In many of the debates / flat-out-arguments regarding gun control, recently, it’s been interesting to see how some anti-2nd Amendment folk trot out the notion that gun owners who claim self defense as the basis for their right to own firearms must have some gender inferiority complex. What are you compensating for?, is the Dr. Phil-ish question that explains what these misguided gun owners are suffering from. Essentially, advocates of gun control claim that the supposed need for having firearms is inexorably linked to the fabrication of an essence, be it ever so false, of manhood.

Maybe they have a point. If I own firearms for self / family defense then what exactly am I compensating for? Well, I’ll tell you what:

Among other things, I’m compensating for the 6′-4″, 225 pound, 25 year-old thug who, after breaking into my home, would not think twice about shooting me in the head (or stabbing me or clubbing me) regardless of whether I was armed or complied with his demands. I’m compensating for the multiple assailants who, after training in prison*, would not think twice about slitting my throat, raping my family, and then strangling them to death. I’m compensating for the inevitability of civil unrest given a natural or man-made disaster in the metropolitan area I live in. And I’m compensating for the sheep-like mentality you display, insuring that your such departures from reality will not inhibit my right to defend the lives of those I hold dear to my heart.

In the meantime, let’s take a look at some stories which illustrate that there are many women who seem to have taken to “compensation”, regardless of whether they suffer from the gender-complex issues that gun grabber psychoanalysts say they do. And, as a sidenote, notice that not all defensive gun uses (DGUs) involved actually firing the weapon.

15 Million women “pack heat” in the US

And that was in 2011. From the article,

One mother named Elena who lives in Roseburg, Ore., explains how her job as a 911 dispatcher led her to overcome the discomfort she felt about owning a gun.

“Dealing with the calls that we field on a daily basis made me really aware of what people are capable of doing,” Elena writes. “I’m a single mom and I’ve got two kids, so I feel like if I’m ever put in a situation where I need to protect them, I’d prefer to have a gun.

Gun-toting Grandma pulls handgun on two men who tried to rob her

More women using guns for fun and protection

From the article,

Several factors are driving women to the gun range, experts say.

“The first and foremost reason is women no longer want to feel vulnerable,” Parsons says. “They want to feel responsible for their own personal safety and the safety of their families. Just by their physical size, the perpetrator is going to be bigger and stronger. A firearm is the great equalizer.”

More and more women…

From the article,

To those who say guns are masculine, Ellanson says, “It would depend on how you define femininity. I think a capable woman is the most feminine expression of power that there is.”

15 year-old girl scares burglars (note – plural) with dad’s… gun

From the article,

Officials said a teen in Texas City was alone when a pair of intruders broke into her family’s house, but she turned the tables on the suspects by grabbing her father’s handgun.

911 is a joke

In Detroit. From the article,

The people of Detroit are taking no prisoners.

Justifiable homicide in the city shot up 79 percent in 2011 from the previous year, as citizens in the long-suffering city armed themselves and took matters into their own hands. The local rate of self-defense killings now stands 2,200 percent above the national average. Residents, unable to rely on a dwindling police force to keep them safe, are fighting back against the criminal scourge on their own. And they’re offering no apologies.

More women…

From the article,

More women throughout the United States are buying guns and learning how to use them. And we’re finding that to be true in South Dakota. In fact, a 2011 Gallup Poll found that 43% of women say there’s a gun in their home. KSFY’s Courtney Zieller is finding out why numbers are at a new high.

21 year-old woman shoots and kills intruder who kicked in her door

Oh, and at least one of the intruders was armed with a gun. From the article,

Tweets sent from the official Dallas Police Department Twitter account said two suspects kicked in the door of the home at about 11:30 a.m. The resident was alone upstairs and heard the noise. She confronted the two burglars as they ascended the stairs and shot at them several times.

The two ran out the front door and one collapsed from a gunshot wound. Police later recovered a gun at the scene, “indicating at least one of the suspects was armed.” Nobody has been identified.

12 year-old girl shoots intruder

Yeah, this one kicked his way in as well. From the article,

A 12-year-old girl took matters into her own hands during a home invasion in southeast Oklahoma.

It happened on Wednesday when the girl was home alone. She told police a stranger rang the doorbell, then went around to the back door and kicked it in. She called her mom, Debra St. Clair, who told her to get the family gun, hide in a closet and call 911.

* Not based on my own knowledge but as related by a retired LA County Sheriff and a current LAPD Police Officer.

No, despite America’s obsession with guns, the U.S. isn’t the most violent country
It’s the U.K. From the article,

Britain’s violent crime record is worse than any other country in the European union, it has been revealed.

Official crime figures show the UK also has a worse rate for all types of violence than the U.S. and even South Africa – widely considered one of the world’s most dangerous countries.

In terms of violent crimes per 100,000 residents, the U.K. comes in at 2,034 per 100K (with the U.S. listed at 466 per 100K).

For those who may be unaware, the U.K. has effectively banned the general public from owning firearms.

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Besides that, gun control doesn’t reduce crime – just ask the U.K. or Australia
From the Wall Street Journal,

We aren’t alone in facing this problem. Great Britain and Australia, for example, suffered mass shootings in the 1980s and 1990s. Both countries had very stringent gun laws when they occurred. Nevertheless, both decided that even stricter control of guns was the answer. Their experiences can be instructive.

…

The results have not been what proponents of the act wanted. Within a decade of the handgun ban and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is. Armed street gangs have some British police carrying guns for the first time. Moreover, another massacre occurred in June 2010. Derrick Bird, a taxi driver in Cumbria, shot his brother and a colleague then drove off through rural villages killing 12 people and injuring 11 more before killing himself.

Read it all.

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Enacting “Gun-Free [sic] School Zones” increases the frequency of active killer events
So says David Codrea, and he links to an interesting graphic provided by GeorgiaCarry.org.

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The Mayor of Newark gets it
Mayor Cory Booker,

I’m not afraid of law-abiding citizens who buy a gun… Listen to me, the people dying in Chicago, the people dying in Newark are not being done with law-abiding gun owners.

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The World according to murder
An interesting infographic (have not vetted the accuracy of it).

Provided by Survival Goods

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Be careful what you ask for
CNN asked its “iReporters” the question, “Was your gun banned?”, and also asked them to “upload a photo of your gun and share your thoughts on gun control.

An intrepid young iReporter decided to have a little fun with the assignment, and uploaded a photo of a nerf gun* (shown below), stating,

My ak 47, 5th generation model. This one uses the 9.88x33mm round. I believe the only nation that uses it is Canada. They need this kind of firepower actually. I got mine in yellow because nothing says, “I’m big, bad and scary like yellow”…banana yellow.

This gun is actually at the top of the ban list. I don’t like that. We have rights to bear arms. Don’t take that away from me, don’t take that away from us. Guns are a part of our heritage, or history, our roots, our blood.

What happens if tyranny arises? What if North Korea invades? What if a meth head randomly walks into my house? The only thing between life and death, survival, and non-survival, freedom and slavery is this baby.

* “Not vetted by CNN”

It’s not like we haven’t warned you that New York City is rabidly anti-gun (especially its Mayor Bloomberg)

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And you can’t even own a Flintlock in NYC

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What if you’re a citizen from another state with a concealed carry weapon permit?
And, while visiting the 911 Memorial you see a “No Handguns” sign (which surely must mean the place is safe, right?) so you want to do the right thing and check in your legally owned handgun?

From the New York Post,

Really, you can’t bring guns into the 9/11 Memorial?

A tourist from Tennessee waltzed into one of the most secure sites in the city — and politely asked a cop if she could check her weapon.

Instead, she was dragged out in cuffs.

Now, Meredith Graves, 39, is facing at least three years in prison for thinking New York’s gun laws are anything like those in the Bible Belt.

Get it? A law-abiding citizen, albeit very wrong in her understanding of the anti-2nd amendment laws in New York City, was attemtping to follow the law and now faces prison time.

Also in the story,

Mayor Bloomberg, with the help of the five district attorneys, has crusaded against the flow of illegal guns, especially from the South.

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But surely a former Marine can check in his legally owned handgun while visiting the Empire State Building?
From the WSJ,

Some veterans linked to the Leatherneck.com online community started sending letters to city officials Monday urging them to drop the prosecution of Ryan Jerome.

He’s accused of trying to check his gun, registered in his home state of Indiana, while visiting New York City in September. They say he was acting responsibly and got bad information about city rules.

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Well how about the guy recently arrested in New York City, for possessing a firearm, who claimed to be a Navy SEAL?
The authorities, not believing him, threw him into a psych ward. Turns out… he was telling the truth!

From the New York Post,

His story about being a Navy SEAL wasn’t so fishy after all.

The Virginia man arrested for gun possession in Manhattan Thursday and thrown in a psych ward when he claimed to be a member of the elite military unit but couldn’t provide proof was telling the truth, The Post has learned.

Oops.

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It looks like Tennessee lawmakers are not too thrilled with the treatment of Meredith Graves
From the New York Daily News,

A Tennessee lawmaker angry that a home state tourist was busted with a loaded gun at Ground Zero introduced is threatening to go after New Yorkers who speed in his state.

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CNN report on Jerome and Graves

He said what?
Richard Dawkins said “Jesus would have been an atheist had he known what we know today.” Wow. I know that Christian apologists have been clamoring for a debate between William Lane Craig and Dawkins, but if he makes such an ignorantly absurd statement like this, then…?

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Only 1 in 4 want to ban handguns
An all-time low (26%) and this spells bad news for liberal democrats. From Gallup,

A record-low 26% of Americans favor a legal ban on the possession of handguns in the United States other than by police and other authorized people. When Gallup first asked Americans this question in 1959, 60% favored banning handguns. But since 1975, the majority of Americans have opposed such a measure, with opposition around 70% in recent years.

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Evangelical Capitalism statement of the day:
“I’ve never seen an empty seat make a decision for Christ.” – Andy Stanley

While this notion is sincere, it usually degrades to nothing more than a “numbers game” approach, and the logical conclusion of this methodology is to do just about anything to entice people through the door (and onto a… seat) where they can then be swayed to “make a decision.” And I wonder just what priority is given, if any,, to that of making a disciple of Christ (what the Bible actually states).

“Christians Need To Stop Making Converts” – Read it again, for the first time.

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Geek News # 1
Checking out footprints of the Apollo moonwalkers.

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Geek News # 2
Searching for Snoopy… Apollo 10’s Snoopy (aka the Lunar Module)

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A Homeschooling convert?
So in the middle of realizing that school is really just a babysitting service, I became militant. I realized that public school is like Social Security. There is no money to do what we are pretending we are aiming to do. We should just grow up and admit that we cannot have effective public schools for everyone. Just like we cannot have Social Security for everyone.

Only in California is a new link spotlight to some of the weirdness found on the Left Coast.

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Stop the Killing! (of coyotes)

After a coyote (or coyotes) began to make dinner out of small dogs and cats in one Anaheim neighborhood, local residents decided to have the animal caught and euthanized. Sounds like a common sense approach, right? Not to animal-rights activists and certain American Indians (aka Native Americans). From the OC Register,

“We want Anaheim and all of Orange County to know that we have lived in harmony with coyotes and other wildlife for generations, and killing coyotes with poison, traps or GPS devices is unfair and upsets the balance of nature,” said Randal Massaro of Victorville, a representative for Union Members for Preservation of Wildlife Worldwide. Massaro describes his organization as an “underground movement of union members” trying to protect nature.

“I am here for nature itself,” said Apache Daklugie Running-Hawk, who said he is a spiritual leader for the Tarasco Nation band of Indians and is based in Lucerne Valley.

“These are our four-legged friends, and this is their land,” he said. “Now they are trying to drive them out, like they drove us (Native Americans) out generations ago. We need to live among them and learn from them.”

Running-Hawk played a song on a Native-American wood flute in a show of “respect and peace” during his comments before the council.

There is some sense in all this nonsense, though. By effectively separating humans from the rest of the animal kingdom (e.g., “this is their land”), there is a blanket admission to the distinctiveness of the human species and, I would argue, the imago Dei.

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Gun Control Marches On

Governor Brown, reportedly a gun owner himself, had 4 anti-gun bills on his desk recently.

AB 809 expands gun registration to include long guns, SB 427 effectively initiates ammunition registration, SB 819 redistributes current gun registration fees, and AB 144 would ban the open carrying of an unloaded handgun.

Unfortunately, he signed three of them into law: AB 809, SB 819, and AB 144. He vetoed SB 427, but only because of a lawsuit against the bill’s predecessor, which was deemed unconstitutional.

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Government doesn’t belong in your home… unless you’re having a Bible Study

A southern California couple is faced with a legal battle after being fined for hosting a Bible Study in their home.

So much for the “separation of church and state.”

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Achoo! – God Bless You

A California student was penalized for uttering the words “God bless you” after someone sneezed.

“The blessing really doesn’t make sense anymore,” Cuckovich explained. “When you sneezed in the old days, they thought you were dispelling evil spirits out of your body. So they were saying, ‘God bless you,’ for getting rid of evil spirits. But today, what you’re doing really doesn’t make sense.”

I wonder if Mr. Cuckovich has ever told anyone good-bye?

In light of the recent Tucson mass shooting, and the negligent discharge shooting (as it now appears) at a high school in the Los Angeles area, the usual cries are voiced regarding gun control. Over the past 15 years, however, it seems that gun control lobbies have lost more battles then they’ve won. Lately, an interesting, if not entirely expected tactic they’ve taken, is that of placing their crosshairs on the purchasing of ammunition. After all, so the thinking must go, if one does not have any ammunition then one’s firearm suddenly becomes nothing more than a club.

Last year, California gun-control advocates introduced, and passed AB962, which would have forced citizens who desired to purchase “handgun” ammunition to conduct the transaction in a face-to-face setting, providing photo-ID, residence address, and a thumbprint (i.e., registering themselves and their actions with the state). Signed by then Governor/Terminator Arnold Schwarzennegger, the bill was touted as promoting our own safety. From the governor,

Although I have previously vetoed legislation similar to this measure, local governments have demonstrated that requiring ammunition vendors to keep records on ammunition sales improves public safety. These records have allowed law enforcement to arrest and prosecute persons who have no business possessing firearms and ammunition: gang members, violent parolees, second and third strikers, and even people previously serving time in state prison for murder.

Such thinking must surely have been inspired by the fact that so many gang-bangers get their handgun ammunition at places like Walmart or through on-line vendors (/sarcasm).

AB962 was set to go into effect in a few weeks.

Word has come in, this morning, that AB962 has been successfully appealed in court. From an NRA news announcement,

The lawsuit—funded by the National Rifle Association and the California Rifle and Pistol (CRPA) Foundation as part of a joint Legal Action Project—was prompted in part by the many objections and questions raised by confused police, ammunition purchasers, and sellers about what ammunition is covered by the new law.

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Many of the nation’s largest mail-order and online ammunition retailers had already announced that they would soon end sales to California residents. If the law had gone into effect, it would have required that “handgun ammunition” be stored out of the reach of customers, that ammunition vendors collect ammunition sales registration information and thumbprints from purchasers, and that vendors conduct transactions face to face for all deliveries and transfers of “handgun ammunition.”

AB962 was just another in a string of laws which do nothing more than restrict the actions of law-abiding citizens. Let’s hope that continued resistance to a Nanny-State mentality will help set the tone for the real hope and change our country needs.

Human nature was displayed this past week, since the catalyst event of the mass shooting in Tucson. Initiated by the heinous act of a crazed individual, we’ve seen both the good – and the bad – in humanity since. Following are a few quick links and thoughts:

Palin breaks silence on Tucson
So reads the title to a post in the New Mexico Independent. Following the herd of liberals who immediately began blaming the Right for the shooting, the title of this post leads us to believe that Sarah Palin had some obligation to respond to, due to her implicit responsibility for, the attempted assassination of Rep. Giffords.

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The New MSM Mantra: Publish first, check later
Initial reports, from “trusted” news organizations, indicated that Rep. Giffords had, in fact, been killed. From a Reuters report (via Malkin),

Representative Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona died after being shot in the head while meeting constituents at a grocery store in Tucson, NPR reported on Saturday.

As we saw, beginning at least back at 9/11, and continuing through major events such as Hurricane Katrina, the instantaneous response time of 21st century technology does not negate the need for real time (and, sometimes slow time) fact checking.

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“It was crazy. A photographer with a [telephoto] lens was outside and he yells ‘Shooter! Shooter! Get down! And I didn’t,”
You may have heard about Rep. Giffords intern Daniel Hernandez, indeed, the President referenced him, and his heroic acts, in his memorial speech. Or perhaps you heard about the 74 year-old veteran, Bill Badger, who helped tackle the shooting suspect. But how many of you heard about Joe Zamudio, who happened to be buying cigarettes as the shooter commenced his mayhem? Zamudio heard the gunshots (and he recognized them as gunshots – something most people have a difficult time doing), and instead of running away from the sound, he ran towards it. Why? Zamudio was armed, legally, with his own handgun, and was ready to use it on the shooter.

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Boxer’s lack of common sense
Senator Barbara Boxer (D – Calif) thinks that part of the cause for the mass shooting in Tucson, other than a deranged individual deciding to shoot other human beings, is that laws on concealed carry are too lax. From Boxer,

I am particularly interested in California’s concealed weapons law, which requires someone who wants to carry a concealed weapon to first receive a permit from their local sheriff or police chief.

In California, you need to be at least 21 years old, show good cause for carrying and show good moral character to carry a concealed weapon. There is a check – an important check – on who is carrying a concealed weapon.

Perhaps someone should educate M’am Boxer that: 1) the Tucson mass shooting had nothing to do with concealed carry and, 2) concealed carry laws, whether strict or lenient, have no bearing on whether a criminal chooses to conceal his weapon.

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Twisted Thinking
In A Right to Bear Glocks?, we read,

If Loughner had gone to the Safeway carrying a regular pistol, the kind most Americans think of when they think of the right to bear arms, Giffords would probably still have been shot and we would still be having that conversation about whether it was a sane idea to put her Congressional district in the cross hairs of a rifle on the Internet.

…

Loughner’s gun, a 9-millimeter Glock, is extremely easy to fire over and over, and it can carry a 30-bullet clip. It is “not suited for hunting or personal protection,” said Paul Helmke, the president of the Brady Campaign. “What it’s good for is killing and injuring a lot of people quickly.”

Setting aside the silly notion of a “regular pistol” that is somehow connected to “the right to bear arms”, I would agree with Helmke – the 30 round magazine is not suited for hunting or personal protection. I would imagine that the extended length of the magazine, combined with the added weight of the cartridges, would affect the shooter’s accuracy and, when one is interested in personal protection, one is also interested in accuracy. Understand that while the 30 round magazine, for a handgun, is a cumbersome oddity, the use of standard capacity magazines (in the range of 10 – 19 rounds) would not appreciably alter the situation. If a shooter knows how to exchange magazines, a magazine replacement can be accomplished very quickly.

Suzanna Hupp, whose parents were murdered in the Luby’s Cafeteria mass shooting, explained to lawmakers this very point (around the 1:50 mark).

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Oh my… Did he really say that?
Per the WSJ, a quote from Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter (HT: Ron’s Bloviaing),

Conservatives like to argue that these are isolated incidents carried out by lunatics and therefore carry no big lessons (unless the perpetrator is Muslim, in which case it’s terrorism); liberals view them as opportunities to address various social ills. Obama is in the latter category and should act accordingly. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste,” Rahm Emanuel famously said in 2008. The same goes for a shooting spree that gravely wounds a beloved congresswoman.

Like a lot of folks, I’ve been watching a lot of news coverage of this past weekend’s shooting in Tuscon. My thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families.

A couple of thoughts about the tragedy and its aftermath:

1. I never fail to be surprised at the lengths people will go to score political points from such a tragedy. I think most voters see such politicians for what they really are and they’ll get their just desserts the next time an election rolls around.

2. A Predictable Tragedy in Tuscon in today’s Wall Street Journal is a worthwhile read. And no, it doesn’t have anything to do with political speech. Instead, it focuses on one of the most underreported aspects of the story: the fact that the shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, had untreated mental illnesses. As long as we continue to ignore the problem of how we as a society deal with treatment of the mentally ill we’ll see these type of events continue to occur. All you have to do is look back at similar events and see how many of the perpetrators had a history of mental illness.

3. A related point to #2 above: Tuscon police missed the warning signs about Loughner’s behavior?

4. Another question that is begging to be asked and answered: why weren’t the police at Congresswoman Giffords’ event? If the political rhetoric is as dangerous as Sheriff Dupnik says then why didn’t he have any deputies there to provide security?

5. A natural response in the aftermath of a tragedy such as this is to talk about passing tougher gun control laws. But consider this quote:

Laws that forbid the carrying of arms… disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes… Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.” –Cesare Beccaria, On Crimes and Punishment, quoted by Thomas Jefferson in Commonplace Book

6. Leave it to Michael Ramirez to provide astute media analysis.

Back in the day, at my blog New Covenant, I would periodically run a set of posts highlighting various current events or issues at hand, known as Rusty Nails. Similar to Mark’s Things Heard and Doug’s Friday Link Wrap-Up, I’ll be starting up a Stones Cry Out version of Rusty Nails.

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I’m looking through you. So, Sir Paul is happy to have a President who knows what a library is? Has Sir Paul become a U.S. citizen or is he simply giving us some unsolicited opinion? Anyway, maybe our current President knows what a library is, but he also thought:  we have 58 states, Switzerland has its own language, England and the U.K. are interchangeable, the word “Orion” is pronounced “Ore-EEon”, the U.S. constitution was written 22 centuries ago, the word “corpsman” is pronounced “corpse-man”, and… Please, Paul, stick to singing.

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Why do I need to learn math, after all, I’ll NEVER use it! Maybe. Or maybe not. It seems that 20% of borrowers with poor math skills experienced foreclosure, while only 5% of those with strong math skills did.

The inability to perform simple mathematical calculations is likely to negatively impact a borrower’s ability to manage a household budget. In addition, such an inability may adversely affect the borrower’s ability to choose the appropriate type of mortgage given his or her current financial status and expected future financial situation. Both of these scenarios would likely put a borrower at risk of falling behind on his or her mortgage.

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Well, then, take a numeracy quiz. Better yet, have your children take the quiz.

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What happens when the populace has more guns? 14,000,000 guns sold in the U.S. in 2009.