Michael Bane, who appears to be an outdoorsy type with a shooting sports program on the Outdoors Channel, also has contacts within the National Shooting Sports Foundation, an organization of firearm manufacturers. He's used those contacts to good effect, and he has this to say:
FLASH! CNN Violated Federal Firearms Law!
Based
on my conversations with legal experts within the firearms industry,
CNN did indeed violate at least one, and probably two, federal firearms
laws in their reporting of the .50 caliber controversy last week.
Representatives of the industry are currently in touch with the ATF.
More to come.
That's
right, folks. Expert lawyers from the firearms industry are now
saying that CNN broke the law. Better yet, this is not an ATF guy
seeing the situation for the first time this morning and firing off a
quick response to have Houston look into it. This is a reasonably
considered opinion, by more than one lawyer with expertise in the area,
informed and prompted by a fellow blogger who has been following the
situation on his own and is thus aware of the full situation as we have developed it over the weekend.
And those lawyers thought enough of the matter that they are contacting the ATF themselves. That's serious, folks. It's not just armchair attorneys and non-attorney bloggers over drinks in the den anymore.
Now we watch the situation develop, and see how the ATF chooses to handle it.
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers! Please feel free to browse the rest of the blog.
Most of what's on the front page is related to the CNN .50 caliber report, but there's quite
a bit of other stuff too. The link above the update describes the
full situation with links to all the other blogs (that I know of)
discussing this, but that's on the front page too, so feel free to start at the top and scroll to your heart's content.
UPDATE: Michael Bane has another update with more detail.
UPDATE: Since Michael has raised the intent issue, I figure it should
be addressed. As I understand it (and I should reiterate here
that I am not a lawyer), there is a common law tradition of requiring
ill intent before a criminal law can be violated. That means it's
hard to get in serious trouble unless you deliberately did something
wrong. On the other hand, that's a tradition that isn't
necessarily binding, and many laws these days are explicitly intended
to apply whether or not ill intent exists.
I don't see anything in the 1968 Gun Control Act that would require ill
intent as a matter of law. So we're basically in the realm of
prosecutorial discretion. The BATFE can choose not to prosecute
CNN's reporters for this, whether they violated the law or not, for
what amounts to strategic or economic reasons.
They have the same options with respect to the seller, but he doesn't
have the weight of CNN behind him. Much easier target,
unfortunately.
As Michael Bane noted, however, lack of ill intent doesn't excuse CNN
from the ethical concerns related to this story. In particular,
the ethical concerns related to doing a story on firearms law, in order
to advocate gun control legislation, and getting the law wrong. (Or, at best, deliberately misleading the public about what they were representing as legal). Not that this is anything new to gun owners; the Assault Weapons Ban was a model of propaganda journalism.
The fact is, gun control laws are a mess of complex, sometimes silly,
regulations that do absolutely noting to keep a determined criminal
from getting his hands on a firearm. It took all weekend for a
bunch of gunbloggers to figure out if what CNN did was legal or not,
and we know the law on this narrow subject about as well as any layman
can. CNN has an expensive legal staff for stories like this, and
they missed a detail with months to set up the story.
How can any normal person expect to safely navigate the law just to own
a gun or two for self-defense, hunting, or civil defense? If you
make a mistake, the consequences are huge: a federal felony, and
forbidden to possess a gun for the rest of your life. In America,
gun ownership is both a right and a duty. It's time we brought
the laws of our Congress back in line with the laws of our Constitution:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary
to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,
shall not be infringed.
UPDATE: Countertop Chronicles doesn't think that intent is a factor here.
Since I try to avoid stepping between dueling lawyers (commenting from
the sidelines is much safer), I will quote from him:
The
simple fact is that CNN didn't commit a common law crime, where mens
rea is an element of guilt. No, instead they violated a statute that
provides for strict liability, ir-regardless of intent. Your reading is
correct Michael. As David Kopel, in his excellent article Trust The
People: The Case Against Gun Control discusses,
As a
practical man, I must admit that I doubt the BATFE will actually
prosecute anyone at CNN, regardless of what the law says, unless
serious pressure is applied to force them to do so. The question
they will most likely be asking is not, "What is the correct reading of
the law?" but "What is the reading of the law that will allow us to
avoid having CNN as an enemy?"
Justice, however, requires it. Equal justice, for all: CNN reporters included.
UPDATE: If you are here for firearms issues, you might also enjoy my coverage of Seegars v Ashcroft, a 2nd-Amendment case just decided by the DC circuit appeals court and possibly destined for the Supreme Court.
I found this link (or rather, was pointed to it by a friend) through the process of visiting Google, entering "Weapons of Mass Destruction" in the search, and clicking the button labeled "I'm Feeling Lucky" (which takes you to the top-ranked google search result directly). The link in the headline will take you to that page. It's well worth it.
When police Officer Randall Smith was accidentally shot in the head by a fellow officer with a Glock semiautomatic pistol in 1995, he sued the gun maker, claiming the weapon was defectively designed and unnecessarily dangerous.
Glock settled the lawsuit. But for the rest of his life, Smith, whose injuries left him permanently brain damaged and cost him his police job in Birmingham, Ala., is barred from talking about the case or revealing any details he learned about Glock before the settlement. His lawyer also is barred from talking, restricted by a confidentiality agreement that is a standard policy for Glock when settling lawsuits.
Glock?s and other gun manufacturers? insistence on confidentiality agreements is common in product liability settlements. The agreements have kept critical information about the safety record of the gun from the public and are a prime example of how the gun industry actively conceals information about injuries and fatalities connected with its products. The industry has done so with the help of Congress and the powerful National Rifle Association lobby.
As any lawyer could tell you, confidentiality agreements regarding legal settlements and documents examined during discovery in a lawsuit are extremely common. Lawsuits often deal with and uncover many kinds of internal details of business's operation that could provide valuable information to competitors, or even to those opposing the business on other grounds -- like gun control advocates. The existance of a secrecy agreement in no way presupposes that the manufacturer has something sinister to hide -- no more than if any citizen found himself hauled into court would want the details of his own life exposed to public view.
If the plaintiffs in this case felt they had uncovered some compelling evidence, they could have chosen not to settle. The Detroit News in this case is unhappy that the terms of the settlement did not give them additional information with which to attack the gun industry, justified or not; and I have little sympathy for their desire to do so.
As for the facts of this case, and many of the others relating to Glock firearms, they are somewhat different than the description given by this editorial might indicate. Glock firearms use a safety mechanism called a "trigger safety"; they operate on the principle that the gun should fire when the trigger is pulled. Each time, every time. Police departments often choose Glock for exactly this reason. Glock firearms are simple to use; point the gun at the target and pull the trigger.
As the article itself admits, "The guns safety features effectively prevent accidental discharges if the weapon is dropped or bumped. But the Glock has no safety features that prevent it from firing if the trigger is accidentally pulled." And this is by design. When you need a firearm, you need it to work. And when you are a police officer, the extra time needed to click off a safety could mean your life -- and doubly so if you forget about the safety, and try to fire the gun while it is engaged.
Following the rules of gun safety with a Glock will prevent accidents just as with any other firearm. Don't point the gun at what you aren't willing to shoot; don't pull the trigger unless you expect the gun to go off. Remember that each time you see someone talking about a firearms "accident": if they pulled the trigger while the gun was pointed at someone, it's not an accident.
People who buy Glock firearms do so making an informed decision about the qualities of the firearm. The popularity of Glock firearms with police departments across the nation suggests that the Glock designs are well-received and fill the needs of those departments well. That's an indication of the free market working as designed -- because other firearms, with more safety features and consequently less reliability in a crisis, are available if police departments wish to purchase them.
The gun has no manual safety to prevent it from firing if the trigger is accidentally pulled. In fact, the gun?s safety features ? extremely effective in preventing discharges if the gun is dropped or hit ? automatically are turned off every time the trigger is depressed.
In addition, most Glocks have no indicator that shows the guns are loaded and no magazine safety to prevent them from firing when the ammunition clip is removed. And unlike many other guns, the Glock is always semicocked and ready to shoot. This inner tension in its firing mechanism increases the likelihood of discharge if the trigger is accidentally moved, some gun experts say.
"What you have is a gun that is almost too eager to fire," said Carter Lord, a national firearms and ballistics consultant. "I think it may be an appropriate weapon for highly trained paramilitary officers in a SWAT team, but not for most police officers and certainly not for civilians."
Nonsense. The design features of a Glock are clearly oriented towards the simple principle of firing when the trigger is pulled, each time and every time. As they say in software development, that's a feature, not a bug. It does require careful handling, and some people may prefer a firearm with more safety features -- but that's no reason to prevent those who do have a need for the Glock's design features from buying firearms with those features.
If you don't want the gun to fire, don't pull the trigger. It's that simple.
One of the Glock?s most frightening attributes is its ability to easily be converted into a full automatic weapon capable of firing at the rate of 1,000 rounds a minute. Glock has issued no warnings and made no changes in its design that would prevent its weapons from being converted into submachine guns. Experts say the problem can be corrected with minor changes in how Glock pistols are made.
A full automatic Glock will fire 33 bullets in seconds with one trigger pull. And the gun can be quickly converted to full automatic mode for as little as $10 with homemade parts. It is a well-documented danger known to law enforcement.
"In some regions of California, police are treating any Glock they encounter as a machine gun until proven otherwise," states an advisory on the Association of Forensic Firearm and Toolmark Examiners Web site that lists dangerous or defective guns.
"The conversion from standard to fully automatic is fast and simple, requiring no technical expertise. The conversion is accomplished merely by swapping one piece for the other. A ?real pro? can make the switch in 15 seconds."
Now, this is an allegation that I haven't heard before. But, I do know the law on fully-automatic firearms. In case you do not, fully-automatic firearms are legal for civilians to own and transfer (but not to manufacture) by federal law. Some states restrict this further. But the federal law defining a fully-automatic weapon for this purpose defines it as any weapon capable of firing more than one round with a single trigger pull, or which is easily converted to do so.
Think about that for a moment. If you really could convert a Glock into a submachine gun in 15 seconds, the government would be regulating the Glock firearms as fully-automatic firearms already. The law makes no distinction between "fully automatic" and "readily converted to fully automatic". And yet, Glocks are made and sold for civilian use every day.
So is this a valid claim? It's hard to say. The Detroit News cites the
Association of Firearm and Tool Mark Examiners website as the source of this claim. The only reference on that website is to an ATF advisory which is for "members only" and password protected. While the subject of the advisory is suggestive, without access to the full text it's impossible to tell exactly what it says.
Did the Detroit News get special access to this advisory -- or are they making assumptions based on the name and a website search?
As we go through the long list of lies and tricks in Fahrenheit 911, keep in mind that Michael Moore has assembled a ?war room? of political operatives and lawyers in order to respond to criticism of Fahrenheit 911 and to file defamation suits. (Jack Shafer, ?Libel Suit 9/11. Michael Moore?s hysterical, empty threats,? Slate.com, June 12, 2004.)
Of course if his staff contacts National Review Online and points out any genuine errors in this report, the errors will be promptly corrected. Conversely, because Moore has a paid expert staff which is monitoring criticism of the movie, it is reasonable to assume that?unless NRO has specifically retracted some item in this column?every factual statement in this column has been tacitly conceded to be legitimate by Moore and his staff.
In this report, I number Moore?s deceits. Some of them are outright lies; some are omissions which create a false impression. Others involve different forms of deception. A few are false statements Moore has made when defending the film.
Dave Kopel has an extensive, researched list of errors from Moore's Fahrenheit 911; it's good reading from a thorough scholar. The tidbit about Moore's "trained attack lawyers" ready to file libel lawsuits against critics is just the icing on the cake. As usual, though, I don't recommend actually paying to watch the movie, even if your intent is to criticize. It's a waste of your time and the money goes straight to Moore whether you like him or not.
If you absolutely must descend into this sewer of filth, I suggest a four-pack: get Moore's movie, get the rebuttal, and get the original book and movie that Moore is referencing with his title.
So, CNN sends a reporter to conduct an out-of-state purchase from a
private seller in order to obtain a .50 caliber rifle for their
story. (I wonder if, maybe, they tried to obtain one from the
manufacturer and Barrett refused?) To see their video clip,
you'll have to look on the right of this search results page.
Suffice it to say, after they get the rifle, they shoot at an airplane
door and proceed to demonstrate that just about any rifle is powerful
enough to put a hole in an airplane's thin aluminum skin.
So what's the legality of this little adventure? The 1968 Gun
Control Act made out-of-state firearm sales illegal. The 1987
Firearm Owner's Protection Act may have removed that restriction for long guns; I say may because I haven't found a good explanation. From memory, I think
that the 1987 law relaxes the rules for purchases from a dealer but
continues to prohibit long guns. And, of course, if your state
bans the .50 (eg, California) then your purchase cannot be legal.
Worse, after the 1987 law, and in part due to the hoopla over the
so-called "gun show loophole", many states passed laws restricting
private sales in a variety of ways. So depending on the state,
performing a private sale without a background check may be illegal
even if the seller is not a licensed firearms dealer.
I will try to nail down the details of the law on this matter.
But I find it interesting that CNN would choose to air this
story. They just recently lost Eason Jordan,
one of their executives, to the blogosphere's demands for
accountability. Are they really that eager to attract more
attention? Well, the segment is out there now. They
shall reap what they have sown.
Lloyd Woods is a Vietnam veteran and longtime hunter who has spent much of his life handling and using guns. But when he bought a used Remington 700 bolt action hunting rifle in 1988, he had no way of knowing that the sleek, carefully finished exterior hid a dangerous design flaw - a defect that has injured more than a hundred people.
The series of small, metal parts that control the gun's firing mechanism were prone to failure, making the rifle accidentally discharge without the trigger being pulled.
Remington Arms Co. officials knew of this problem in some rifles as early as 1947, but for decades failed to fix the firing mechanism or warn customers of the danger.
The problem, the company's own records show, could have been fixed for 32 cents a rifle.
There are a couple things to bear in mind here as we begin a careful examination of the Detroit News' attack on Remington.
They've gone back to 1996 to find an illustrative incident, regarding a gun that was bought (used) in 1988. Thats about 15 years -- quite a long time for something that is supposed to illustrate a current, serious problem. Especially when you have to go back even further to find the date of original sale.
They claim the problem dates back to 1947, and their quoted cost figure to 1981, which means the "32 cents per rifle" figure is in 1981 "cents" rather than 2003 "cents" -- what would be an almost trivial cost today would be more serious in 1981.
They claim that over 100 people have been injured by this design flaw since 1970. Reality check here. 100 people over 30 years? More children drown in bathtubs over a SINGLE year.
This "design flaw" does not occur on new rifles. The firing mechanism must first be damaged or worn.
And, of course, in order for this design flaw to actually injure anyone, the person holding the gun must break the rules of gun safety -- by pointing a loaded gun at something they are not willing to shoot.
It was far from an isolated incident. Since the 1970s, more than a hundred people - mainly hunters - have been injured, maimed or killed when their Remington rifles accidentally fired without the trigger being pulled.
Missouri attorney Richard Miller, who estimates he has handled about 100 cases against Remington, said the firearm manufacturer's own records show it has received more than 1,500 complaints of unintentional discharges involving the 700 rifle.
Leaving aside the habit of the Detroit News reporters of quoting from lawyers on only one side of these cases, there's an interesting ratio here: 1,500 complaints resulting in 100 cases. That is, a 15-to-1 ratio of people experiencing the problem versus people being injured by the problem. Once more we see that safe gun handling is the order of the day.
Remington, under new ownership since it was sold by DuPont for $300 million in 1993, insists that modifications in the 1982 rifles - which allow them to be unloaded with the safety on - have ended the problem. And they say an ongoing recall of pre-1982 rifles, initiated last year, is addressing the problem with older rifles.
Hmm. I'm trying to recall the theme of this series -- you know, how current laws are not enough to encourage responsible behavior from firearm manufacturers? And yet, I'm seeing that Remington fixed this problem in 1982, and has a recall in progress for guns made prior to that year!
Since CNN aired a story on hw "easy" it is to legally purchase a .50
caliber rifle, and in the process appears to have violated the Gun
Control Act of 1968 at least once and possibly more than once, the
blogosphere has been in a rage. This post serves to collect all
the links in one place. I had some problems editting this post
earlier, so if I am missing any posts on this issue, please put them in
trackbacks, or comments, or email.
Apparantly, someone thinks Canada's gun registry is actually working...
OK, let's see here. 2 million firearm owners registered, with a totally made up 90%. That leaves 10% "known" unregistered firearm owners -- about 200,000 people. And how many unregistered firearms? 7 million registered, estimated 85% coverage... leaving about 1 million unregistered firearms. This is after 2 years and at least two missed deadlines. The people who haven't registered by now aren't going to. And the criminals never were going to, and their ranks are probably not counted in those official estimates.
All this at a cost of nearly $1 billion (Canadian), which is at least a 5x cost overrun from estimates of 200 million. And given the hideous mess the system was in for the first couple years, who knows how accurate those records are?
But this is a success because 9,000 people have been denied firearm licenses under the new program? Hmm. 2 million owners and not even 10,000 denials. How do you know those who had their applications denied did not simply go and acquire one of the 1 million unregistered firearms? That's right -- you don't. In fact, you don't even know that their firearms were collected and taken away. They just don't have the legal piece of paper that says the gun is registered.
Personally, though, I don't consider any program a success just because it signs people up. There needs to be a measurable effect on the problems you're trying to solve -- in this case, crime rates.
What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is straight out of Minority Report. Canada's police agencies have officially implemented the doctrine of precrime. If you look at a police officer the wrong way, or spit on a Mounties' mount, then they'll take your guns away and count it a crime prevented and a success of the program.
Would it be impolite to ask what has happened to Canada's crime rates? Any change? Hmm?
Ah, here we go. Straight out of "How to Lie with Statistics", we have the attempt to redefine terms in a manner that supports your argument. Suddenly, it's not crime that's important: it's firearm death, robbery, and injury rates. When you start taking away firearms, obviously you reduce the rate of firearm-related crime. But what about overall rates? Strangely silent on those.
This journalist at least has the decency to admit that it's too soon to assess the impact of the program... right after implying that the program is responsible for those 30-year lows in firearm crime. Not to be outdone, she immediately follows up by assessing the impact of the program as "encouraging". Impressive intellectual rigor there.
Let's rephrase this with something a bit more illustrative. Let's replace the term "gun owners" with "Jews" and the term "gun" with "Torah" (which is, I think, what Christians would call the books of the Old Testament; but I am no expert on Judaism). Go ahead and read the quoted paragraph again, making those substitutions.
If that doesn't make my point clear, nothing will, so you might as well stop reading here.
In Canada, governments may have a "duty" to protect their citizens from harm (they do not in the US), but they certainly don't have the ability. It's unclear if the author hasn't thought it through or just doesn't realize that not everyone lives within 30 seconds of a police station.
As for regulating dangerous products, firearms (when used properly) are remarkably safe... for the user. They tend not to be safe for people on the wrong end of the barrel, but that is, as they say in software development, "A feature, not a bug." In any case, it's hard to equate "firearms safety regulation" with "nationwide registration scheme", because the firearm doesn't get any safer once the government knows it exists.
And claiming that lack of a firearms registration system might run afoul of human rights laws is ... well... laughable. Or would be, if she wasn't serious.
So it's a good value to spend two-thirds of a billion dollars to identify under 10,000 "precrime" suspects? Interesting math there.
Betcha thought I was kidding about the precrime stuff, huh?
How exactly will either system reduce those costs? Firearm injuries and deaths can be divided into several categories:
Accidents
Crimes
Suicides
Will the criminals stop committing crimes because they would have to register their firearm? Not likely. Will the people who legally own firearms, registered or otherwise, injure themselves at a lower rate now that the government knows they have firearms? Unlikely. Will people who plan on committing suicide balk at registering a gun to do it -- or simply choose another method, perhaps even a gun they have already owned? Doubt it.
So we have a system that costs $70 million per year. Even taking that at face value rather than multiplying it by 5, is it worth that much to buy absolutely no reduction in the $6.6 billion price tag? You would be better off spending the money buying firearms for the poor in high-crime neighborhoods -- then you might actually see a reduction in crime!
Here, we have a couple points to make. First, note the switcheroo -- suddenly we're talking about "firearm" rates rather than overall crime rates. It helps make up better numbers, don'tchaknow. Second, the "preliminary evidence" is in regards to a program which you just admitted earlier is "too soon to assess". But you love to assess it when you can handwave the results! And, of course, let's not miss the fact that (in the US at least, and presumably in Canada) the period around 1990 was a very high crime period, and around 2002 was a very low crime period. Assuming Canadian crime rates followed the same trend, what proof do we have that any firearms registration program had any effect whatsoever?
More statistics, and more ways to lie with them. Note that the absolute numbers of homicides are compared between 1989 and 2002, without regard to changes in population. Note that we're talking about "firearm" homicides. And then we get to the kicker; murders with handguns have increased! Remember, under the "old system" (if I understand correctly), only handguns were registered, and under the new system they added rifles and shotguns. So, even though firearm homicides fell, crimes committed with the type of weapon that was now being registered increased. Crowing about the reduction in rifle and shotgun murders is meaningless when the registration programs for those firearms did not even begin until the end of the sample period.
Oh, and what is with the special line-item for "women"? Are murders of women somehow more evil?
The missing element in this analysis is what effect licensing gun owners and registering guns will have on the costs being cited. Unfortunately for the author, there is reasonable way to postulate reduced costs from licensing and registration of gun owners and their firearms. Money spent on those programs will have no practical return.
I'm ashamed to admit that anyone teaching information technology could make such a poorly-reasoned analysis. But I think the other half of her title explains much about this article.
One of the arguments being provided as support for the Assault Weapons Ban is the change in the number of firearms traces that were traces of assault weapons. This is an oft-cited number because it appears in one of the official government studies about the effectiveness of the ban, and it's one of the very few numbers in that report that suggests any benefit at all. However, anyone reading the study with a basic knowledge of statistics will understand that the number is actually meaningless.
This particular study result is usually cited as a "2/3rds reduction in assault weapons used in crime", and sometimes as a "65% drop". In actual fact, it's a drop from 3% of firearms traces to 1% of firearms traces. The studies cite the change rather than the absolute percentage because the absolute percentage is so low. That's understandable, since it sounds more impressive and is technically accurate. To understand what is misleading about that number, you have to dig even deeper.
For people who don't have the training in statistics to understand this, here's a very short course in statistics to show you what's going on. Most of this information can be applied to just about any public-policy poll or study, since the analysis of such issues depends on the application of statistical analysis.
Without such knowledge, it's easy for the author of a study to mislead by implication about his results.
Sample Bias
Statistics is a science that depends on extrapolating the qualities of a small sample selected from the overall population to predict or explain the behavior of an entire population. This technique is used because, in public policy questions, it's a lot cheaper to measure the sample than the entire population. In order for this extrapolation to be valid, the sample must be taken from the population at random.
This point cannot be overemphasized. A sample which is biased in a way related to the measurements being made will not produce valid results, and there is no simple way to detect the bias by examining only the sample. You may think that getting a random sample is easy, but in fact, it's an extraordinarily difficult thing to do.
Consider a simple telephone survey -- suppose you want to employ someone to call people on the phone, selected at random from a phone book using a computer algorithm. Every day at 9am, this person starts making phone calls to people on the list, and giving surveys to the people who answer. Every day at 5pm, he goes home. Even though you started with a computer-generated random sample drawn from a fairly-complete list of people, you've just eliminated from your survey:
Anyone with a 9-5 job
Anyone who can't afford a telephone
Anyone who has moved since the last phone book was published
Anyone whose privacy concerns are such that their number is unlisted
That's just the beginning of the possibilities, but it should give you an idea how subtle and tricky the question of sample bias can be. There are polling firms that exist solely for the purpose of developing truly random samples and conducting surveys.
So how does this effect the result? Simple: firearms traces are not a random sample. Police departments do not trace every firearm used in a crime, because they don't have every firearm used in a crime. They also trace some firearms that were not used in a crime (for example, recovering stolen property). Different police departments have different policies on when to trace a firearm, meaning that some firearms used in crime will not be traced, and firearm types which police departments find "interesting" will be traced more often, and some states have local databases which they can check before submitting a trace request to the BATFE.
So on the basis of sample bias alone, the number of "assault weapons" traced by the BATFE is useless. It tells us nothing about the general population of assault weapons. Here's what the study's authors have to say about trace data:
Therefore, tracing data are a biased sample of guns recovered by police. Prior studies suggest that assault weapons are more likely to be submitted for tracing than are other confiscated firearms.
Correlation vs Causation
One of the most common mistakes made with statistics in the hands of a layman is mistaking correlation, which many statistical tools designed to analyze, and causation. The difference is vital. Correlation means simply that two factors -- for example, drug use and petty crime -- tend to occur together. Causation means that one factor causes the other, or in our example, that drug use causes petty crime. Statistical analysis can only determine correlation; a carefully designed experiment (that excludes all other conflating variables) is needed to determine causation.
Where that is not possible, studies can try to account for as many significant factors as possible. When this is done, the correlation for individual variables can be determined. This analysis looks a lot like causation; you typically end up with a large number of variables, each with a correlation coefficient relative to a result. So, in our study, we might have variables for the passage of the assault weapons ban, variables for the state each gun trace came from, a variable to indicate whether the state had a pre-existing assault weapons ban in place, and so on. This is done in an attempt to account for variables in the sample that can be known, but not eliminated.
Sometimes that kind of analysis is the best you can do, for cost or ethical reasons. Because it looks a lot like causation, it's often mistaken for such. But it has fundamental flaws when used in that manner. For example, even if the drop in assault weapons traces is highly correlated with the assault weapons ban and all other variables are accounted for, it's impossible to tell (with statistical tools) which direction the causation arrow points. Does the ban cause the reduction, or does the reduction cause the ban? It's easy to form logical assumptions about that arrow, but there is no statistical evidence to back them up.
In this case, people are mistaking the correlation between the passage of the assault weapons ban and the drop in assault weapon traces with the proposition that the assault weapons ban caused the drop. It might have, or it might not have. We just don't know. We don't even have the kind of information and analysis that would help us to eliminate other related variables, which might let us make logical guesses. We just have two raw numbers -- before, and after. That's not enough information to even suggest a causal connection.
Statistical significance
To normal people, the concept of "significance" refers to importance. In statistics, it's subtly different: a correlation is significant if it is sufficiently unlikely to have occurred by chance.
Chance matters because of the randomness (at least, the hoped for randomness) of the sample. Even using a completely random selection process, it's possible to pick a biased sample. If a population of one hundred people has 5 people who like peanuts, and your random sample of 5 people happens to be the 5 people who like peanuts, you're going to think that the entire population likes peanuts -- and you'll be completely wrong. But picking those 5 people for your sample is unlikely.
A large part of statistical analysis is understanding just how unlikely that is, and quantifying it for your specific sample. That way the analyst can report how likely it is that his results are due to chance rather than a true correlation. Sometimes this is reported as a confidence interval (a range of values between which the true value lies some percentage of the time, usually 95%), and at other times as a simple test for significance. Exactly how wide the confidence interval is depends on how much variance is in the sample.
Variance is a term that describes how closely grouped the values of the variable being measured are. If you have a sample of 3 people, one 6 feet tall, one 3 feet tall, and one 10 feet tall, you could describe that sample as having a high variance -- because most people are more tightly clustered in the 5-6 foot range. The variance of a variable influences how broad the confidence interval will be.
Another influence on the size of the confidence interval is the sample size. The larger the sample, the less likely random selection bias will be to influence the results. Using a larger sample won't reduce the variance of the population, but it will reduce the distortion of randomly selecting a non-typical member of the population as part of the sample. In other words, it's harder to pick 500 non-typical examples than it is to pick 5 non-typical exaples.
So what does this mean if you are reading a study, rather than writing one? Simple: look for the author's tests for statistical significance. If there are no tests for statistical significance, the study is bunk; toss it. If there are tests, read them carefully. Usually the level of significance will be specified, with .95 being the most commonly used standard (that is a 5% chance that the results of the study with respect to that specific variable are due solely to chance).
If the study reports that results did not attain significance it's an indication that they are probably not reliable. The results could mean nothing more than the effect of randomness in the sample selection. If the results are reported as significant, check at what level the significance test was conducted. Anything less than 95% significance should be considered questionable, although 90% is sometimes used.
One of the most common tactics for obfuscating lack of results is to report results in the summary that don't pass the significance test in the detailed paper. There's no real way to catch this without reading the whole study, but when the whole thing is available, make sure to check the results reported in the summary against the significance tests for those results.
In the case of the assault weapons ban study, the change from 3% to 1% was tested and found not to be significant. In other words, it presents absolutely no evidence for the effectiveness of the ban. Assault weapons, it turns out, are so rarely traced in absolute numbers that there simply isn't enough data to show any results. The drop in traces, which has been widely reported, is statistically insignificant at the standard 5% level. The authors had to reduce their standards to the 10% level to attain significance, and (as already noted) they were working with a biased and invalid sample to start with.
It's easy to lie with statistics. But it's also easy to see through those lies, if you know the basics.
Firearms with manufacturing defects or that lack safety features are involved in thousands of unintentional shootings each year. In many instances, human error and poor judgment play a role. But firearms experts who support manufacturing standards for gun makers say human error and possible misuse should be taken into account when designing weapons.
The National Safety Council advises designers to "anticipate common areas and methods of abuse and take steps to eliminate or minimize the consequences associated with such action."
In many cases of unintentional and accidental shootings, the guns provided no protection against human error. The Detroit News looked at more than 1,000 shootings across the country going back decades. Some were purely accidental, some human error, but many could have been mitigated if the guns had addition safety features, say a number of firearms experts. Among the cases The News reviewed:
What we have here is simply a list of "accidents" that the Detroit News contends could have been prevented by a government regulatory agency. I contend that most could have been prevented by the gun owner following the simple rules of gun safety. Let's cover them one by one.
AMT .380 Back-up semiautomatic
Safety issue: No magazine safety and no loaded chamber indicator.
On Dec. 23, 1992, a Texas gun dealer who sold firearms from his garage removed the magazine from the AMT pistol to give prospective buyer Ricardo Antonio a demonstration. The dealer didn?t realize there was a round left in the chamber and he shot and killed Antonio.
The dealer pointed the gun at someone and pulled the trigger, breaking the rules of gun safety.
AMT .380 Back-up semiautomatic
Safety issue: No magazine disconnect.
In 1989, Daniel Milewski, then 13, took the magazine out of the pistol like he had seen done many times on television. Milewski, of Pennsylvania, thought the gun was empty and began twirling it with his finger in the trigger guard. The gun went off and shot him in the face.
The child had unsupervised access to a firearm and was playing with it. In the course of his play, he pointed the gun at himself and pulled the trigger. Both the child and his parents broke the rules of gun safety.
Lorcin 9mm semiautomatic
Safety issue: No drop safety.
Timmy Jones, a 35-year-old Kentucky truck driver, was killed in 1996 when his Lorcin semiautomatic dropped and discharged a bullet into his stomach. He died of massive internal injuries and bleeding.
This one I'll grant, although obviously dropping a loaded gun is a little careless. But the market offers many firearms with drop safeties, so the option to purchase one was available to this individual. If you drop a knife on your foot, you will end up with a knife in your foot -- sometimes, you just have to be careful not to drop things.
RG-26
Safety issue: Firing pin.
Clarence Lemmon purchased an RG pistol for $99.95 on Dec. 10, 1980, to protect his Texas business. While attempting to put a round in the chamber, the firing pin dropped before the chamber closed and the pistol went off, firing a bullet through his left hand.
This one is borderline. The gun was not pointed in a safe direction and it sounds like the owner was not exactly familiar with proper firearms operation. It's hard to say who was at fault without knowing exactly what happened.
Tec-9, 9mm
Safety issue: No magazine disconnect.
Detroit resident Darnell Crawford, 16, was shot in the back and killed in 1987 by a friend while they and two other friends were eating pizza at home.
Crawford had taken the Tec-9 semiautomatic pistol from a closet and removed the ammunition magazine. A round remained in the chamber. Crawford passed the gun to a friend who, seeing the clip removed, thought the gun was empty. The friend, who got pizza grease on the gun, tried wiping it clean before giving it back to Crawford. In doing so, he pulled the trigger and the gun went off, striking Crawford.
Trigger pulled, gun pointed in unsafe direction.
Hawes Firearms Co. Western Marshall revolver
Safety issue: No drop safety
Clara Sue Cobb was wounded and left a paraplegic after a Western Marshall revolver on the back floorboard of a car in which she was a passenger discharged without the trigger being pulled. The Louisiana woman was 18 at the time.
Couple thoughts here. First, the picture in the article depicts an old-west-type revolver rather than a modern design -- such a historical design might be expected to lack modern safety features. Second, how do they know the trigger was not pulled? Not deliberately pulled, sure, but any firearm bouncing around on the floorboards of a car could easily snag on something. And bouncing around on the floorboards of a car is not exactly safe gun handling in any case.
F.I.E. Model D38 derringer
Safety issue: No hammer block, no transfer bar and no rebound safety.
Mary Goodman was killed when a derringer dropped and discharged without the trigger being pulled. Alvah Yates was killed at work when a derringer fell from a deliveryman?s pocket as he stooped to put down a crate of milk. The gun struck the ground and discharged, hitting Yates.
Don't drop your gun if it's cheap; if you intend to drop your gun, buy one with a drop safety. 'nuff said.
Winchester ?94
Safety issue: Firing mechanism problem.
Lois Mamo was severely injured in 1978 when a Winchester 94 fired without the trigger being pulled. The gun went off when a family member in another room in their Michigan home adjusted the gun?s lever, without pulling the trigger.
The bullet went through the kitchen wall, a stove and pots on the counter before striking Mamo in the stomach and arm. Bullet fragments hit her liver and nearly severed her right hand. She spent 62 days in the hospital and has had numerous operations. She still has shrapnel in her body.
Last month, Michigan gunsmith John Tunney Jr. was repairing a customer?s Winchester ?94, similar to the one that wounded Mamo 25 years earlier. As Tunney took the rifle, the customer mentioned that there was a round in the chamber and the rifle had a tendency to fire without the trigger being pulled when the lever was adjusted.
Tunney pointed the rifle at a sand bag designed to capture bullets and racked the lever without touching the trigger. On the very first attempt, the rifle discharged.
This sounds like a legitimate flaw, though whether it's a design flaw or something that occurs due to damage in the field is unclear. But note the difference in outcomes! When you follow the rules of gun safety, even if the gun is defective and goes off, no one gets hurt.
The 1968 Gun Control Act, aimed at stopping the flow of cheaply made, easily concealed handguns into the country, has done little to prevent the import of millions of guns that lack important safety features.
Most imported firearms don?t have features that show if the guns are loaded or that prevent them from firing if the ammunition clips are removed, a Detroit News investigation found. Fewer still have pistol grip safeties, effective in preventing children from discharging firearms by rendering the gun inoperable unless the grip safety and trigger are depressed at the same time.
The law, which set no rules for American-made guns, also has created a breed of low-end gun makers in the country. Manufacturers, domestic and foreign, have set up U.S. operations to take advantage of the freedom from restrictions and safety standards granted guns made in the America.
With no federal agency empowered to recall problem guns, their weapons continue to injure, maim and kill.
Once again, we see a call for magazine safeties and chamber-loaded indicators. And yet, guns with both features are readily available on the market. The only reason to have a gun without those features is choice -- and the choice to buy a gun that lacks them is a perfectly valid one, as many police departments have proven by their choice of Glock firearms, which lack both safety features by design.
Why has the Detroit News focused so heavily on those features? It might have something to do with the lawsuits being brought against gun manufacturers around the country. Those lawsuits, particularly the one against Beretta in California (which has recently been ruled a mistrial for the second time), focus on obtaining in a settlement the agreement to include those safety features on handguns.
Yet the gun in that very lawsuit already had a chamber loaded indicator. It just "wasn't large enough", according to the plaintiffs, who also claimed to have no idea the feature existed. And here, in fact, is where we find the common thread: people who are hurt in firearm accidents are people who either ignored the rules of safe gun handling, or were victims of those who did.
Is a gun which fails to include a magazine disconnect and chamber loaded indicator a "junk gun"? Glock doesn't think so; neither do their customers. And while many people make fun of the Glock design ("combat tupperware", for their partially plastic construction), no one would deny that they are a major handgun manufacturer and make a quality product.
But the gun control organizations want you to think they are talking about "junk guns" rather than an optional feature which some guns happen to lack. They illustrate this with the case of Rohm GMBH, a german-based corporation selling firearms. Apparantly, in 1981, they were the fourth largest handgun manufacturer in the US. It's strange how they have to go back over 20 years to find a suitable example... but it is a good one.
The guns, manufactured for $14 apiece, lacked several important safety features, such as magazine safeties and loaded chamber indicators.
In addition, several models of RG pistols had a tendency to fire when dropped. The quality of the company?s guns was further compromised because RG workers, who were paid by the piece, were required to assemble 100 pieces every two hours to make minimum wage.
With no standards to adhere to for its American-made guns, safety features on the RG models were left to the discretion of the company?s firearm designer, Edwin Kroisandt. But Kroisandt, who joined the company as a tool and die maker, admitted during a 1994 deposition that he knew nothing about such features as magazine safeties and loaded chamber indicators until he read about them in an Italian gun magazine 13 years after he started designing RG pistols.
He also admitted that he learned gun design on the job at RG and that his only formal training was from a correspondence course. Kroisandt said had he known of the magazine safety when he designed the RG pistols, he most likely would have incorporated it into his design.
So what we have here is a single individual designing firearms for a company building them as cheaply as possible. The designer doesn't include a magazine disconnect or a chamber loaded indicator because he doesn't know about them. That's not exactly a stellar description of his knowledge of the field, but then he never claimed to be an expert. And since he's designing cheap firearms to be sold at low prices, he doesn't need to be -- people are free to purchase guns with, or without, whatever safety features they feel appropriate.
Such a safety feature could have saved Detroiter Craig Blaydes? life. The 17-year-old was accidentally shot in the chest and killed in 1994 when a 14-year-old friend took the magazine with ammunition from an RG-26, and thinking the gun empty, pulled the trigger. A bullet remained in the chamber, and the gun fired, killing Blaydes.
Despite the deaths and injuries associated with its weapons, RG never has recalled any firearms for design defects. And it didn?t warn customers of any danger.
If this is the best case they can find, it's pretty slim. But it follows the same pattern of their other stories; "young child finds gun, thinks it is empty, and shoots a friend." Would a chamber-loaded indicator have saved a life here? No, because the shooter would not have known to check it. Would a magazine-disconnect safety have saved a life? Perhaps, if it had worked; in a gun this cheaply made that's not a sure thing.
What would definitely have saved a life would be proper training in gun handling: never point a gun at anything you are unwilling to shoot, and most especially never in adolescent horseplay. But somehow, that is never acknowledged by those clamoring for more gun control. And neither is the fact that firearms accidents are at an all-time low.
RG closed its American operation in 1986 after the company lost its insurance following several lawsuits. But by the time it shuttered its Miami factory, the company had assembled more than a million guns in America, many of which have serious design flaws.
So, tell me again how the "law fails to control junk guns". They spend an entire article talking about guns from a company that has not been in business for nearly 20 years, because consumer safety lawsuits prevented them from operating, and then have the gall to claim that laws don't work to control "junk guns"?
Well, the 1968 Gun Control Act did not help much in this case. But other laws certainly did. So where's the beef?
No foreign-made long gun has presented more problems than the Chinese-made SKS semiautomatic rifle. More than 300,000 of these rifles were imported into the country before they finally were banned in 1994.
The refurbished weapons, which sell for about $100, have major design and safety flaws. Built by the Chinese Defense Agency, the rifles can fire in full automatic mode while being loaded without the trigger being pulled. In automatic mode, the SKS can fire at the rate of 1,200 rounds a minute.
The Chinese government, which sold the rifles through North China Industries Company, has never recalled the weapon. As with other gun manufacturers, there is no federal agency with the power to force a recall.
At first glance, this looks to be the same basic issue. An imported, cheap firearm has safety issues; nobody can recall it; lives are being lost because the laws aren't working!
And yet... that's not all there is to it.
The guns are cheap, and by now, nearly 60 years old -- or older. At that price and that age, malfunctions are hardly unexpected. Since 1994, they cannot be imported (presumably under the Assault Weapons Ban). The originals are made in China by a Chinese company. So, what are the options here? Order a recall, ship the guns back to China for repairs? Assuming the company was willing to repair or redesign firearms that are 60 years old, they would be unable to return them to the US! .
How many people who own SKS rifles -- safety issues and all -- would be willing to give them up with no compensation for a "recall" that amounted to confiscation? Not many. That renders a recall somewhat impractical at the least.
But maybe the Detroit News would prefer the guns be confiscated. They do seem to have an ulterior motive...
One of the unforeseen consequences of the 1968 Gun Act was the creation of a whole class of domestic junk gun makers.
More than any group of firearm manufacturers, they have used the freedom from safety and design standards to make guns that are unnecessarily dangerous.
"A gun maker can make a gun that fires backwards and violate no safety standards," said Oklahoma attorney Richard Miller, who has successfully sued several gun makers for defectively designed firearms. "I can?t imagine we would allow that for any other product."
Gee -- tell me again how current laws are failing to control "dangerous junk guns"? Consumer safety lawsuits are being filed and apparantly won, where the cases have merit, Consumers have the choice of buying guns with safety features and without; understandably the cheaper models are often those lacking the safety features. That's not a failure of the market or the law; it's a reflection of the fact that for some people, a $100 gun they can afford is better than a $600 gun they can't.
Are we to deny the poor the right to defend themselves? Of course not. But requiring safety features will increase the cost of defensive firearms enough to do just that.
The past few days have been very exciting for liberty activists, especially those with a right-to-keep-and-bear-arms orientation. In case you haven't had the time to follow the situation blow-by-blow (though I hope you had time to call your senators!), here's the sequence of events:
Pro-gun and anti-gun forces in the senate are in a Mexican standoff; either side can filibuster the other's bills.
To break the standoff, a deal is struck; the NRA's Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms act will get a vote, but the anti-gunners can offer gun-control bills as amendments
The deal is approved by a cloture vote (75 in favor)
The pro-gun bill is introduced as S1805
President Bush urges a clean bill
Amendment: "Closing the gun show loophole" (passed, 53-47)
Amendment: "Assault Weapons Ban" (passed, 52-48)
Amendment: "Gun locks (Boxer version)" (passed)
Amendment: "Gun locks (Kohl version)" (passed)
Amendment: "LEO national concealed-carry" (passed)
Amendment: "Armor-Piercing Ammo (Craig-Frist version)" (passed)
Amendment: "Armor-Piercing Ammo (Kennedy? version)" (failed)
Amendment: "Exception for DC Sniper shootings" (failed)
Amendment: "Exemption for LEO victims" (failed)
Larry Craig courageously decides the amendments are not worth it, and urges pro-gun forces to vote no on the final bill.
The final vote is 90-7 against.
So what does this mean? Well, it means a couple things. First, both sides went into this thinking they might get something they wanted, and they might get something they didn't much like. Their own vote counting, on both sides, showed that the situation was very close.
No one could force passage of a clean bill; the anti-gun forces knew they couldn't get a majority in favor of their most important bills (closing the gun show "loophole" and the assault weapons ban) by themselves, but if they offered some political cover by making it a "compromise" bill then they had a chance. Pro-gun forces couldn't move their bill forward by itself, due to filibuster rules, but they also knew that they had enough votes to pass the bill in a straight vote. They also knew the House is more firmly pro-gun.
So the deal is struck. S1805 gets it's straight vote, no filibuster, but the antis can offer a collection of amendments. Here's where it gets tricky. Some pro-gun strategists think the best hope is to pass the bill with whatever amendments, then try to strip those amendments in the house. Others take the no-compromise position and want to kill the whole bill if it accumulates more than token gun control.
Rocky Mountain Gun Owners sends out email warning its members that the NRA is brokering a backroom deal to get the legislation passed, with the AWB and/or the gun shows bill attached, in the hopes that it can be stripped out in the house. This is a risky legislative strategy, and the NRA's record is far from spotless; suspicions are understandable but lacking in proof.
This warning sparked a LOT of opposition from within the gun-owning Internet community -- enough that the NRA started sending out emails of its own denying the accusation, but leaving themselves a suspiciously large amount of wiggle room. So, Senators are getting deluged by gun owners urging them to pass a clean bill, and at least some of these are specifying "but if the AWB is attached, kill it." Maybe some antis are calling in, too. Hard to say.
The three big votes are the gun show loophole, the assault weapons ban, and the whole package (S1805 with amendments). The two anti-gun amendments pass, and are attached to the bill. We lost those votes, folks. If we could have garnered another 3 votes our way, we could have had a reasonable liability protection bill in place without any significant gun control attached.
So, we lost there. But, we also won, and we won something big -- something I certainly did not expect, and something that damn near floored me when it happened.
Larry Craig, as I understand it the original author of S1805, stood up on the Senate floor and urged his colleagues to vote against his own bill. It was his bill, and he took personal responsibility to putting it out of its misery after the anti-gun amendments had tortured it. That takes balls. I'm proud of him for standing up and making that call. He made this tough decision and he got a vote of 90+ against his own bill. That's the anti-gunners voting against and that's the pro-gunners voting against; the ones left in the middle were the ones who wanted a compromise.
Why is this such a big deal? Remember the pro-gun strategists were saying they could kill the provisions in the House! That's the NRA, folks, who issued a half-hearted denial of exactly that intent after the RMGO called them on it. For a long time, compromise has been the order of the day for the NRA and for pro-gun forces in the Senate. The Brady Bill, and the Assault Weapons Ban, were both examples of compromise at work. Compromise a little here, a little there -- one slice of rights at a time.
But now that's changed. Pro-gun forces have just drawn a line in the sand. "This far, and no farther."
I may be wrong, and this may not represent a sea change in Senate firearms policy. In any case, the upcoming elections are sure to shake things up. But if I am right, it's an encouraging sign, because it means that our senators are listening to us. The NRA was not telling senators to kill the bill; they wanted it to pass even with some gun control and could barely muster straight-faced opposition when called on it. Gun Owners of America, bless their no-compromise hearts, couldn't even get me a postcard with the wrong bill name on it before the final vote. (I'll still send it in; can't hurt.)
We told them to kill the bill if it had the assault weapons ban or the gun show amendment attached. We told them to, and they did it. That's you and I, not the NRA, not even the GOA.
Ladies and gentlemen... welcome to the 21st century. We've been given a republic... if we can keep it.
So we've been fought hard, and we've managed to preserve the status quo. We might need to tell our Senators how to vote again on this issue, but this time we held the line, and I don't think they'll be eager to try again without the political cover the immunity bill would have offered. We lost some votes, to be sure, and we didn't get our bill out; but we also blocked the assault weapons ban. We don't have to win a vote to get that ban to expire; we just have to hold the line. And that is exactly what we did.
Please take the time to find out how your Senators voted and give them a call to congratulate or chastise them as appropriate. When you do so, please indicate that you supported a clean S1805, but you agree with the decision to kill the bill once the assault weapons ban or the gun show amendment were attached. We wouldn't want them to think you were calling for the Brady Bunch, after all.
You might want to contact Larry Craig and thank him for his courageous stance on voting against his own bill. We need to show that we understand that kind of hard decision and that it was the right decision.
Volokh posted a link on a firearms-related mailing list to a study on gun availability, drug use, and crime in juveniles. There are a number of obvious flaws that are worth pointing out.
"No support is found for the hypothesis that gun availability
decreases the likelihood of being victimized": this should not
surprise anyone, since they are working with a sample of
high-school students for whom "having access to a gun at home"
does not indicate that the gun is available for self-defense,
whether inside or outside the home.
"In fact, the results show that having access to guns increases
the probability of being cut or stabbed by someone and of someone
pulling a knife or gun on the juvenile.": Again, this should not
be surprising; juveniles in high-crime areas are probably highly
correlated with juveniles in economically-depressed familys or
regions. Families in high-crime areas are presumably more likely
to have a gun around the house for self-defense and definitely
more likely to store the gun in such a manner that it is readily
accessible to a juvenile (as the cost of a secure gun safe is
not trivial). Families composed of criminals owning illegal
firearms are even more highly correlated with lack of safe
storage methods and gun availability.
"gun availability at home increases the propensity to commit
crime by about two percentage points for juveniles but has no
impact on damaging property.": It's unclear what crimes they
refer to or why they chose to exclude damaging property.
Regardless, this is another unsurprising result: *Access* to
firearms is likely to be highly correlated with living in a
high-crime area and with being raised by criminals. Being raised
by criminals will presumably have a fairly obvious
crime-increasing effect on the juveniles so raised.
Why do I emphasize access? Because having a gun at home for most
juveniles is not the same as either owning a gun or being able to
use the gun. The juvenile cannot legally carry the gun, and will
as a practical matter be prevented from doing so by the owner,
regardless of the juvenile's perceived "access".
Additionally, in most cases, being "victimized" occurs whether or
not you have a gun to protect you. If you are accosted by a
criminal in a dark alley demanding your wallet (or your lunch
money), you have been victimized, whether you use or display a
firearm in self-defense or not. To properly analyze the
benefits of gun ownership, an unbiased scientist cannot seek to
use juvenile data and must distinguish between 1) events
occurring inside or outside the home; 2) whether the victim had
access to the firearm; 3) whether the firearm was legal or
illegal.
Why must "illegal" guns (ie, guns possessed by prohibited
persons, such as felons, as distinct from "banned guns" eg
assault weapons) be distinguished? Because those illegal guns
are highly correlated with a criminal upbringing, unsafe storage
methods, and high-crime areas.
Failing to distinguish those factors will produce misleading results, as the people reading academic analyses of gun control and crime issues are presumably
highly negatively correlated with illegal guns.
It's also interesting, given the expected dichotomy between
illegal and legal guns, to question whether prohibitive gun
control measures (ie, a ban on all firearms, or on handguns)
would effectively turn "legal" guns into "illegal" guns; that is,
once the gun is made illegal, do the negative traits correlated
with (but not, I think, caused by!) the "availability" of those
firearms become associated with the guns newly made illegal?
The hypothesized causes of the effect in that case are a criminal
upbringing, unsafe storage methods, and a high-crime environment.
By living in a house with an illegal firearm, even one in which
the owners were otherwise perfectly responsible, could produce
similar effects: a firearm concealed from the police is not
stored in a gun safe; and a parent who commits a crime and
conceals it from the police with the knowledge of his children
is, to some degree, damaging their respect for the law.
Thus, we can speculate that banning firearms might actually have
negative results. But there is as yet no evidence -- just a
chain of hypotheticals.
There is apparently no limit to the insanity in California. For the umpteenth time in the long and sordid tale of AB-50, the California Assembly voted on the bill and the bill lost by a 35-36 margin. That was voting by the rules.
But the rules seem to matter very little in Sacramento. Shortly after
voting to send the fifty caliber ban to a well-deserved grave,
California Democrats called for a "re-vote" and we watched as a handful
of Democrats pressed the vote button at their own desk, then calmly
walked to the empty desk of another member of the Assembly and voted a
second time. This, we learn, is what California Legislators call "Ghost
Voting." Nobody there is shocked because "they do it all the time." Ah,
I see...
This sort of bullshit is exactly why we have a Second Amendment. The
Fifty-Caliber Institute is trying to lobby the Governor, Arnold
Schwarzenegger, to veto the bill because of the ghost-voting. I doubt
it will be an easy sell, but he is a Republican who ran on a promise to
shut down political bullshit like this, and the bill apparantly
includes spending provisions that won't exactly have a positive effect
on California's already near-bankrupt coffers. I'd say that adds up to
a chance, especially since the ghost-voting will provide cover if he
wants it.
Recently, the California legislature passed "AB50", a bill that certain
elements have been trying to pass for a long time. Up until now, they
have failed with a consistent 35-36 vote, including one immediately
before this bill passed on a re-vote. The most recent vote, however,
succeeded only due to the practice of "ghost voting". If you are not
aware of this practice, it involves legislators present voting "for"
legislators not present -- literally voting twice. Simply put, some of
the legislators who were not present had their votes stolen from them and recorded without their consent.
It is in your power to put a stop to this practice simply by vetoing
this bill.
This is exactly the kind of political abuse that you ran for office to
stop, and this is your chance. Stand up to the games the legislators
are trying to play, and insist on an honest vote.
I oppose AB50 because I am a gun owner and I believe in the Second
Amendment rights of all US citizens, including citizens of California.
As an immigrant, you have undoubtedly taken classes or education
concerning the Constitution of the United States. Most likely this
education avoided the subject of the Second Amendment. You may have
been told that the Second Amendment is outdated, or refers to the
National Guard. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Second
Amendment protects the right of Americans to keep and bear arms, a
right that has served us well throughout our history. AB50, by banning
a large class of firearms almost never used in crime, is a clear
violation of the Second Amendment.
But I do not ask you to veto AB50 because it violates the Second
Amendment. That argument has little power in your chosen state of
residence, where corrupt politicians have forgotten the duties of
honest government. I ask you to veto it because it was passed only
through blatant fraud. More, I call upon you as an American and an honest man: it is your duty
to veto this fraudulent bill. I invite you to contact the Fifty-Caliber
Institute[1] and verify their account of the fraud, and I hope that you
will do so, and take appropriate action.
If you stand up to this political corruption, you can show the
legislators that you will not stand for bullshit. If you sign the bill
into law because you are afraid of political consequences, however, you
will prove only one thing: that you are the real "girly-man" in California.
1: http://www.fiftycal.org/
If you send an email or a letter, please leave a comment too.
As if those two weren't enough, there are also reports that SB1140 passed;
that's a Brady Campaign measure creating a misdemeanor offense for
"keeping a handgun where a person knows or reasonably should have known
a child is likely to gain access to it", as well as what they call a
"wobbler" (some kind of sometimes-misdemeanor, sometimes-felony thing I
think) for "storage of a firearm in proximity to ammunition".
The information demanded by the state on each ammunition purchase includes:
Date of transaction
Name, address, and date of birth of the purchaser
Driver's license or other ID number, including state of issuance
Brand, type, and amount of ammunition
The signature of the customer
The name of the salesperson
The right thumbprint of the purchaser
Yes, that's right. In order to buy ammunition in California, you are required to provide a fingerprint! And there are provisions for inspection of these records at any time (during normal business hours), by any employee of the District Attorney or the Department of Justice, which means no warrant is necessary.
And guess what? There are exceptions for two classes of people: police officers
and concealed-carry permit holders. Before you start celebrating about
the latter, California is NOT a shall-issue state, which means that
those holding concealed-carry permits are the political cronies of the
legislature and nothing more -- such luminaries as Dianne Feinstein are
exempted from the law, but no ordinary peon in California can get a
concealed-carry permit.
I wonder if these bills passed by a "ghost vote" too? I wonder if
Arnold will sign them? Since I asked him to veto AB50, I'm going to
write a follow-up email asking for an investigation of these bills on
ghost-voting grounds. Please send your own letter to his email address:
governor@governor.ca.gov. As always, please drop a comment on this post if you send an email.
Governor,
Recently I wrote to you regarding the practice of "ghost voting"
in the California legislature. This practice was used to pass AB-50, a
measure banning the sale of .50 caliber rifles in California, which had
languished for a long time in a very close vote. However, the
legislature eventually passed the bill 45-32 when your legislators
abandoned honor and decency to cast false votes for legislators not actually present! I wrote to you asking you to veto a bill passed through clear fraud and abuse of the legislative system.
I am writing to you now because two addition bills on the topic of
firearms have also passed your legislature. These bills are SB1152 and
SB1140. They are bills which are offensive to the Second Amendment and
to any free people. SB1152 requires a fingerprint to purchase ammunition.
How would you feel about being required to provide a fingerprint before
making a speech protected by the First Amendment? SB1140 makes it a
criminal offense to store a handgun in a manner useful for
self-defense. Do you own a handgun, Governor? How is it stored? You may
already be a felon.
But because of the way AB-50 was passed, I urge you to investigate
the passage of SB1152 and SB1140. I urge you to find out whether these
measures, too, were passed by "ghost voting". If they were, regardless
of your feelings about the Second Amendment, I urge you to veto all
three bills (AB50, SB1152, SB1140) due to their abuse of the people's
trust. If your legislators can't be trusted to respect the sanctity of
the opposition's votes with a nanny to watch them, it is your
responsibility as governor to administer the spanking.
I recognize that if the Democrats in your legislator are "girly-men"
as you have accused them of being, they may find the spanking more
enjoyable than might be wished. But if you prefer to let them spank you
with this legislation, who then is the "girly man"?
As a cop- I think the national concealed carry permit is GREAT. I'm sorry to hear the resentment though--- as a citizen I see this as a step toward a national concealed carry permit for everyone. It's a first step- maybe it isn't fair that it's only for certain people, but once it's in place it gives a good place to start lobbying for concealed carry permits for everyone.
One of my readers posted this as a comment to my brief article on what I call the Armed Knighthood Restoration Act (aka, "National Concealed Carry for Cops"). I thought it deserved an explanation, since the idiom isn't necessarily obvious.
Standing alone, independent of everything else, I don't really have any problem with cops carrying concealed firearms -- or with anyone else, for that matter, until they decide to become a threat to me. The problem that I have with this issue is simple: police can, normal citizens can't.
So what's wrong with that? All sorts of things.
I use the analogy to knights because I think it gets the point across quickly and easily, and (as an avid reader of medieval fantasy novels, collector of swords, etc) it's one that comes naturally to mind. Knights are warriors, considered better than the common peasant. Knights have more rights than peasants; they are allowed to carry arms where a peasant would be denied that right. Even in areas where a peasant is technically allowed arms (say, a bow for hunting, or a sword) the knight is subject to fewer questions and challenges for his decision to go armed.
Furthermore, in many cases a knight could kill a peasant with impunity: simply invent an imagined threat or insult, and the nobility (which in that time usually acted as judges) would accept the explanation. Only the most notorious of knights could expect censure for their actions. The Samurai, for example, are widely known to have tested their swords (and their own skills) with human victims; mostly corpses or criminals, but "execution by sword tester" was not unknown.
In short, knights were "like us, only better". That theme is even echoed in the media; we have endless tales of "knights in shining armor" protecting damsels in distress or oppressed peasants. In most of the orders of knighthood, there is an oath sworn to behave with honor, bravery, and righteousness. Knights were supposed to defend the realm from dragons and evil knights.
But the truth doesn't match the propaganda. There were some good knights, some mediocre knights, and some bad knights. The special training doesn't change a person's character; it changes only the tools they have available to express that character. The oath of knighthood doesn't erase evil from the knight's heart, and the shiny armor just means he's harder to stop should he decide to act on evil, or even merely corrupt, motives.
The closest analogy to knighthood we have today are police officers. Like knights, they are considered a protected class; nearly all gun control laws exempt law enforcement. Like knights, they have a positive public image intended to present them as defenders of truth and justice. Like knights, they expect to be addressed as "Sir". Like knights, they have the right to go armed where mere peasants cannot. Like knights, they wear armor that the weapons available to most peasants outside their home cannot penetrate. Like knights, they can strike, shoot, and even kill a peasant with impunity in most cases, even if there is a technical review of the action. Hell, in some cities they even ride horses.
Police officers are our modern knighthood, and they are being treated as one. Some of them, I'm sure, live up to the propaganda. But police officers are just humans, not infallible and not special. And one of the things we rebelled against when we founded this nation was the idea of knighthood -- the whole idea of nobility, for that matter. We spent our blood to create a nation where all men are created equal: no knights, no nobles, no kings. Just men.
I wouldn't care too much about this if the issue in question wasn't the fundamental human right of self-defense. We're not talking about some trivial sinecure or meaningless title. We're talking about the right to defend your life with deadly force. The consequences of not having this privilege, which is reserved to the new nobility, are serious -- perhaps even deadly -- if attacked by a criminal.
My reader makes the argument that national concealed carry for police officers is a step towards national concealed carry for all citizens. I wish that were true; if anything, though, the passage of the bill will have the exact opposite effect. Where, once, we could have put forward a "national concealed carry reciprocity bill" that would allow anyone able to legally carry a concealed firearm in their home state also be able to carry a concealed firearm in another state, that option is no longer available to us.
To put it in practical terms, the police officers, police chiefs, and police lobby have all obtained what they want. When the citizen lobby starts pushing for a national concealed carry bill, do you think we'll see a lot of support? Probably not: those organizations already have the privilege for their members. Why waste time and lobbying cloat on a measure that won't benefit a single member? They'll go back to lobbying for the Assault Weapons Ban.
And when push comes to shove, how many police chiefs will speak out in favor of abolishing their special privilege of self-defense? To get an idea, just find out how many police chiefs spoke out in favor of shall-issue concealed-carry before it passed in their state. The issue gets a lot of after-the-fact conversions because there aren't many problems. But before it passes... know any? No? Neither do I. (If you know of one, please let me know in the comments!)
Even if most police officers are honest, hardworking folk who just want to save some lives, police chiefs are political animals. They won't support national concealed carry for ordinary folk unless there's something in it for them. And thus, passing this bill cuts off the peasants from their support.
About two weeks ago, the Detroit News ran what they called a "special report" on firearms manufacturers and safety issues. For three days, they ran multiple stories, describing victims in graphic detail, and attempting to blame gun manufacturers for negligently ignoring safety devices that would have prevented the incidents. It was a tour-de-force of anti-gun propaganda. But propaganda is all it was.
I have written an extensive rebuttal of each story they posted. Please read the rebuttal along with the original story. But before you do that, read the rest of this article to give yourself a grounding in the basic facts of the issue -- a grounding the Detroit News doesn't want you to have.
Some facts from www.gunfacts.info about death from firearms accidents: Compared to dying in a firearms accident, the average person is twice as likely to choke to death, seven times more likely to be poisoned, ten times more likely to die in a fall, and 31 times more likely to die in a car accident. Think about those numbers for a second. Then realize those estimates are from 1997, and accidental firearms deaths have fallen every year since, even though the number of firearms in the US has grown and continues to grow. The "installed base" of firearms in US households is estimated at around 200 million firearms, with one firearm-owning household for every 2 or 3 unarmed households..
Want a solid number? Let's look at children, since the Detroit News loves to present children as victims. In 1996, there were 21 accidental gun deaths for children under 15. Not 21 per day as the media or gun control advocacy groups might have led you to expect: 21. Period. That's all.
So we're not exactly dealing with a crisis here.
The real motive behind this special report is the chance to influence the manufacturer immunity bill currently in the Senate. The bill is designed to protect firearms manufacturers from being sued over criminal acts, in order to block a series of politically-motivated lawsuits seeking to impose gun control via the courts. The Detroit News wants to make it politically difficult to pass this bill.
But to do that, they have to take some serious liberties with common sense.
One of their articles covers a defect in pre-1981 Remington hunting rifles. Yes, this particular problem has been fixed for over 20 years; still they seem to feel it's both current news and relevant to the current bill. A different section deals with Chinese SKS rifles, currently illegal to import for the past 10 years, and manufactured in 1945 -- at the LATEST. Hmm. Real current problem.
Then they spend an entire article attacking Glock for lacking safety features that Glock has deliberately chosen to avoid, in favor of a design that will always fire when the trigger is pulled, and never fire when the trigger is not pulled. Although this is a departure from the tradition of manual safety devices that could block the trigger, it's not an inherently unsafe one. Police departments have demostrated their approval of this design by purchasing Glock firearms in droves. You don't have to agree with the design decision Glock made, because there are firearms with with traditional safety devices available. It's disingenous to call this design decision a safety defect without so much as explaining the reasoning behind it.
And then there's the "victim" file. By that I mean the article which spends its several pages describing a series of incidents in which a child or young adult shot a friend or family member. But there are some common threads to these cases: in almost all of them, the shooter was not authorized to have access to the firearm, and when they gained access, their first thought was to remove the magazine, point the gun at the victim, and pull the trigger.
The Detroit News thinks that's an argument for "magazine safeties" which prevent the gun from firing if the magazine is removed. Guns with such devices are available, but the Detroit News would like them made mandatory, or at a minimum, they would like the victims (or their families) to be able to sue the gun manufacturers out of business... because their friend or child thought that pointing a gun at a human being and pulling the trigger was some sort of funny joke or acceptable horseplay.
Ha-ha. Very funny. Now take me to a hospital.
What those children lacked wasn't a magazine safety on the firearm they weren't supposed to have access to anyway. What they lacked was any concept of consequences or responsibility for their actions. How ironic, then, that the parents of those children are being asked to deny their own responsibility for their child's ignorance of and access to their firearm.
As you've probably guessed, this "special report" isn't exactly the most unbiased representation of the facts you're likely to find. But now that the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act is the law of the land, approved by the Supreme Court, biased reporting like this is going to become the order of the day.
Announcing that "the foremost consideration in firearms manufacturing is to produce a weapon that is safe under all conditions," Smith & Wesson unveiled its new gun to the world.
The year was 1914.
Now, 89 years later, most American gun makers produce firearms that fall far short of the standards set by Smith & Wesson in its original safe gun. And even America?s biggest gun maker has retreated from some of the features in its super safe firearm.
In addition to internal safety features that prevented the gun from accidentally discharging if dropped or hit, the firearm had a manual safety and grip safety. The grip safety and the trigger had to be depressed at the same time, making it nearly impossible for young children to accidentally discharge the weapon and forcing the gun handler, according to Smith & Wesson, "to think before firing."
What the Detroit News won't tell you in this section of their "special report" is that while many guns today are available without the safety features listed here (ie, a manual safety, grip safety, and drop safety), many guns today are available with those features. It's a choice you make when you buy a firearm: do you purchase a high-quality model with several safety devices, a low-quality model that lacks them, or perhaps a gun whose safety devices are designed in such a way that some of the safety devices on their list don't make sense?
If you value a gun that will fire each time and every time the trigger is pulled, you might buy a Glock, which has a number of safety devices that accomplish exactly that -- but lacks a grip safety or a magazine disconnect. According to the Detroit News, those features should be mandatory, even though the Glock brand is one of the most popular brands for police officers nationwide.
The fact is, there's more to gun safety than technology. Gun safety starts in the person holding the gun.
The lack of safety features in many guns in America poses a serious risk to gun owners. Many have been wounded or killed when their guns accidentally discharged or were unintentionally fired because of manufacturers? safety omissions.
Remember, "many" is a very small number when compared to things like bathtubs, bicycles, or cars.
Gun makers have been allowed to decide what safety features, if any, to use on their weapons because no federal agency can set standards for firearms manufactured in the country. Not only have gun makers ignored long-established safety options, but they have been slow to embrace new technology.
Actually, gun makers haven't "ignored... safety options". Where the firearm was at fault, they have issued product recalls, changed the design of their firearms to correct the defects, and even today offer firearms with all the safety devices the Detroit News is so fond of. How that can be construed as "ignoring" I don't know.
In 1996, the Sandia National Laboratories ? a highly respected research unit in the Department of Energy ? completed a $620,000 study for the National Institute of Justice on available technology to personalize police guns and prevent their unauthorized use. But much of the technology reviewed by the lab has practical applications for gun safety in general.
The government decided to fund the study because statistics showed 16 percent of officers killed in the line of duty were shot with their own weapons, or those of their partners, by assailants who managed to get the guns.
The concept of a "smart gun" that can only be fired by its owner is a reasonable safety option, but not a reasonable safety requirement. Any firearm must make a tradeoff between reliability of operation and safety. Any improvement in safety (ie, making it harder to fire the gun in an unauthorized manner) has a corresponding decrease in reliability (ie, making it harder to fire the gun when intended). Most mechanical safety devices are reliable and simple; they are durable and rarely fail.
No one has yet devised a "smart gun" system that can distinguish between authorized and unauthorized users that even comes close to that level of reliability. This is a concern not only for the traditional reasons to value reliable operation, but because of the nature of firearm use -- a firearm that fails to fire at a shooting range or while hunting is a trivial matter, but a firearm that fails to shoot an attacking criminal in your home may cost you your life.
"Smart guns" are pushed for precisely that home defense use. It is believed that a "smart gun" can keep your child or a criminal from firing your handgun, while allowing its use for self-defense against a criminal. But what technology can be used to fit this scenario? The Detroit News covers a number of possibilities. But they all have the same flaws:
The gun needs batteries. Batteries fail.
The recognition system can be confused (by misplacing a special object, radio interference, or just dirty hands).
The keyed object in some designs can be misplaced, or simply not worn, or stored with the gun.
All of these potential problems could be fatal if you are depending on your firearm to stop a criminal. They could be just as fatal if you are depending on them to prevent your gun from firing in unauthorized hands, because (as the other stories in this series have shown), even simple mechanical safety devices can fail. In actual practice, these devices have substantial safety tradeoffs that must be evaluated by the purchaser -- including the increased chances for accidental discharge associated with the mechanism that readies the gun to fire.
Some states (New Jersey) have passed laws that pre-emptively ban "non-smart" guns from sale within that state after a gun manufacturer brings out a smart gun to the consumer market. This kind of heavy-handed threat ignores the real safety and reliability concerns of "smart gun" devices in favor of politically-motived regulation. Those safety and reliability concerns were acknowledged, albeit in a backhand way, by exempting the police forces of the state from the ban!
It seems that "smart guns" are not good enough for the police, even if they are good enough to force upon the average citizen. And until a smart gun mechanism is developed that is no less reliable than a standard mechanical firearm, "smart guns" will remain a fantasy.
Tens of millions of guns in America share design flaws that put their owners and those around them in unnecessary jeopardy, a four-month Detroit News investigation found.
Firearm manufacturers, long aware of the dangers, have made no concerted, industrywide effort to improve safety.
The News found that many firearm manufacturers ignore technology ? including their own ? that would make guns safer and less apt to accidentally discharge. Internal memos, gun patents and employee depositions show that many of these safety features are cheap, easily installed and have been available for nearly a hundred years.
As you might guess, this isn't an "investigation" so much as it is an editorial... and it isn't an editorial so much as it is a polemic. So far, four separate stories on this theme have been published; more may be on the way. I will be debunking them here. For links to the additional stories, check the sidebar.
The basic premise is that gun manufacturers are somehow at fault for the stupidity of some gun owners who cause accidents with their firearms. The fact is, you would be very hard pressed to find a firearm on the market today that does not have at least one safety device incorporated into its design. Many have several.
But the authors of this piece aren't about to let you start to wonder about the wisdom of their pronouncements. The very first thing you'll see when you open up the link is a picture of a disabled child. The Web doesn't carry the screeching "Save the CHILLLDREN!" sounds in the background, but any decent imagination will suffice to include them, because surely they are there.
Another thing that many people do not realize: firearms accidents are rare in this country. Firearms accidents involving children are extremely rare. Depending on his age, your child is more likely to die from drowning in a swimming pool or from injuries sustained playing football than he is from a firearms accident.
So why do we keep hearing about it? Because it's the only way the news media can keep up the pressure on guns.
In addition, many manufacturers routinely disregard customer complaints and fail to recall guns even after losing or settling lawsuits over faulty, dangerous firearms. Some gun makers go further, using confidentiality agreements as part of legal settlements to conceal problems with their firearms.
Gun manufacturers have strong allies in the National Rifle Association and the U.S. Congress.
Lawmakers have ensured that no federal agency has the power to set safety standards for firearms manufactured in the United States, and that no agency can demand a recall of defective guns. And the NRA, a gun owners lobby group, has used its considerable political clout to help fend off all attempts to impose safety standards for guns.
Actually, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms already regulates the manufacture of firearms. They are under some political restraint, true, because in the past they have been used as tools of anti-gun administrations trying to do a lot more than "regulate". But the fact is, additional "safety standards" for firearms are nothing more than political tools to make firearms more expensive.
How can I know this? Simple: many of the proposed standards include such wise decisions as requiring the use of a metal with a melting point higher than some arbitrary number. Since there aren't any firearms on the market that are actually in danger of melting from extended use, what relationship does this have to safety? Well, you see, it bans guns made from "cheap" material, thus effectively outlawing the infamous "Saturday Night Special" that gun controllers love to talk about.
What they don't realize is that banning cheap firearms will deny the poor the ability to defend themselves effectively -- but that's another issue. My point is that the proposed "safety" standards often have nothing to do with safety.
Want another example? Try the case against Beretta being argued in California (after the original jury returned "not guilty"). The plaintiffs are arguing for a "chamber loaded indicator" as mandatory safety equipment on all firearms -- and in fact that's one of the proposals in this editorial. So what's the problem? The gun used in the California incident that spawned the lawsuit had a chamber loaded indicator already. The plaintiffs claim it was "too small".
The real problem in that case is that the person holding the gun broke the rules of gun safety:
Always point the gun in a safe direction.
Always assume all firearms are loaded.
Rather than following those basic rules, they pulled the trigger on a firearm they thought was unloaded while it was pointing at someone, and a tragedy occurred. That's regrettable, but it's not the fault of the manufacturer.
Safety features, like those missing from the Bryco pistol that shot Brandon Maxfield, are especially effective in preventing accidents among people with limited knowledge of firearms.
"A large number of children and teen-agers who are killed by other children in unintentional shootings are shot in the face, sometimes between the eyes," said former Guns and Ammo magazine senior editor Whit Collins, a national firearms expert and historian who has testified in dozens of gun defect cases across the country. "That?s because the child with the gun pulls out the magazine and thinks the gun is empty.
"Then they try to scare the other child by pointing the gun right in his or her face and pulling the trigger. They expect to hear a click, but the gun goes off."
Twenty years ago, Philadelphia native Tamika Haines suffered massive brain injuries that left her partially paralyzed on her right side when she was shot in the head by a teen-age friend. Haines was 14 at the time.
The friend, Walter Butler, then 16, removed the clip from the .25-caliber Raven handgun and believed it was empty. But a bullet remained in the chamber.
Butler told police he was kidding around and trying to scare Haines when he pointed the gun at her head and pulled the trigger. He never expected the gun to go off.
Can you hear the violins? But aside from the musical accompaniment, we have here a typical "firearm accident". The editorial would like to blame this accident on the manufacturer. I would like to blame this accident on Walter Butler, who deliberately pointed a gun at someone and pulled the trigger. Guns are not toys; they are intended for purchase and use by responsible adults.
"The reaction of the gun industry is to blame all unintentional shootings on human error and negligence," Collins said. "But part of manufacturing is to assume that human error will occur and find ways to minimize it. We have applied this approach to appliances in the home and cars, why not to a product like firearms that carry such a capacity for catastrophic injury?"
The fact is, there are a huge number of different models of firearms available. All the safety features described in this article are available, on the market, today. If a responsible adult chooses to purchase a firearm without those features and bear the associated risks, it is their choice. Manufacturers should bear liability for their products in the same way as other products -- that is, for actual safety flaws. But just as you cannot sue Chrevrolet for making a car capable of tripling the speed limit, you cannot sue the person who made a firearm because one of their customers was stupid or criminal.
In case you were wondering, the Consumer Federation of America is a lobbying group. It doesn't seem to be a successful one: they have several internet surveys on their site, most with under 10 respondents. Their funding, according to their website, comes from "pro-consumer organizations" rather than actual consumers. Since they have a history of releasing anti-gun "research" I'd say they are a democratic front group, perhaps even one with ties to Nader due to the consumer angle, but that's speculation. All we know is that they've released these three surveys:
So how did they get these results? Simple: they asked whether they supported "bans on military-style firearms like Uzis or AK-47s". As anyone with even a little knowledge of firearms law knows, "military-style" weapons (that is, fully-automatic firearms) are heavily regulated, since 1933, have been banned from manufacture since 1986, have never been used in a crime by a civilian legal owner, and are not affected by the Assault Weapons Ban.
Thanks to the media's confusion about semiautomatic assault weapons versus fully-automatic military assault rifles and the ignorance of the general public regarding firearms law, poorly-designed public opinion polls are often published supporting the ban. In evaluating such a poll, ask yourself:
Does the poll explain what an "assault weapon" is? (A semiautomatic rifle that functions identically to non-banned rifles, with the only difference being minor cosmetic features)
Does the poll explain what an assault weapon isn't? (The law does not affect fully-automatic military rifles).
Does the poll explain existing law? (Existing law, unrelated to the assault weapons ban, forbids manufacture of fully-automatic rifles for the civilian market)
Does the poll provide information on how often "assault weapons" are used in crime? (1-3% of crimes committed with firearms)
Does the poll relay on misleading and inaccurate information from anti-gun groups? (The Violence Policy Center's report on police officer mortality by assault weapons, for example, has been thoroughly debunked)
Does the poll ask the respondent to to evaluate whether the ban is legal under the 2nd Amendment? (The courts have so far neglected to strike it down, but a plain-language interpertation suggests it should be)
Obviously, these polls aren't designed to get accurate results, they are designed to produce "support" for the viewpoint of the people who commissioned the poll. Their accuracy is extremely questionable. But enough said on that topic -- why Michigan, South Dakota, and West Virginia?
Michigan and West Viginia are considered swing states. The anti-gun groups are basically trying to tell Bush that letting the assault weapons ban expire may cost him the race in 2004, because of the support for the ban shown in their polls in those two crucial swing states.
Unfortunately, while public confusion about the issue means that the polling shouldn't be considered accurate with regard to the merits of the law, it is more difficult to dismiss the question of public opinion; that is, will voters who think they support the assault weapons ban have their opinion of Bush influenced by whether or not he supports it? And likewise, what about the Senate races? Here are the Senators from those three states, and their votes on the S1805 renewal amendment:
All 6 senators are Democrats. That's odd; I would have expected them to be trying to change the votes of Republican Senators. Only one of the senators on the list did not vote to pass the renewal, so it's not likely to be about their votes. It's probably aimed at Bush. The fact that one of the South Dakota senators abstained despite being democratic may explain why South Dakota is included although it is not on my list of swing states.
It may be worth sending Tim Johnson a note of thanks for his abstention. It's not as good as a no, but it's better than nothing... er, wait, it IS nothing. It's better than I would expect from a Senate Democrat, how's that?
The Violence Policy Center (VPC) today offered its strong support for legislation sponsored by New York State Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Assembly Member Patricia Eddington to ban 50 caliber sniper rifles. Fifty caliber sniper rifles can penetrate armor plating, pierce rail cars carrying toxic chemicals, and destroy aircraft. Currently being used by U.S. troops in Iraq, 50 caliber sniper rifles are accurate at distances of more than a mile, yet under federal law are sold in the United States with fewer restrictions than a standard handgun. The guns have already been banned in Los Angeles, CA, and Contra Costa County, CA.
Well, it seems the Violence Policy Center wants to get behind a ban on .50 caliber rifles. They have their usual parade of lies and omissions in support of the ban. Just so we're on the same page, I will examine them briefly:
Penetrating Armor Plating
This claim arises from the fact that a .50 rifle will penetrate the armor plating used in early tanks -- very early tanks. We're talking vintage WWI stuff here. And that only worked at close range. There's nothing special about the bullet that lets it do that; just a matter of ballistics.
The fact is, concerns about armor piercing bullets are silly when there is no evidence that criminals or terrorists use these firearms to attack the US.
Pierce rail cars carrying toxic chemicals
This is really just a restatement of the "armor piercing" issue. Toxic chemical rail cars were not designed to have people shooting at them. Let's face it: In the US, terrorism is easy. We'd do better arming people with handguns so they can shoot back. Israel has tried this strategy and it works.
Arming Terrorists with .50 rifles
The government arranged that sale, and at the time, Osama bin Laden was going to use them to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. Remember the Cold War? But since he's has these rifles for at least 10 or 15 years, why hasn't he attacked the US with them, if they are so effective?
For that matter, since he already has the rifles, how will one state (plus a country in California) banning them make any difference whatsoever?
Destroy Aircraft
Sure; for values of "destroy" that involve poking a small hole in the aircraft while it's sitting still on the ground, for which just about any rifle will do. Or a hammer, for that matter. Shooting aircraft in flight with anything short of a computer-guided projectile or a gun mounted on another aircraft is a ballistics problem that humans just aren't able to solve quickly enough, and that's assuming the plane is actually in range.
Making accurate thousand-yard shots, even with a .50, is something of an accomplishment. Very few airplanes cruise under 10,000 feet. The plane is moving at several hundred miles an hour at an unpredictable vector and there is no way to judge wind currents across the whole distance.
All that, and yet the .50 is practically never used in crime...
Go ahead: name one incident of criminal activity with a .50 rifle. I dare you.
But that's not the real point...
We've seen what the Violence Policy Center thinks of the .50 rifle today. Let's take a stroll back in memory lane and see what they thought of the Assault Weapons Ban when it was passed:
Assualt Weapons Are "COP-KILLERS"
The Violence Policy Center (VPC) today released "Cop Killers: Assault Weapon Attacks on America's Police," a study documenting the significant threat assault weapons pose to law enforcement personnel. The 55-page study was released at a 1:30 PM press conference held on Tuesday, September 12th at the House Triangle with Representative Charles Schumer (D-NY), ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee's Crime Subcommittee.
"The assault weapon ban has finally turned off the spigot that for more than a decade has flooded the nation's streets with these weapons of war. This study confirms that the ban on assault weapons must remain in place if our nation's police are ever to be safe from the threat posed by these firearms," adds Rand.
OK, so the Violence Policy Center was heavily in favor of the Assault Weapons Ban back in 1995. What do they think about it now?
"This bill merely continues the badly flawed 1994 ban, which is a ban in name only," states Kristen Rand, VPC legislative director. "The 1994 law in theory banned AK-47s, MAC-10s, UZIs, AR-15s and other assault weapons. Yet the gun industry easily found ways around the law and most of these weapons are now sold in post-ban models virtually identical to the guns Congress sought to ban in 1994. [...] Reenacting this eviscerated ban without improving it will do little to protect the lives of law enforcement officers and other innocent Americans. Now is the time for Americans to demand that Congress and the Bush Administration roll up their sleeves and enact a truly effective assault weapons ban."
Now, in 2004, it's "badly flawed", a "ban in name only", an "eviscerated" ban that does "little to protect the lives of law enforcement officers and other innocent Americans".
Compare and contrast. Study the before-and-after statements about the assault weapons ban, then study the 'before" statement about the .50 rifle ban. Take a minute or two to think about it.
I'll bet that if they pass that ban, they'll be back shortly thereafter with a call to ban "sniper" rifles... by which they mean hunting rifles. And they'll be talking down the .50 ban just like they are presently talking down the assault weapons ban. And your hunting sniper rifle will be on the chopping block.
Remember, the gun prohibitionists are busy trying to set precedents. What they are really scared of is the 2nd Amendment. They know that they will never get enough support to repeal it, and that if by some means they did, it would touch off a revolution. So they try to pass laws that set precedents; in 10 or 20 years they can look back and say "Well, the assault weapons ban was constitutional, so why can't we ban this other type of gun?"
922. Unlawful acts (a) It shall be unlawful - (1) for any person - (A)
except a licensed importer, licensed manufacturer, or licensed dealer,
to engage in the business of importing, manufacturing, or dealing in
firearms, or in the course of such business to ship, transport, or
receive any firearm in interstate or foreign commerce...
Why, yes, flying to another state to conduct the purchase would count as "receiving a firearm in interstate commerce".
UPDATE: I think CNN can skate on this one. They are not in the
business of manufacturing, importing, or dealing in firearms.
However, the ATF FAQ on this topic (see below) does not include this
exception! So the official position may be different, and less
favorable to CNN, than the plain language of the law.
(3) for any person, other than a licensed importer, licensed
manufacturer, licensed dealer, or licensed collector to transport into
or receive in the State where he resides (or if the person is a
corporation or other business entity, the State where it maintains a
place of business) any firearm purchased or otherwise obtained by such
person outside that State...
Why yes, flying home with it is also a crime.
UPDATE: After the collective wisdom of gunblogger analysis, this
violation seems to hold up to scrutiny IF, and ONLY IF, CNN's reporter
is considered to have bought the gun. That's a very tough
question that isn't covered by the law itself, that I know it.
That means it would be a jury question.
From whom may an unlicensed person acquire a firearm under the GCA?
A
person may only buy a firearm within the person s own State, except
that he or she may buy a rifle or shotgun, in person, at a licensee's
premises in any State, provided the sale complies with State laws
applicable in the State of sale and the State where the purchaser
resides.
So the short answer is, you can buy a firearm out of your state of residence from a licensed dealer only. CNN's story involves a private sale; they make an explicit point of that in their voiceover.
UPDATE: The story also says they "made sure the buyer and seller were
in the same state". That might mean physically, in which case
this applies, or it might mean residing in the same state, in which
case the initial sale was legal. The conclusion I am reaching
here is that the video doesn't tell us enough. There are gray
areas.
For those who are wondering if these rules include the modifications in
the Firearms Owner's Protection Act, the answer is yes. Later in
that same document, the transportation rules from that law are
described:
May a nonlicensee transport firearms for sporting or other lawful
purposes?
Yes. Federal law provides a person, who is not prohibited by
the GCA from receiving or transporting firearms, the right to transport
a firearm under certain conditions, notwithstanding State or local law
to the contrary. The firearms must be unloaded and in a locked trunk
or, in a vehicle lacking a trunk, in a locked container other than the
glove compartment or console. Also, the carrying and possession must be
lawful at the place of origin and destination.
Because
of that, I will take this data as reflecting the current state of the
law. CNN [ed- may have] fucked up big. But will they get prosecuted?
We'll have to wait and see.
The most useful aspect of this portion of their "special report" is to compare it with the victims they feature in their other stories. How many of those victims were following these rules? The answer might surprise you. The incidents can be grouped into four categories:
People who removed the magazine from a handgun and, thinking it was unloaded, pointed the gun at someone and pulled the trigger.
People who experienced an accidental discharge due to the gun functioning as designed, and were injured because the gun was not pointed in a safe direction while loaded.
People who experienced an accidental discharge due to a flaw in the firing mechanism, without pulling the trigger, and were injured because the gun was not pointed in a safe direction while loaded.
People whose firearm discharged when it was dropped.
The first two categories are clearly cases of negligent or simply unsafe gun handling. The third set of cases involve a mixture of fault; clearly, an accidental discharge that occurs without pulling the trigger is a problem. But following the rules of gun safety they lay out in this portion of their article is sufficient to prevent injury, so the gun owner must also bear some responsibility. Notably, most of the cases they present that fit this category are cases where appropriate corrections or recalls have already been made, and additionally cases where the fault occurs after damage to the mechanism rather than as an inherent flaw.
The last category is the only clear case with real fault in the manufacturing process. And yet, dropping a loaded gun is certainly a careless action. I have little sympathy for those who are injured as a result -- the obvious solution is "Don't drop a loaded gun". This should be simple common sense. Yet by the same token, a dropped gun should not fire, as a common-sense safety measure by manufacturers.
It's interesting that this last category is occupied entirely by "cheap" guns, rather than well-made firearms from reputable manufacturers. Why? Because reputable manufacturers make guns that do not fire when dropped already. The consumer has a choice.
Some people are reporting that CNN is not letting them view the .50
video I've been referencing, claiming that a (paid) subscription to CNN
or to Real's service is required. That's odd -- because I've
viewed it twice without any such subscription. You do need a
working Realplayer plugin, though.
Here is a brief description of the video from memory; quotes are
reasonably close to what was said but should be considered a paraphrase:
Voiceover talks about the .50 and how it's easy to buy one without any
government paperwork. Video of a reporter browsing the web...
"and this website is one of the biggest firearms sales sites on the
web: GunsAmerica.com".
The video shows the report browsing down the list of .50 rifles
available. He explicitly states (and the video highlights) that
he is looking for a private individual, not a federal firearms
dealer. He finds one, writes an email on the site suggesting a
meeting, and says he's paying cash.
"Before we actually buy the gun, I want to make sure that I can buy
ammunition for it." And so he goes to an ammo dealer website,
orders it with a credit card, and gets it shipped to his office by UPS
"no questions asked". Well duh. Only problem is, he says
it's "armor piercing" ammunition. Maybe he means it's rifle
ammunition, since just about any rifle round will defeat most
bulletproof vests.
Cut to the reporter in his SUV, taking about how the only paper
involved in the transaction will be the cash. He flashes what
looks like about 5 bills to the camera. Since the price of the
gun was about $3000 new, he's not exactly representing the amount
accurately.
Cut to the reporter walking into a building, then walking out again
with a carrying case. More inane comments in voiceover.
Cut to an airport baggage claim, where he picks up the gun case.
Voiceover about how it's perfectly legal to transport the gun on an
airplane on your baggage (never mind the paperwork).
Cut to a shooting range, where the reporter proves he needs a lot of
practice to hit an airplane door at about 300 yards. Gee, what a
surprise, the bullets penetrate the door, leaving a small hole that
could be plugged with someone's finger! Good thing I don't depend
on thin aluminum to stop a bullet.
After a bit of that, they put a 1-inch steel plate behind the emergency
door and shoot a hole in that. Lots of slow motion for that
shot. I'm left wondering why it matters, since airplanes don't
have 1-inch steel plate armor, and wouldn't be blown to bits by a
little tiny hole even if they did.
And it closes, as I recall, with the reporter doing voiceover about
airport vulnerabilities while an airplane flies overhead, much closer
than the maximum effective range of that "evil" rifle (and most other
rifles). Never mind that actually hitting an airplane in the air
is difficult enough to require a computer with radar.
The single overriding impression I got from this video was that CNN is begging,
yes literally begging, some terrorist to watch this segment, buy a .50
rifle using the "gun show loophole", and shoot at airplanes. They
are handing out instruction manuals to terrorists because they are
tired of the fact that the terrorists have never done anything like this!
CNN is not merely biased. CNN is on the other side.
UPDATE: There are two brief segments with Ron Barrett, who does his
best but is at the mercy of the CNN editting. There's also a
quote: "Bullets the size of small artillery shells". Right.
For those who are having trouble viewing the video, I can still view it for free.
UPDATE: For those who are STILL having trouble viewing the video, I've
figured out what might be causing the problem. You need the RealPlayer plugin.
When you go to download it, RealPlayer is desperate to make you pay
them for a premium product, but if you are determined, you can download
a free version. You have to click through at least two pages that
try to sell you the expensive version. Just look for the link
that says "free". They will try to hide it, so look closely.
One of the problems I have always faced, going into an election, is figuring out who to vote for. Sometimes it's easy; if there's a Libertarian running, he or she gets my vote. But if not, I have to try and synthesize what I have read and researched on each candidate, where they stand on the issues, judge whether they will keep their word if elected, and so on. And in many cases, there's just not much information available -- who publishes information about the local race for dogcatcher?
What about what the major candidates have said in the past -- have they changed their positions after being elected? Or maybe said things that they would rather disown when actually facing an election? To some degree, honest journalists seek to provide that sort of analysis. But their political views rarely match mine, most people don't exactly build a scrapbook of analysis to review when deciding who to vote for, and frankly, most "journalists" these days seem more interested in rewriting an AP article with some local quotes for color than actually doing thoughtful research.
But what if I could actually go back over all the articles written about a candidate in the past -- perhaps along with some thoughtful analysis and commentary? That would help immensely in deciding who to vote for, simply by providing all the information in one place for each candidate in each race. And thus was born what I call The Political Profile Project.
Beginning with the 2004 Presidential Election, I have decided to collect all of the articles I can about each of the candidates. Each will get their own category within the triggerfinger weblog. I will post the articles I find to those categories in order to aid others in reviewing the candidates and making their decisions.
And here's where you can help. There are far too many candidates and races for me to cover myself, even if the Presidential race is the only one really active at the moment. The others will continue to grow in prominence and coverage as we move closer and closer to the 2004 election. And I will need your help to keep up with as much of the coverage as I can.
If you are interested in politics and plan to follow the elections in your state, please register on this site in order to gain access to the weblog, and send me mail with the candidates you intend to cover, along with the positions they are running for, and a brief description or biography. I will create a category for each candidate and then you can start posting links. Consider it doing your bit for informed democracy in our great republic.
