes will stop or minimize mass shootings? The claims from the anti-gun folks are quite grand. Lawrence O’Donnell was ahead of the curve on this idea. Back in July MSNBC's he guaranteed that the Aurora movie theater massacre would have ended early if the shooter hadn't used a hundred-round drum magazine:

California has made the sale of hundred-round clips illegal. California restricts those magazines to ten bullets. And so, if you’re an aspiring mass murderer here in California, and you decide tonight to obtain your killing tools legally, as our most recent mass murderers have done, you will be forced to reload after your first ten bullets, and if you try doing that in a packed movie theater, I promise you, you will not finish reloading. You will be taken down by the freedom of the people in that theater to attack you the second you have to stop firing and reload. The ten-bullet clip is about the freedom to stop mass murderers after they’ve fired ten shots, instead of a hundred.

But that shooting never lasted 100 rounds. The shooter's gun jammed on him. No one tackled him. He simply switched to a second weapon, as most of these shooters have had the option to do. Reloading can take one to three seconds. O'Donnell's wild claim, peppered with confident statements like "I promise you" was a swirl of useless conjecture. Where is the hard evidence that this policy will make a difference?

Banning weapons that have certain non-essential features and labeling them "assault weapons" based on the stock or the grip is another useless move lacking evidence. The research ranges from showing the 1994 federal ban on so-called assault weapons failed to make a clear impact on gun violence to inconclusive. There is no reason to believe passing these feel-good laws will prevent violence.

I think the most telling recommendation President Obama made today was his effort to fund another study on video games hoping the conclusion will be different. From Joystiq:

Obama mentioned video games once during the conference, asking Congress to provide $10 million for the Centers for Disease Control and other scientific agencies to research the causes of gun violence. 

"While year after year, those who oppose even modest gun safety measures have threatened to defund scientific or medical research into the causes of gun violence, I will direct the Centers for Disease Control to go ahead and study the best ways to reduce it," Obama said. "And Congress should fund research into the effects that violent video games have on young minds. We don't benefit from ignorance. We don't benefit from not knowing the science of this epidemic of violence."

Well, we do know the science here. In fact, the Supreme Court took that scientific fact into account back in 2011. We already have the answer to this question.

Imagine if the president said he wanted to fund a new study to determine if vaccines cause autism, or if George W. Bush was behind the 9-11 terrorist attacks. Try ending that request with "We don't benefit from ignorance."

The president does not practice an evidence-based approach to running this government. The list he produced today had some reasonable approaches, but he couldn't help himself from peppering it with dubious measures.

In an authoritarian world, all freedoms are restricted unless the government permits them. In a world of liberty, all freedoms are permitted unless the government restricts them.

I believe freedom should come first. There are times when it is needed for the government to restrict some of our freedoms, but the burden of proving the necessity of those restrictions falls on the government. If they want to take a right away it is up to them to prove to us why they should be allowed to. We shouldn't have to come up with a compelling reason for why we deserve each and every freedom we get to keep.
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Didn't expect Sam Harris to pack a pistol

As someone who gets annoyed by the popular assumption that having a secular world view means one has to hold generic left-wing views as well, I thoroughly enjoyed Sam Harris's recent piece on the gun control fervor and why he is a gun owner.

As an outspoken atheist author and critic of religion, Harris receives a considerable number of death threats, and some of them need to be taken seriously. That's why he spends an entire day training with a qualified instructor about once a month. This is news to me, but when other critics of radical Islam like Theo van Gogh are murdered in the street it seems like a reasonable precaution.

What is comforting is that Harris makes the same points people like me have been making - mass shootings are rare, assault "weapons" bans are useless symbolism and concealed weapons allow people to fight back. Dysfunctional views tend to be all over the place, but informed views converge.

This is my favorite part, where he makes the same point as the gun is civilization essay.

Like most gun owners, I understand the ethical importance of guns and cannot honestly wish for a world without them. I suspect that sentiment will shock many readers. Wouldn’t any decent person wish for a world without guns? In my view, only someone who doesn’t understand violence could wish for such a world. A world without guns is one in which the most aggressive men can do more or less anything they want. It is a world in which a man with a knife can rape and murder a woman in the presence of a dozen witnesses, and none will find the courage to intervene. There have been cases of prison guards (who generally do not carry guns) helplessly standing by as one of their own was stabbed to death by a lone prisoner armed with an improvised blade. The hesitation of bystanders in these situations makes perfect sense—and “diffusion of responsibility” has little to do with it. The fantasies of many martial artists aside, to go unarmed against a person with a knife is to put oneself in very real peril, regardless of one’s training. The same can be said of attacks involving multiple assailants. A world without guns is a world in which no man, not even a member of Seal Team Six, can reasonably expect to prevail over more than one determined attacker at a time. A world without guns, therefore, is one in which the advantages of youth, size, strength, aggression, and sheer numbers are almost always decisive. Who could be nostalgic for such a world?

Harris also says that limiting magazines to 10 rounds causes more frequent reloads and provide a slight help in mass shootings. I don't agree this would change much and he readily admits that this would require multiple people who happen to be in the right place to make a daring attack, but Harris is coming at this from his own perspective and I'm glad to see he really does think for himself.
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I wouldn't mind if they didn't call themselves journalists

I thought I was done with this subject, but they keep pulling me back in.

The self-important "Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting" released a report yesterday that was reprinted by Maine newspapers. The headline was States have subsidized makers of assault rifles to tune of $19 million.

However, I read it and found no subsidies or assault rifles. The sloppiness of this editorial masquerading as a news story is apparent just two paragraphs in.

Taxpayers across the country are subsidizing the manufacturers of assault rifles used in multiple mass killings, including the massacre of 20 children and six adults at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn. last month.

A Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting examination of tax records shows that five companies that make semi-automatic rifles have received more than $19 million in tax breaks, most within with the past five years.

Semi-automatic rifles, by definition, are not assault rifles. Tax breaks are not subsidies, just as deciding not to punch someone in the face doesn't mean you healed them. The article repeatedly uses those terms interchangeably. As a journalist I know how crucial getting details right is for a story. This is something an intern would be embarrassed to turn in, and they're treating it like an opus.

The article finds every anti-gun source it can and makes a layer cake with them. This is what activists do, and that's acceptable for activists, but the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting insists on labeling itself "A nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that writes and distributes stories that uncover and explain the actions of state, local and federal government."

If you want to call yourselves journalists, expect to be judged like ones. Either the reporters and editors are so sloppy that they don't know the difference between a tax break and a subsidy or they just assume all wealth belongs to the government and anything not confiscated is a gift.

Well, if that's the case, I am going to continue to not steal money from the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting and call myself a donor.
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Ban assault snakes

We can't allow an incident like this near-tragedy to ever happen again.

That's why I'm proposing a long-overdue ban on "assault snakes," which is a vague category of snakes that are only designed to kill and are entirely impracticable for petting zoos or use as companion snakes.

Assault snakes are any snakes that possess two or more of the following features:

* Long, bayonet-like fangs

* Skeletal or folding rattle

* Raised Jacobson's organ

* Patterned hood

* Green or brown "camo" scales

* Venomous bite

* Deep, sexy eyes

Just imagine if one of these slithering murder-beasts was let loose in a school. We don't have the funding to organize an ensemble of irrelevant celebrities to read short, repetitive bursts over and over again at the camera to manipulate the emotions of the public. We need you to pressure your congressman into bringing St. Patrick's Day early this year by chasing the snakes out of American for good.
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Gun opponents are going off half-cocked

In an article critical of Wayne LaPierre's National Rifle Association speech on Friday, Jacob Sullum of Reason.com declared it was an exception to the way gun control is being debated, which has predominately featured anti-gun advocates using "raw emotionalism and invective pitted against skepticism and an attempt at rational argument."

LaPierre said some silly things, but he did hit the bullseye when he said

The media calls semi automatic firearms "machine guns." They claim these civilian semiautomatic firearms are used by the military. They tell us that the .223 round is one of the most powerful rifle calibers, when all of these claims are factually untrue. They don't what they're talking about.

Nowhere can this battle of raw, uninformed emotion against careful, reasoned restraint be encapsulated as succinctly as this clip of Penn Jillette trying to get a word in against three anti-gun advocates on the Wendy Williams show


Two minutes in Nicole Lapin demands a ban on semi-automatic weapons, as they can "easily be turned into machine guns." She goes on to say that if the shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary School only had a handgun he would have only been able to kill two people, not 26 people.

It is frustrating to hear such blatant ignorance about basic gun information. Semi-automatic means when the trigger is pulled, one shot is fired and another one is readied. This mans the gun is not fully automatic, like a machine gun, but does not need to be reloaded between each shot like a musket or bolt-action rifle. She was inadvertently asking to ban pistols, shotguns and hunting rifles.

Lapin is not the first anti-gun advocate to swing wild and call for a ban on semi-automatics, thinking it means something else. Chris Matthews of MSNBC also failed to understand what the term means, but didn't let them stop him from making policy regulations on an unknown subject.

I'm not aware of any mass shootings where the shooter modified a semi-automatic rifle into a fully-automatic one, yet Lapin claims this is a major concern. It's also relevant that she doesn't know what an assault rifle is, and mistakenly applies that label to weapons like the one used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School.

This idea that only having a handgun would have limited the body count to two is inexcusable. Was she asleep during the Fort Hood shooting where 13 people were killed with handguns? Did she miss the Virginia Tech shooting where 32 people were killed with handguns? This is embarrassingly simple. It's also a false dichotomy, as shotguns present a very real danger to the public and have been used in mass shootings.

And those errors were only from the first 30 seconds of the discussion. It did not get any better as it went on. The anti-gun speakers continued to make careless declarations and Jillette stayed calm and responded to as many as he could with reasonable replies.

I'm not mocking people for simple mistakes like calling a magazine a "clip." These errors are massive and I'm calling into question why they should expect to be taken seriously if they can't grasp even basic concepts about guns.

Would you listen to suggested curriculum guidelines for a biology class from someone who doesn't know who Gregor Mendel was? What about a report on the 9-11 terrorist attacks from someone who claims no Jews were killed in the attacks? What about suggestions on where to set the top tax rates from someone who doesn't understand how marginal tax rates work?

That doesn't automatically disprove their views, but it does cast doubt. If they don't understand simple non-controversial elements of a subject, what are the odds they have anything meaningful to contribute about it? Nothing good has ever come from taking these people seriously.

I have no problem having a rational, reality-based discussion with someone about import subjects like gun regulations and restrictions. What we do not need is loud, obnoxious zealots spouting off a bunch of nonsense on a subject they can't be bothered to research.
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We waited a week for that?

Today Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of the National Rifle Association, spoke before the nation, breaking a week of silence from the organization following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

I wasn't impressed.



LaPierre famously focused his speech on a bone-crushingly expensive plan to put armed guards in every American school. As a reporter I can say that school security is already hostile enough to adults who need to visit the main office and I don't think ramping up an over-indulgent security obsession is going to make it any better.

Since mass shootings are in no way increasing, there is no excuse for this flailing attempt at a solution.

He also blamed video games and movies. These are things that we know do not cause violence. When someone gets stabbed, do we blame Shakespeare's MacBeth?

There are a few moments I liked. He did get some good remarks in about anti-gun bias in the media and the way firearm opponents speak about guns the way Deepak Chopra speaks about quantum physics:

The media calls semi automatic firearms "machine guns." They claim these civilian semiautomatic firearms are used by the military. They tell us that the .223 round is one of the most powerful rifle calibers, when all of these claims are factually untrue. They don't what they're talking about

For what it's worth, I support allowing teachers and other school employees who have concealed weapons permits to carry those same weapons into schools where they can be used defensively. That idea is being criticized by the anti-gun crowd and misrepresented as forcing all teachers to carry guns.

If that idea is not politically possible, then Plan B should be to do nothing.

Nothing.

Schools are safe places and school shootings are rare, although dramatic. Just as airplane crashes get more attention than car crashes, mass shootings get so much attention it distorts public perception and implies a fictional trend is taking place. Every one of these shootings is a tragedy, but they do not warrant useless, costly gestures that will not change anything.
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Mass errors about mass shootings

It's a scene we've all watched over and over in countless movies. Dangerous brutes are closing in on a mother and her infant children corned at the end of a cold, dark alleyway. She defiantly holds up a broken piece of wood in front of her hoping to ward off her attackers, but the threat is laughed off. Her children close their eyes as they wait for the assault to come.

But wait, a hero emerges from the streets. He is going to do everything he can to save the innocent woman and children the only way he knows how. With legislation.

This un-dramatic scenario is what you get when you boil down all the current cries for more gun control following the shooting in Sandy Hook Elementary School where 20 children and six adults were murdered last week. However, as emotionally pleasing as it is to make calls for action, any action, the specific ideas for action I've seen emerging are nonsensical and ignore the facts.

The biggest misstatement is the claim that we are seeing more mass shootings over time. This idea is being advanced by writers at Mother Jones and the Washington Post, but has been refuted by criminologists. From the Associated Press:

"There is no pattern, there is no increase," says criminologist James Allen Fox of Boston's Northeastern University, who has been studying the subject since the 1980s, spurred by a rash of mass shootings in post offices. 

The random mass shootings that get the most media attention are the rarest, Fox says. Most people who die of bullet wounds knew the identity of their killer. 

Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has written a history of mass murders in America, said that while mass shootings rose between the 1960s and the 1990s, they actually dropped in the 2000s. And mass killings actually reached their peak in 1929, according to his data. He estimates that there were 32 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s and 26 in the first decade of the century.

Violence itself is going down, as most people should be aware. The pattern has been very steady for four decades.

There's a clip being passed around of semi-conservative Joe Scarborough citing this phony increase in mass shootings and violence as his reason to make vague anti-gun platitudes, along with calls to censor Hollywood and video games. It's all for the sake of the children, of course, even though we know that entertainment does not cause violence.

There are calls to ban certain types of guns, which people are erroneously referring to as "assault rifles." Assault rifles are fully-automatic. There is an artificial political term called "assault weapons" that uses arbitrary details of weapons to make certain semi-automatic weapons sound deadlier. This is a term used by activists, not gun experts. The requirements include things like a pistol grip (who cares) and bayonet mounts (ever heard of someone getting bayonetted? The president hasn't). One problem with calls to bring back these bans to prevent mass shootings is that some states already have them, including Connecticut where the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting took place.

Handguns, not assault weapons were used at Fort Hood, Virginia Tech, the Wisconsin Sikh Temple, and the Tuscon shooting that targeted Gabrielle Gifftords. The Columbine shooters used several shotguns and one TEC-9. The Auroro 2012 shooter used an AR-15 that would meet the ban, but he also had a shotgun and two pistols. The flawed Mother Jones report that erroneously claimed mass shootings are  on the rise also said weapons that fit the fake "assault weapon" category were only used in a third of the mass shootings.

The fact is, guns that could be used for a killing spree have been available since the 19th century. Just look at this video comparison of the AK-47 and a Winchester Model 1894:



There are some people who oppose gun control who made the mistake of listing a mass stabbing of children in China that happened the same day as an argument that we will still have killing sprees even without guns. The problem is that no one died in the Chenpeng Village Primary School stabbing spree, and it proved a point gun control advocates make, that it's easier to outrun a blade than a bullet.

While gun control in England has brought the horror of "knife crime," guns and pointed weapons are not the only tools mass killers have on hand. This is a false dichotomy. The killer in the Akihabara massacre rammed people with a truck before switching to a knife, killing seven total. The Happy Land fire killed 87 people from a single can of gasoline. A staggering 18 other people were injured inside a high-ceiling Walmart when a woman poured two common cleaning products on another woman to try to kill her. Be glad she didn't mix those chemicals in a smaller space when no one was watching. What about the 9-11 attacks where 3,000 people were killed with airplanes hijacked with box cutters? Are we going to ban blades, van rentals, fuel and cleaning products?

One idea that's being floated around is to limit the size of magazines. This seems like symbolic legislation because reloading is an incredibly fast, easy maneuver. I honestly don't think my life would be worse off if I was unable to buy a 100-round drum magazine, but there's a big misunderstanding to how useful they are. The military doesn't use them, partially because they jam easily, and surprise surprise that's exactly what happened in the Auroro shooting. Of course, none of the gun controls advocates are trumpeting that important detail. If someone isn't good at changing magazines, they can always switch to another weapon, something people have been doing for ages.

Nate at CongressShallMakeNo Law likes to remind us that 3-D printers will eventually make gun control obsolete. It will be much easier to fashion a high-capacity magazine than a full firearm, so don't expect this restriction to change anything.

Some moderate positions include more gun registration procedures and in-depth background checks. These wouldn't have stopped the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting because the killer stole the guns from his mother, but if people want to be opportunistic with the momentum from this tragedy, they do have to come to grips with how any effort to make guns harder to get legally will affect the peaceful, non-violent majority of gun users as well.

I cringe when pro-gun advocates make the simplistic argument that criminals don't follow the law, so why bother making guns laws. Right or wrong, these laws do make it harder for people to get their hands on guns. It just so happens that any major gun restrictions or legal hoops to jump through will disproportionately affect people that follow the law, and encourage the odds that an armed criminal will encounter an unarmed victim.

The anti-gun advocates have a big advantage because they can make emotional arguments centered around victims. Well, we have people like 18-year-old mother Sarah McKinley of Blanchard, Oklahoma who shot and killed a knife-wielding attacker who had been creeping her out for days while her husband died of cancer. When he finally came for her, she was on the phone with police for 21 minutes and had barricaded herself and her child inside their home. Two men broke in and she shot one and the other ran.

Imagine if she wasn't allowed to have that gun, or if her ability to have a gun was delayed. That is the scenario gun control advocates are fighting for. A brutal, stone age world where young gay men, old women and people in wheelchairs are at the mercy of big thugs. That would be a primitive, dangerous world.

As a famous essay said, the gun is civilization:

The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone.

Being able to defend oneself empowers people. Waiting around helplessly for a hero to save you does the opposite. The ability to possess a weapon is a human right, and not just because it is enshrined as one in the Bill of Rights. It is unjust and immoral to rob innocent people of that right. Gun ownership is, and always will be, a civil rights issue.

There's a rather silly article being passed, mostly to mock it, that claims shooting sprees reveal something evil inside white males. Don't expect the diversity police to come to our aid, but did these people miss Virginia Tech, Fort Hood and the DC sniper attacks? Do they really want to start that conversation in a country where blacks are seven times more likely to kill someone than whites? It's not a road anyone wants to go down.

If you want to be an advocate for gun control than you have a responsibility to learn some basic facts about guns and gun violence. Otherwise, you are attempting to legislate from emotion, not reason, and nothing good comes from that.


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So what if President Obama is politicizing this tragedy

I heard the president's reaction to the terrible shooting in Connecticut today. After speaking about the horrors of so many innocent children being cut down by an armed maniac, President Obama said the country needs “meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.”

Make no mistake, this was an attempt to politicize the tragedy in a non-committed way. A coded message, if you will.

It just so happens, however, that I don't think there's anything wrong with people using a tragedy as a rallying point for their movement. I don't support most gun control measures, but if I did I wouldn't see how speaking of ways someone believes would reduce future tragedies is in any way disrespectful to the victims. As I said this summer, there's nothing wrong with politicizing a tragedy.
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What's wrong with politicizing a tragedy?

I haven't written about the Aurora shooting before, although I've been tempted to write about how stupid it is to ask people involved in making the Batman what they think about the shooting. Yahoo News thought it important to tell us that they were shocked. A different reporter revealed that Gabrielle Giffords did not support the shooting either.

Uninspired reaction stories aside, some members of the left are using the shooting for momentum so they can bring out gun control proposals they already supported before the shooting. This has drawn some criticism as "politicizing" the tragedy, but I can't find a convincing argument for why that should be off-limits.

When a judge overrules a piece of legislation, critics will say they are legislating from the bench and supporters will say they are simply righting a wrong. With that same duality of perspective in mind, gun control can be viewed as a short-sighted, foolish policy or a life-saving measure, depending on the viewer.

I reject most of the gun control arguments I've heard after this shooting, such as Lawrence O'Donnell's ridiculous suggestion that limiting rifle magazines to 10 rounds would have led to the unarmed crowd overwhelming the shooter. That being said, I can completely understand why they would want to use this tragedy as a spring board to talking about their side of the issue.

From the gun control advocates perspective, America would be a safer place if guns were harder to obtain legally. They think tragedies like this are examples of the terrible events that could be stopped with tighter controls, and now is the perfect time to win public support.

In the movie Braveheart, I don't recall the Scots allowing a period of mourning for William Wallace before they returned to war with the British. Instead, they used his death to invigorate their troops, and that's what gun control advocates are trying to do here.

I don't like that they will end up making a lot of rushed emotional arguments instead of letting cooler heads prevail, but this is as good a time as any for my intellectual opponents to make their play. Let us have it.
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