According to news sources, Hasan is a Muslim who disagreed with U.S. foreign policy and was resisting deployment to the Middle East.  The politically correct spin is that Hasan had been harassed about being a Muslim and was at the end of his rope with regard to legal methods of avoiding deployment.  The report that Hasan yelled “God is good!” before he began murdering his fellow soldiers would tend to indicate that the killings were a Jihadist act of terrorism.  “Alu Akbar” is the venerable battle cry of a Muslim warrior.

The shocking killings by a U.S. Army field grade officer raise disturbing issues about the role of Muslims in the military.  All service members take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies.  Christianity urges that its followers “render unto Caesar.”  Islam teaches that devotion to Allah supercedes all national loyalties.

The U.S. is committed to religious freedom.  How do you reconcile that value with a religious doctrine that prescribes the death penalty for leaving the faith?  Islam may, depending on interpretation, legitimize the killing of “infidels” during Jihad as a way to obtain blissful eternal life. 

Unfortunate fallout from this incident will probably include more calls for gun control and more discrimination and harassment against Muslims.  There are no easy answers on this massacre.  There are not even any easy questions.  For our part, we must not let Left-wing politicians parlay a shooting in a government-mandated “criminal-safe free fire zone” (gun-free zone) into more restrictions on our fundamental natural right to armed self-defense from crime, tyranny and genocide recognized by the Second Amendment.

Def Mech

As least two other individuals have been detained in conjunction with this event.  Their roles appear to be uncertain at this time.

News sources seem reluctant to call the shootings a terrorist attack, but the officer involved seems to have a name associated with Middle Eastern origins.  As a major in the U.S. Army, the shooter would have to have undergone some sort of background checks to obtain security clearances.

The shootings undoubtedly occurred in a nominal “gun free zone” on the sprawling Fort Hood Military Installation.  It is beyond imagination that one man with two handguns could have killed about a dozen armed soldiers.

The families and comrades of the fallen deserve our somber thoughts and heartfelt prayers.  My initial reaction leans toward a terrorist explanation.  Only time will tell, if this plays out.

Under any sort of gun control scheme imaginable, the army major would have had access to firearms.  We will see if the Left tries to use this tragedy as a springboard for more gun control.

Def Mech

Of the 5 states with the highest denial rates, Colorado led the country in the percentage of wrongful denials.  71% of Colorado denials were reversed on appeal.

In the Centennial State, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) conducts background checks for individuals who buy firearms from licensed dealers and at gun shows.  The U.S. Government also runs a background check system through the FBI.

The FBI National Instant Check System (NICS) had only a 4% denial reversal rate for 2008. According to my calculations, the NICS check was almost 18 times more accurate in protecting honest citizens than the CBI background check.

Colorado Residents, please contact the Governor of Colorado, your State Senator, and your State Representative. Ask that the state move the CBI check to the NICS.

*Source: Workman, Dave, “Nearly 11,000 wrongly denied by background checks in 2008,” The new Gun Week, Second Amendment Foundation, Bellevue, WA, 09-15-09, Page 2.

Def Mech

Now, in their never-ending campaign to reign in the barbaric pub crawling inclinations of the “Great Unwashed,” otherwise known as British subjects or commoners, the Home Office is proposing to replace glass beer glasses with plastic ones.  There is obviously a crisis here.  According to a BBC report, about 5,500 subjects are the victims of glass attacks every year in England and Wales.  I’m sure the figures from Scotland were too horrible to report.

Professor Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy estimated that this works out to about one attack with a glass or bottle for every 1,000,000 pints served, assuming all attacks are conducted with pint containers.  “If it only saves one pint…,” as the saying goes.

Where will it end?  I’m sure the Home Office has detailed plans to take away sharp-pointed scissors.  How about those deadly umbrella tips?  The Brits carry a lot of umbrellas.  Hard-soled shoes could be used to kick and stomp innocent commoners.  Maybe they should get rid of those hard soles, or is it hard souls? 

Belts!  Belts can be used as weapons.  Read Kipling’s stories and poems.  Belts can be used to strangle innocent commoners.  Forks have those sharp tines on them.  I don’t know if commoners should be allowed to have forks.

I’ve got it.  The British Home Office should force all commoners to wear soft-soled slippers.  No belts or suspenders for them!  It’s hard to assault somebody, if you are holding up your pants with both hands.  We won’t even talk about bra straps.  No scarves, feather boas, or eye glasses.  (You could cut somebody with the lenses.) 

All umbrellas must have rounded tips.  The subjects can use soft plastic spoons and drink from plastic sippy cups.  Wait!  Forget the sippy cups.  That projection on the top could be used to put out someone’s eye.  OK.  Just plastic cups without projections.

No chop sticks!  No ball points or fountain pens!  No shoe laces!  All pub and restaurant furniture should be bolted to the floor.  A thrown chair can be a weapon of mass destruction. 

Darts?  Darts?  Darts in a British pub?  Don’t even think about darts!  Have you seen the points on those things?  Maybe floppy darts with suction cups on the ends…

Who are we kidding here?  The Brits should just handcuff their subjects at all times or restrain them with those shock bracelets that deliver a taser-like jolt in the event of misbehavior.

I would laugh myself silly over the antics of our British cousins, if the Liberal proponents of American gun control didn’t think that the Home Office has the right idea.  Be afraid of the Nanny State.  Be very afraid.  Whether it’s gun control or socialized medicine, the Liberal statists want to control every aspect of your existence.

Don’t believe me?  Find out what happens to you in San Francisco, if you don’t sort your recyclables and garbage into the right bins. (See my post, “San Francisco proposes ‘Garbage Police.’  Am I psychic or what?” dated 08-01-08 tagged “San Francisco,”)

Def Mech

Note to Chicago City Government Officials: criminals don’t obey laws.  Gun makers are not flooding your city with firearms for the criminal market.  More reasonable gun laws elsewhere are not the reason that you have a problem. 

If Britain had the criminal elements and gang bangers that you have, Britain would have a worse situation with violence than they do now, after they passed their handgun ban and began collecting sharp-pointed kitchen knives.  If gun control worked, both Chicago and Britain would be much safer than they are.

If Japan had Chicago’s gangsters, the Japanese would have a higher crime rate.  Please read David Kopel’s book, The Samurai, the Mountie and the Cowboy, Should America Adopt the Gun Controls of Other Democracies?  Prometheus Books, Buffalo, New York, 1992, pages 431 and 432.  Consider Mr. Kopel’s conclusion that social controls and not gun control are the reasons for lower crime rates in these two island nations on opposite sides of the globe.

Baseball bats!  That’s it!  Baseball bats!  A baseball bat murderer in Boulder Colorado was just sent to prison on DNA evidence.  Maybe if you ban baseball bats, that will solve the Chicago violence problem.

You never know, bats might the answer.  If we could only get them out of some of the Chicago belfreys…

Def Mech

The US Justice Department’s Project Safe Neighborhoods Program supported the project.  CU Professor Mark Pogrebin led the team of CU and CSU researchers, who surveyed prisoners in 2003, 2004.

We should keep in mind that 73 individuals constitute an extremely small sample size, totaling about four percent of the subjects of the landmark prison study done by Professors Wright and Rossi.  (See my post under the Category: “Research.”)

The Colorado study group may have been an available sample rather than a random sample, but we will have to wait for the book in July to look at their selection process.

Given these potential limitations, we can consider the self-reports of the prisoners to be representative to some degree of the Colorado population of convicted felons who have used firearms in the commission of a crime.  (We should keep in mind that it is illegal for a convicted felon to possess a firearm.)

It will be instructive to find out if the book goes into other crimes committed by the research subjects.  The book does apparently touch on the role of drugs, especially Meth, in increasing violent criminal behavior.  (It is also illegal for drug addicts to possess firearms.)

According to the article, the Colorado findings suggest that “gun-control laws would have had little effect on the study subjects’ criminal behavior.”  The impressive CDC Study and the even more massive NAS Study, which indicate that there is no substantial scientific evidence that gun control laws prevent crime, support this conclusion.  (See my posts under the Category: “Research.”)

Another interesting finding of the study in question is that some criminals would be deterred by liberal concealed carry laws.  Wright and Rossi found that criminals are risk averse and, in effect, do a kind of risk/benefit analysis when selecting victims.

Florida Scientist Gary Kleck found up to 2 million defensive uses of firearms every year in the United States.  Economist John Lott postulates that “shall issue” concealed carry laws save lives and reduce crime.  (See David Kopel’s review of John Lott’s book, More Guns, Less Crime, here.)

An interesting artifact of the Colorado Study is that “most inmates said that concealed weapons…” or “the perception” of concealed weapons in the hands of potential victims would lead to more violent behavior on the part of the criminals.  There are two possible problems with giving credence to this idea.

The first problem is that the criminals in the study group could have been motivated by bravado, attempting to convince the researchers (and themselves) that they were not intimidated by the idea of relatively widespread, spontaneous, armed opposition to their felonious acts.  The second, and more insidious possibility, is that the convicts knew that their responses might find their way into public policy debates on concealed weapons permits.  What better way for a career criminal to improve “business conditions” than to provide responses to researchers that might actually disarm potential victims?

Most criminals do not attack police officers in order to take their weapons.  Few criminals attempt armed robberies at gun stores or gun shows.  I personally give more weight to the much larger Wright and Rossi Study and the evidence of crime deterrence suggested by Dr. Kleck and Dr. Lott.

One convict’s remark that he would shoot people he thought were carrying concealed guns should make it abundantly clear that CCW permit holders’ names must be kept private to protect them and society as a whole.  Another implication of this individual’s attitude is that we should incarcerate dangerous felons for as long as possible to keep them from committing future criminal acts.

According to the Post article, this small Colorado study seems to agree with much of the research supporting the Second Amendment and the fundamental right of American Citizens to self-defense against crime.  Defense against tyranny and genocide appear to be beyond the scope of the study.  It will be interesting to check out the book.

Def Mech

Washington D.C., where the Holocaust Museum Shooting took place, is a legally mandated “gun free” zone for ordinary, common citizens.  (Think of it as a criminal-safe, free-fire zone, although, this time, there were armed security guards.)

Possession of a firearm by a convicted felon is against the law. Brandishing a weapon is illegal.  Murder or attempted murder, battery, or even a verbal offer of violence is illegal.  Von Brunn broke numerous laws in his intended rampage, which thankfully was ended by people with guns.  Criminals, by definition, don’t obey laws.  That statement should be engraved somewhere on a library.

There are roughly 80,000,000 law-abiding gun owners in this country.  We must not allow ourselves to become hostage to acts of violence perpetrated by deranged individuals. 

For those firearms enthusiasts who slowly shoot paper targets, collect antiques or “curios and relics,” and those hunters who use lever action, bolt action, or pump firearms, be advised that this crime was committed with an “old” rifle.  Do not ever be deluded into the notion that the “Progressive” Left only wants to take away handguns and “black” rifles.  If they can ban an AR-15, I believe that they can and will, ban your target rifle, hunting rifle, or Winchester ’73.

Look at the interconnecting web of restrictive regulations being spun by the Homeland Security Report on “right-wing extremists,” H.R. 2159, and H.R. 2401.  The Homeland Security Report broad brushes veterans, abortion opponents, Evangelical Christians, and “single issue” advocates (read Second Amendment supporters) as potential terrorists.

H.R. 2159 allows the Attorney General to declare you to be a terrorist based on “a preponderance of the evidence” and may deny you the right to confront your accuser based on “national security interests.”  Once on a watch list, you have no legal right to possess a gun or get on a plane.

McCarthy’s bill, H.R. 2401, the “No Fly, No Buy Act of 2009,” would include “persons who may be prevented from boarding an aircraft in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System…”

The Page 1B, 05-31-2009  Denver Post article,”Name’s not the same?  That just won’t fly,” “Mistaken ID’s of flyers on watch lists happen daily,” outlines some of the problems with the current aircraft boarding program.  What happens if you happen to have the same name as a “terrorist” on the “No Fly List?” “No Fly, no buy?”  

What happens if an errant bug falls into a printer at our Big Brother’s Ministry of Information or whatever it was that they called “Spy on You Central” in Terry Gilliam’s prophetic, dystopian movie, Brazil.   It could be, “No Fly, no buy!”  No legal right to own a gun, ever! 

(Dystopia is a variation on utopia, meaning a utopian vision that didn’t work out.  See 1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World, It Can’t Happen Here, Soylent Green, Minority Report, and Logan’s Run, for a few warnings about dystopian societies that may be closer to our present reality than we would like to think.)

By the way, isn’t it strange that shortly after the Homeland Security Report came out, we have multiple shooting incidents that seem to reinforce the conclusions of the report?  Abortion clinic shooting.  Anti-Semitic shooting.  Hmmm!  Von Brunn: name sounds Nazi-like, doesn’t it?  (See my post, “Look for more shootings after church killing and more calls for gun control,” 03-12-09, under the Category “Spree Killings.”)

In any case, all law-abiding gun owners must stand together in resisting further attempts by the Left to restrict our fundamental right to self-defense against crime, tyranny, and genocide.  Failure to do so will result in our demotion from citizens to subjects.  Remember!  The British Olympic Pistol Team trains in Switzerland, because it would be illegal for them to practice on their native soil.

Def Mech

The CBS hit piece on Americans’ right to self-defense from crime, tyranny and genocide apparently followed an NBC attack on 04-10-09.  We can expect an increasingly shrill crescendo of anti-Second Amendment rhetoric until at least after the anniversary of the Columbine killings.  There may be anti-NRA demonstrations at the Phoenix convention in May.

Why do I say that the CBS piece was biased?  Let’s look first at the timing of the piece to fit in with the annual, anti-gun rights, spring barrage.  The annual Columbine mourning and the upcoming annual NRA Convention provide ample targets for this sort of propaganda.

Next, let’s look at the structure of the segment.  It was a typical “advocacy journalism” set up.  The story opened with the implication that guns cause mass murders and that people buying guns is not a good thing.  The producers bring on a “straw man,” in this case the head of a Virginia gun rights organization.  Then, the presentation closes with a sound bite from anti-gun California Senator, Diane Feinstein, intimately associated with the first ban on semi-automatic firearms during the Clinton Administration.

You will notice that the pro gun-control side of the argument got the first and last slots in the segment.  It was designed this way, so viewers will tend to remember the anti-gun message.  The pro-gun rights “straw man” was “rebutted” by the closing arguments.

The “straw man” did mention that just one legally-armed student might have aborted the Virginia Tech Killings, which occurred in a “gun free criminal safe free fire zone.”  However, that statement was effectively drowned in the much more extensive coverage given to the anti-gun side of the argument.

Keep in mind that the producers controlled every minute aspect of this “news” report.  They just “happened,” to photograph some Nazi swastika flags at the gun show during the interview with the “straw man.”  These flags are normally displayed in conjunction with displays offering collections of war trophy Nazi memorabilia.  The casual observer of the “news” story probably wouldn’t know this, nor even consciously be aware that he or she was being led to associate the flags with the “straw man.”  Get it!  “Gun shows and gun rights are tied to Nazism!”  Excellent job of unconscious psychological persuasion!  Pavlov, not to mention Lenin, would be proud.

Let’s look at the advocates for the various sides in this “news” story.  There was one pro-individual rights advocate interviewed.  There were five pro-gun control viewpoints presented, including interviews with a wounded Virginia Tech student, the relative of a person killed in the Virginia Tech Massacre, an anti-gun law enforcement representative, and Diane Feinstein.  Illinois anti-gun Senator Dick Durbin got in his two cents for “sensible gun laws” in a sound bite.  Five to one aren’t bad odds  in a “news” story?

You will note that there were no persons interviewed or quoted who had employed firearms for self-defense, even though Dr. Gary Kleck estimates that up to 2.5 million defensive uses of guns occur every year.  You wouldn’t know it from this report.

Language is also telling.  The report misidentified semi-automatic, or self-loading firearms, as “assault weapons.”  ”Assaults” are bad things, right?  By pejorative labeling of commonly owned guns, the producers can shape the perceptions of viewers in the desired direction.

Real “assault weapons” are capable of fully automatic fire.  The guns shown in the news story are not.  You have to pull the trigger every time to fire a round from a self-loading firearm.  With a full-auto weapon, you pull the trigger and the gun will fire multiple rounds.  Advocates for more gun control typically deliberately blur this distinction.

In the segment, advocates for individual rights were called “The Gun Lobby,” which has a “stranglehold” on Congress.  Private sales of firearms at gun shows without background checks are referred to as “The Gun Show Loophole.”  (Ooh! Doesn’t that make you want to close that pesky “loophole,” register all gun sales, and force those nasty “gun lobby stranglers” back under the rocks from which they crawled?)

Never fear!  Even though the police are currently “outgunned” by drug dealers and gang bangers armed with their “gun of choice,” the “assault weapon,” Diane Feinstein will pick the time and place to push her gun control legislation and save us all from ourselves.

It’s extremely interesting to me that criminals and gangs didn’t seem to have a lot of interest in semi-automatic rifles, until the news media began hyping the idea that self-loading firearms were “guns of choice.”  I suppose the media had to point out to the gangsters what guns they should be using.

According to the CBS report, a recent poll indicated that “only” 49% of Americans currently favor stricter gun control laws.  After a few weeks of this kind of “news” reporting, the numbers will probably rise.

Now, I don’t object to the fact that CBS and “60 Minutes” producers have opinions on the issue of gun control.  I would just like them to express their opinions as opinions, and stop calling them “news.”  I would also like Mainstream Media pundits to clean up their language on the debate and stop trying to shape public opinion against gun owners.  Silly me!  That’s what advocacy journalism does! They have to make the world a ” better place”, a place like Chicago, or Oakland.  (See my posts under the Category: “Gun Law Failures.”)

Def Mech

The report goes on to describe smuggling from other countries and desertions from the Mexican Army as other sources of firearms used in the epidemic bloodbath south of the border.  In spite of their draconian anti-gun laws, gang violence continues to tear the country apart.  (See my posts on Mexico under the Category, “Foreign Gun Laws.”)

Don’t look for the well-funded and ideologically-driven Left to abandon the Mexican situation as a springboard for more U.S. gun control.  In spite of the fact that we have about 22,000 gun laws in this country, Tom Diaz, of the Violence Policy Center, describes the U.S. “gun market” as “wide open.”

Def Mech

Def Mech