Exploiting Dead Cops for Political Gain Ought to be a Crime...

...so says Ruben Navarrett Jr. in my local dead tree paper yesterday morning. My first instinct was to move it right along to the recycling bin where it would do the most good. But since this goes well beyond the Left's typical hypocrisy, I thought it should have a reply. Mr. Navarett states:

It is grotesque that anyone would ever seize on the killing of a police officer for political purposes. Alas, the practice is bipartisan.

"Grotesque" Noted.

On the right, when the alleged assailant is an illegal immigrant, we often see a cheap and shrill attempt to turn the grief of families and communities over a fallen guardian into outrage over illegal immigration and "open borders."

A "cheap and shrill attempt to turn the grief of families and communities... into outrage" Got it.

You see, for me, the concept of dead policemen is personal and painful. It's not just another issue du jour to be played with. Still, mercenary politicians use it as a chew toy. May they choke on it.

May I suggest that Mr. Navarrett either didn't go far enough, didn't think it through or couldn't see past his own biases?

Maybe the outrage should be when people seize on any killing for political purposes? Recently, on the border, two children died because of medical problems related to their long trek across Mexico. How many on the Left immediately made a "cheap and shrill attempt" to turn the grief of families and communities over these children into outrage over Trump's immigration and borders policies, or against ICE and the Border Patrol?

After Sandy Hook, the "ghouls of gun control" seized on the killing of children for political purposes, proposing numerous gun control methods, none of which would have prevented the shootings. Or at Parkland, where laws already on the books, had they been properly enforced, would have taken the shooter off the street, long before the fateful shooting. "Grotesque", as Mr. Navarrett would say.

In Ferguson, Missouri, there were those who seized on the killing by a police officer for political purposes, giving birth to the bogus "Hands up, don't shoot" movement.

The practice is bipartisan, but alas, it seems to primarily find its home on the Left. If Mr. Navarrett wants to criminalize or at best stigmatize the killing of a police officer for political purposes, may I suggest that he expand his horizons to include the deaths of those shot by the police until such time as they can be thoroughly investigated? The deaths of illegal immigrants who tragically may be sick or dying before they ever enter the country is also not "another issue du jour to be played with", not a "chew toy".

Time for Mr. Navarrett to step up and not be choked by his own chew toys of deaths that he approves of politicizing, not just the ones he disapproves.

Now, it's ready for the recycling!

A Primer on "Common Sense" Gun Laws

First, let me say that I share in the loss and mourn with those who lost loved ones in that terrible Florida school shooting. Some people want to take advantage of those raw emotions to see if they can obtain some political advantage in what really ought to be a time of mourning. But I want you to fully understand that what the anti-gunners mean by "common sense" gun laws is not necessarily what the rest of us call "common sense". The phrase itself, "Common sense gun laws", polls well. I mean, it's obvious, isn't it? Who in their right mind could object to "common sense"? Poll any number of people if you think we should have "common sense gun laws" and you will get a majority, maybe even unanimity!

The gun grabbers then try to use that superficial verbal agreement, since nearly everyone agrees we should have common sense guns laws, then, you should have no problem accepting the ones they're proposing, regardless of how ineffectual they might be, whether or not they solve the problem, and whether or not there are unintended consequences to Constitutional rights, public safety or both, so long as we label them "common sense". There's the bait and switch.

A Democrat, John Dingell, of Michigan said in 1965,

"We now have on the lawbooks of this nation over 20,000 laws governing the sale, distribution and use of firearms.”

I guess it's pretty safe to assume we've added some since then. Yet, for all the "common sense" gun laws already on the books, the people whose ultimate goal is the complete elimination of privately owned firearms (the honest ones will tell you that. Stop laughing!), the anti-gunners want ever increasing restrictions on firearms, the quantity, the quality, the ease of ownership, the cost of ownership, until they have made it too prohibitively expensive or onerous to obtain, and erode the Second Amendment rights of honest, law abiding Americans to keep and bear arms. At least you common ones! We with political clout and wealth will still require our bodyguards to be fully armed!

"But, but..."you might say, "we still have terrible school shootings. We have to do something!!" Aye, and we can. But before we trip down the primrose path of passing new laws, pause a moment and consider what effect new laws will have if they are enforced exactly the same way as the 20,000 plus we already have?

Consider straw purchases, that is to say, buying a gun for someone else, who could not pass a background check.  That is currently against the law. "Well then, that's settled!" You would think so, wouldn't you? But, "U.S. Attorney B. Todd Jones told a Congressional panel in 2013 that out of 48,321 cases involving straw buyers, the Justice Department prosecuted only 44".
If you're wondering how that works out to a percentage it's: 0.0009105 ( 0.01 = 1 percent).

And just how harsh is the punishment for those prosecuted? To quote Jim Geraghty,

"Last year, Simone Mousheh purchased four weapons for $600 each and sold two to a man with Chicago gang ties. She was sentenced to 12 months probation, 15 days in the Cook County sheriff’s work alternative program and ordered to pay $679 in fines."

In other words, a "slap on the wrist". California's "common sense" gun laws did not stop the San Bernadino shooters, (14 killed, 22 seriously  wounded), from getting their long guns via a straw purchase, nor did they prevent them from illegal modifications under the state's assault weapons ban.

Let's recap: Under state and federal "common sense gun laws", you can't buy guns for someone else and lie about it, you can't legally modify the guns you bought illegally to operate the way they did, oh, and by the way, it's illegal to shoot people. Noise ordinance or some such.

California has, in addition to their common sense gun laws, some of the most restrictive laws in the nation. Likewise, Chicago, where just last year, 3,561 people were shot, 650 killed. Which, granted, was fewer than 2016, where they had 771 murders. Just checking my memory, but have you heard anyone screeching that Mayor Rahm Emanuel had "blood on his hands"? Any screams of "We have to do something?" Funny how only white suburban shootings seem to rouse the anti-gunners from their slumber! According to CBS News, 27 people were shot in Chicago the very first day of the year.

Shrieks of outrage? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller??

No, because Chicago already has the strictest gun control laws in the nation. Making a fuss there would be counterproductive to passing new laws, which would be, for the most part, those very same laws for the rest of the country. Show me the law working in Chicago and I'll consider implementing it somewhere else. Anywhere else. You say, "Thoughts and prayers are not enough!" Likewise, emotional grandstanding and demagoguery is not enough, either.

One last point on "common sense" gun laws and their implementation. Consider the incongruity of liberal attitudes towards guns. I'm sure you've all heard the horror stories of "zero tolerance" in the public schools, which are by and large the domain of liberals. A kid is expelled for biting a Pop Tart into the "shape of a gun" or drawing a picture of a gun. A kid put a green Army man on his ball cap to honor veterans, but because it carried a 3" plastic rifle, it violated the "zero tolerance" policy on guns. Zero means zero! Repercussions are swift! Off with his hat!

Contrast that with our attitude with people who bring actual guns onto a school campus. How many times do you suppose has a teenager walked away from a courtroom because "it was his first offense". Really? So we get one free murder each, like the Bill Clinton "one free grope" rule? Or we question whether or not to try a 16-17 year old gangbanger as an adult, because "He's just a child, better go easy on him!" If there ever were a place for zero tolerance, shouldn't it be for murder and violent assaults? Popular media reinforces the stereotype that first offenders, and those under eighteen, will skate on a first offense, or receive a much less stringent sentence. Where's the deterrence in that?

Listen to what Nikolas Cruz's public defender, Melisa McNeill, said about him:

“When your brain is not fully developed, you don’t know how to deal with these things. When you have the lack of impulse control that a 19 year old has, that effects the behavior you exhibit."

Got that? All you seventeen, eighteen, nineteen year olds: your brain is not fully developed, you lack impulse control and you don't know how to deal with these things! Next time you get pulled over by a police officer, tell him, "Officer, my brain is not yet fully developed and my lack of impulse control effects the behavior I exhibit." At which point, the officer will pat you on your head and send you home to Mommy...in no universe ever!

I'm thinking maybe we need a class action suit against the military. For years they drafted 18 year olds, with brains not fully developed, enlisted recruits as young as seventeen, with their parent's permission, and put a rifle* in the hands of all those poor lads who lacked impulse control and showed them which end the round came out!

"That’s the child I’m sitting across from...He’s sad. He’s mournful. He’s remorseful. He is fully aware of what is going on, and he’s just a broken human being.”

Not sure if any jury is going to buy this. A 19 year old "child" who is "fully aware of what is going on", even with his 'not yet fully developed brain' and 'lack of impulse control' is somehow not responsible for what millions of similarly functioning young adults have managed not to do for as long as anyone can remember?

If it's a question of not knowing right from wrong, ask yourself why he took his vest off and tried to exit unnoticed with all the other students? To avoid capture. Why would he try to avoid capture unless he knew what he did was wrong?

Before you join the stampede for new guns laws, because "we can't just do nothing", consider the consequences of electing and appointing District Attorneys, Judges, and Attorneys General and electing the politicians who appoint them, who do not enforce the laws they write, that are already on the books, such as "straw purchases".

And maybe before you start calling pro-gunners vile names and wishing for their painful deaths and the death of their children, consider that they probably value much of what you value, and want many of the same things for their children and their communities as you do, but simply disagree with you on the best way to accomplish it.


*Or a fighter jet. What could possibly go wrong?

Michael Bloomberg: The Most Trusted Name in Gun Control Statistics

Bloomberg's "Everytown" claims there have been 18 "school shootings" so far in 2018. Among them:

* a man committed suicide in the parking lot of a school closed for sever months: no students around, no teachers.

* Someone shot a gun several times in a school parking lot at 8 PM when there were...no students around, no teachers either.

* Someone shot a BB gun at a school bus window...no students present, no teachers either.

* One was the accidental discharge of a school police officer...no one injured.

Are you starting to see a pattern here? I understand that in 13 of these 18 school shootings, there were no physical injuries whatsoever to anyone involved. Now, you and I may agree that one school shooting s too many. But, liberal liars like Mike Bloomberg are not doing any favors to a rational discussion of what needs to be done. On the other hand, irrational emotion is vital to their cause of eliminating the private ownership of firearms.

The Ghouls of Gun Control Rear Their Ugly Heads Once Again

Editor's note: I'm reposting this, in part because of the anti-gun noise and nonsense in the wake of the Las Vegas shooting, and because the liberal anti-gun crowd still can't get their facts straight.I wrote this piece in response to a column by Michael Fitzgerald, of the Stockton Record, late in Oct '15. I responded with a long letter to the Editor, which, to their credit, they published almost in its entirety. (Like I said, it was long!) Afterwards, there were a spate of shootings which made the national news, and I felt it might be inappropriate to respond, in the light of unfolding events. For those of you who just read The Ghouls of Gun Control, this is the columnist and the column that I was referring to. This last draft contained a lot of material I felt wouldn't fit in the letter.


Michael Fitzgerald, a columnist for my local dead tree paper, decided that my fair city has too many guns. In reality, what he wants to eliminate is too many shootings. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to know the difference.

You can't hardly blame him. Well, yes you can. He's regurgitating statistics that he got from the Brady Campaign to Stop Gun Violence. Getting reliable and accurate statistics from them is like getting information from our last Commander-in-Chief on keeping your doctor if you liked your doctor. He quotes the "reality" that
"A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used to kill or injure in a domestic homicide, suicide, or unintentional shooting, than to be used in self-defense..."
So I read that and immediately I asked myself, where did they get that number from? A curiosity apparently not shared by our columnist, so I Googled it, and the top two entries were one from the Brady organization and the second was from the NRA-ILA, Institute for Legislative Action.

It listed the source of the study, "Injuries and Deaths Due to Firearms in the Home," Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection and Critical Care, Aug. 1998, and then proceeded to list the flaws of that study. This analysis was in 2001. For upwards to seventeen years, Brady has been repeating the results of this extremely flawed study, because it knows that columnists like Fitzgerald will accept it without question and then spread the lies even farther. Perhaps the greatest flaw in the study which "proves" 'A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used...yada yada yada", except in all but 14.2% of the subjects of the study, they were shot with some other gun!

"only 14.2% of criminal gun-related homicides and assaults he surveyed involved guns kept in the homes where the crimes occurred."

Let me break that down for you. Let's say you are a drug dealing gang banger and you keep a gun in your house for protection. Which is probably pretty smart, since all your other drug dealing, gang banger associates have guns and would shoot you in a New York minute if there was a buck in it for them. So, if you leave your house and get killed by someone else's gun, outside your house, the study says, See? He kept a gun in the house and he got shot! Mind you, the gun you kept in the house didn't kill you, but it counts in our study because...science!

And what's a good anti-gun diatribe without a little something to tug the heart strings? Fitzgerald recounts the 1989 Cleveland schoolyard "massacre". Because nothing like that has happened here in the last quarter century or so, but...science! A little background on the Cleveland school shooting, in case you don't remember back that far. A loser named Patrick Purdy, whom the New York Times described as having an "extensive criminal history", killed five children between the ages of six and nine, and wounded thirty others.

He had a record of at least five arrests in California, dating to 1980.

A psych evaluation for his probation report after his last arrest and incarceration in 1987 "described him as a danger to himself and others". Arrested numerous times, attempted suicide twice, one might suggest that the criminal justice and public health system failed this man. One other lesser known detail of his attack, he prepared a Molotov cocktail, a gasoline bomb, and blew up his car before he started his shooting spree. Which not only does not sound like the mark of a sane man to me, but it also points out his disregard of laws restricting the use of explosive devices. Imagine for a brief moment, you have a person this crazy, without a firearm in sight, who creates not one but a half a dozen firebombs and uses them to assault an elementary school.

Purdy was a mentally ill criminal. His last handgun purchase was subject to a 15 day "cooling off" period, which ended three days before the shooting. Guess that didn't work, either.

Fitzgerald gratuitously tells the tragic story of a young man who accidentally shoots himself fatally, cleaning his gun while his mother watched. Although this is both heart breaking and avoidable, this death would not have been eliminated by any of the proposed gun control laws being pushed today, so why bring it up? Because most gun control advocated today cannot be sold logically, it must tug the heart strings.

For example, who among us is untouched by the death of a child? So young, with their entire lives before them! So a few years back, there was a study compiled of the deaths of "children" killed by guns. Because when we hear about things like that, we tend to think "Sandy Hook" or "Cleveland school". Only this study was of "children" up to the age of twenty three! The highest percentage of deaths was among inner city gangs, 17-23, who were involved in all sorts of criminal activity and not the sort to abide by the law just for the sake of it. But the dishonesty of the anti-gun crowd can be seen in the way they pad their statistics, because if the numbers are not high enough, it will not affect you as emotionally.

Everyone who is killed by a gun in America is fair game for their statistics. People who use a gun in self defense, police officers in the line of duty, every justified use of deadly force is considered a "victim" of gun violence. Dana Loesch points out in her book, one group reciting the names of "victims" of gun violence, named Tamerlan Tsarnaev. You remember him? After he and his brother set off bombs at the Boston Marathon, killing men, women, and children and tearing their bodies limb from limb, he got into a shootout with police. Most of America didn't lose any sleep over it. Brady and their brethren drew another chalk outline around another victim, and if we only have "common sense gun laws" we could eliminate these senseless deaths. Don't worry. I'm sure Michael Brown of Ferguson MO is on one of their lists, too!

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed a gun control measure for the 2016 ballot. Newsom’s politically courageous measure would ban clips (sic) that hold more than 10 rounds.

I'm sure he meant "magazines". There is a difference, though I suspect much of Mr. Fitzgerald's knowledge of guns comes from Hollywood rather than hands on experience. There may be one slight hitch in this part of Newsom's "politically courageous measure" here in California. It's already been law since January of 2000. We affectionately call it California Penal Code Section 32310:

32310. (a) Except as provided in Article 2 (commencing with Section 32400) of this chapter and in Chapter 1 (commencing with Section 17700) of Division 2 of Title 2, commencing January 1, 2000, any person in this state who manufactures or causes to be manufactured, imports into the state, keeps for sale, or offers or exposes for sale, or who gives, lends, buys, or receives any large-capacity magazine is punishable by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year or imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170.
(b) For purposes of this section, "manufacturing" includes both fabricating a magazine and assembling a magazine from a combination of parts, including, but not limited to, the body, spring, follower, and floor plate or end plate, to be a fully functioning large-capacity magazine.

So, we have a journalist quoting studies that have been debunked for fourteen years impressed with someone who apparently hasn't got a clue to what current law actually states, and these guys are going to fix it for us? Please!

Patrick Purdy, the Aurora theater shooter and the Boston Marathon bombers all broke multiple laws in constructing, placing and detonating bombs aside from their gun crimes. Yet if anyone were to come up to you and say, "All we need are 'common sense' bomb laws", you might look at them as if they were insane. We already have "common sense bomb laws" on the books which need to be enforced when violated by evil or mentally ill individuals. BTW, that's the way that some Second Amendment advocates and those who actually know the issues, look at you when you propose something yet again that will not work, will not deter crime or criminals or the mentally ill, but you feel you "have to do something" about these horrific crimes. Or at least, that's what the politicians say.

Despite the media coverage, school shootings are actually decreasing. Homicides are decreasing. Accidental shootings are decreasing. The sensational coverage is increasing.

For liberal politicians, gun control is the gift that keeps on giving. They can pass legislation that they know will not decrease crime or violence one whit, in fact may even make the problem worse by disarming the law abiding, take credit for "doing something" and still have an issue they can run on year after year.

Bottom line, whenever someone tells you they want "common sense" gun laws, ask them specifically what the law would ban and how specifically that law would have prevented the latest in a long line of tragedies exploited by the Ghouls of Gun Control?

Originally published 12/14/15

The Folly of Gun Control and Gun Controllers

Editor's note: I'm reposting this, because the liberal anti-gun crowd still can't get their facts straight.I wrote this piece in response to a column by Michael Fitzgerald, of the Stockton Record, late in Oct '15. I responded with a long letter to the Editor, which, to their credit, they published almost in its entirety. (Like I said, it was long!) Afterwards, there were a spate of shootings which made the national news, and I felt it might be inappropriate to respond, in the light of unfolding events. For those of you who just read The Ghouls of Gun Control, this is the columnist and the column that I was referring to. This last draft contained a lot of material I felt wouldn't fit in the letter.


Michael Fitzgerald, a columnist for my local dead tree paper, decided that my fair city has too many guns. In reality, what he wants to eliminate is too many shootings. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to know the difference.

You can't hardly blame him. Well, yes you can. He's regurgitating statistics that he got from the Brady Campaign to Stop Gun Violence. Getting reliable and accurate statistics from them is like getting information from our last Commander-in-Chief on keeping your doctor if you liked your doctor. He quotes the "reality" that

"A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used to kill or injure in a domestic homicide, suicide, or unintentional shooting, than to be used in self-defense..."

So I read that and immediately I asked myself, where did they get that number from? A curiosity apparently not shared by our columnist, so I Googled it, and the top two entries were one from the Brady organization and the second was from the NRA-ILA, Institute for Legislative Action.

It listed the source of the study, "Injuries and Deaths Due to Firearms in the Home," Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection and Critical Care, Aug. 1998, and then proceeded to list the flaws of that study. This analysis was in 2001. For upwards to seventeen years, Brady has been repeating the results of this extremely flawed study, because it knows that columnists like Fitzgerald will accept it without question and then spread the lies even farther. Perhaps the greatest flaw in the study which "proves" 'A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used...yada yada yada", except in all but 14.2% of the subject of the study, they were shot with some other gun!

"only 14.2% of criminal gun-related homicides and assaults he surveyed involved guns kept in the homes where the crimes occurred."

Let me break that down for you. Let's say you are a drug dealing gang banger and you keep a gun in your house for protection. Which is probably pretty smart, since all your other drug dealing, gang banger associates have guns and would shoot you in a New York minute if there was a buck in it for them. So, if you leave your house and get killed by someone else's gun, outside your house, the study says, See? He kept a gun in the house and he got shot! Mind you, the gun you kept in the house didn't kill you, but it counts in our study because...science!

And what's a good anti-gun diatribe without a little something to tug the heart strings? Fitzgerald recounts the 1989 Cleveland schoolyard "massacre". Because nothing like that has happened here in the last quarter century or so, but...science! A little background on the Cleveland school shooting, in case you don't remember back that far. A loser named Patrick Purdy, whom the New York Times described as having an "extensive criminal history", killed five children between the ages of six and nine, and wounded thirty others.

He had a record of at least five arrests in California, dating to 1980.

A psych evaluation for his probation report after his last arrest and incarceration in 1987 "described him as a danger to himself and others". Arrested numerous times, attempted suicide twice, one might suggest that the criminal justice and public health system failed this man. One other lesser known detail of his attack, he prepared a Molotov cocktail, a gasoline bomb, and blew up his car before he started his shooting spree. Which not only does not sound like the mark of a sane man to me, but it also points out his disregard of laws restricting the use of explosive devices. Imagine for a brief moment, you have a person this crazy, without a firearm in sight, who creates not one but a half a dozen firebombs and uses them to assault an elementary school.

Purdy was a mentally ill criminal. His last handgun purchase was subject to a 15 day "cooling off" period, which ended three days before the shooting. Guess that didn't work, either.

Fitzgerald gratuitously tells the tragic story of a young man who accidentally shoots himself fatally, cleaning his gun while his mother watched. Although this is both heart breaking and avoidable, this death would not have been eliminated by any of the proposed gun control laws being pushed today, so why bring it up? Because most gun control advocated today cannot be sold logically, it must tug the heart strings.

For example, who among us is untouched by the death of a child? So young, with their entire lives before them! So a few years back, there was a study compiled of the deaths of "children" killed by guns. Because when we hear about things like that, we tend to think "Sandy Hook" or "Cleveland school". Only this study was of "children" up to the age of twenty three! The highest percentage of deaths was among inner city gangs, 17-23, who were involved in all sorts of criminal activity and not the sort to abide by the law just for the sake of it. But the dishonesty of the anti-gun crowd can be seen in the way they pad their statistics, because if the numbers are not high enough, it will not affect you as emotionally.

Everyone who is killed by a gun in America is fair game for their statistics. People who use a gun in self defense, police officers in the line of duty, every justified use of deadly force is considered a "victim" of gun violence. Dana Loesch points out in her book, one group reciting the names of "victims" of gun violence, named Tamerlan Tsarnaev. You remember him? After he and his brother set off bombs at the Boston Marathon, killing men, women, and children and tearing their bodies limb from limb, he got into a shootout with police. Most of America didn't lose any sleep over it. Brady and their brethren drew another chalk outline around another victim, and if we only have "common sense gun laws" we could eliminate these senseless deaths. Don't worry. I'm sure Michael Brown of Ferguson MO is on one of their lists, too!

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed a gun control measure for the 2016 ballot. Newsom’s politically courageous measure would ban clips (sic) that hold more than 10 rounds.

I'm sure he meant "magazines". There is a difference, though I suspect much of Mr. Fitzgerald's knowledge of guns comes from Hollywood rather than hands on experience. There may be one slight hitch in this part of Newsom's "politically courageous measure" here in California. It's already been law since January of 2000. We affectionately call it California Penal Code Section 32310:

32310. (a) Except as provided in Article 2 (commencing with Section 32400) of this chapter and in Chapter 1 (commencing with Section 17700) of Division 2 of Title 2, commencing January 1, 2000, any person in this state who manufactures or causes to be manufactured, imports into the state, keeps for sale, or offers or exposes for sale, or who gives, lends, buys, or receives any large-capacity magazine is punishable by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year or imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170.
(b) For purposes of this section, "manufacturing" includes both fabricating a magazine and assembling a magazine from a combination of parts, including, but not limited to, the body, spring, follower, and floor plate or end plate, to be a fully functioning large-capacity magazine.

So, we have a journalist quoting studies that have been debunked for fourteen years impressed with someone who apparently hasn't got a clue to what current law actually states, and these guys are going to fix it for us? Please!

Patrick Purdy, the Aurora theater shooter and the Boston Marathon bombers all broke multiple laws in constructing, placing and detonating bombs aside from their gun crimes. Yet if anyone were to come up to you and say, "All we need are 'common sense' bomb laws", you might look at them as if they were insane. We already have "common sense bomb laws" on the books which need to be enforced when violated by evil or mentally ill individuals. BTW, that's the way that some Second Amendment advocates and those who actually know the issues, look at you when you propose something yet again that will not work, will not deter crime or criminals or the mentally ill, but you feel you "have to do something" about these horrific crimes. Or at least, that's what the politicians say.

Despite the media coverage, school shootings are actually decreasing. Homicides are decreasing. Accidental shootings are decreasing. The sensational coverage is increasing.

For liberal politicians, gun control is the gift that keeps on giving. They can pass legislation that they know will not decrease crime or violence one whit, in fact may even make the problem worse by disarming the law abiding, take credit for "doing something" and still have an issue they can run on year after year. 

Bottom line, whenever someone tells you they want "common sense" gun laws, ask them specifically what the law would ban and how specifically that law would have prevented the latest in a long line of tragedies exploited by the Ghouls of Gun Control?

Originally published 12/14/15

The Folly of Gun Control and Gun Controllers

Editor's note: I wrote this piece in response to a column by Michael Fitzgerald, of the Record, late in Oct. I responded with a long letter to the Editor, which, to their credit, they published almost in its entirety. (Like I said, it was long!) Afterwards, there were a spate of shootings which made the national news, and I felt it might be inappropriate to respond, in the light of unfolding events. For those of you who just read The Ghouls of Gun Control, this is the columnist and the column that I was referring to. This last draft contained a lot of material I felt wouldn't fit in the letter.


Michael Fitzgerald, a columnist for my local dead tree paper, decided that my fair city has too many guns. In reality, what he wants to eliminate is too many shootings. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to know the difference.

You can't hardly blame him. Well, yes you can. He's regurgitating statistics that he got from the Brady Campaign to Stop Gun Violence. Getting reliable and accurate statistics from them is like getting information from our Commander-in-Chief on keeping your doctor if you liked your doctor. He quotes the "reality" that

"A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used to kill or injure in a domestic homicide, suicide, or unintentional shooting, than to be used in self-defense..."

So I read that and immediately I asked myself, where did they get that number from? A curiosity apparently not shared by our columnist, so I Googled it, and the top two entries were one from the Brady organization and the second was from the NRA-ILA, Institute for Legislative Action.

It listed the source of the study, "Injuries and Deaths Due to Firearms in the Home," Journal of Trauma, Injury, Infection and Critical Care, Aug. 1998, and then proceeded to list the flaws of that study. This analysis was in 2001. For upwards to seventeen years, Brady has been repeating the results of this extremely flawed study, because it knows that columnists like Fitzgerald will accept it without question and then spread the lies even farther. Perhaps the greatest flaw in the study which "proves" 'A gun in the home is 22 times more likely to be used...yada yada yada", except in all but 14.2% of the subject of the study, they were shot with some other gun!

"only 14.2% of criminal gun-related homicides and assaults he surveyed involved guns kept in the homes where the crimes occurred."

Let me break that down for you. Let's say you are a drug dealing gang banger and you keep a gun in your house for protection. Which is probably pretty smart, since all your other drug dealing, gang banger associates have guns and would shoot you in a New York minute if there was a buck in it for them. So, if you leave your house and get killed by someone else's gun, outside your house, the study says, See? He kept a gun in the house and he got shot! Mind you, the gun you kept in the house didn't kill you, but it counts in our study because...science!

And what's a good anti-gun diatribe without a little something to tug the heart strings? Fitzgerald recounts the 1989 Cleveland schoolyard "massacre". Because nothing like that has happened here in the last quarter century or so, but...science! A little background on the Cleveland school shooting, in case you don't remember back that far. A loser named Patrick Purdy, whom the New York Times described as having an "extensive criminal history", killed five children between the ages of six and nine, and wounded thirty others.

He had a record of at least five arrests in California, dating to 1980.

A psych evaluation for his probation report after his last arrest and incarceration in 1987 "described him as a danger to himself and others". Arrested numerous times, attempted suicide twice, one might suggest that the criminal justice and public health system failed this man. One other lesser known detail of his attack, he prepared a Molotov cocktail, a gasoline bomb, and blew up his car before he started his shooting spree. Which not only does not sound like the mark of a sane man to me, but it also points out his disregard of laws restricting the use of explosive devices. Imagine for a brief moment, you have a person this crazy, without a firearm in sight, who creates not one but a half a dozen firebombs and uses them to assault an elementary school.

Purdy was a mentally ill criminal. His last handgun purchase was subject to a 15 day "cooling off" period, which ended three days before the shooting. Guess that didn't work, either.

Fitzgerald gratuitously tells the tragic story of a young man who accidentally shoots himself fatally, cleaning his gun while his mother watched. Although this is both heart breaking and avoidable, this death would not have been eliminated by any of the proposed gun control laws being pushed today, so why bring it up? Because most gun control advocated today cannot be sold logically, it must tug the heart strings.

For example, who among us is untouched by the death of a child? So young, with their entire lives before them! So a few years back, there was a study compiled of the deaths of "children" killed by guns. Because when we hear about things like that, we tend to think "Sandy Hook" or "Cleveland school". Only this study was of "children" up to the age of twenty three! The highest percentage of deaths was among inner city gangs, 17-23, who were involved in all sorts of criminal activity and not the sort to abide by the law just for the sake of it. But the dishonesty of the anti-gun crowd can be seen in the way they pad their statistics, because if the numbers are not high enough, it will not affect you as emotionally.

Everyone who is killed by a gun in America is fair game for their statistics. People who use a gun in self defense, police officers in the line of duty, every justified use of deadly force is considered a "victim" of gun violence. Dana Loesch points out in her book, one group reciting the names of "victims" of gun violence, named Tamerlan Tsarnaev. You remember him? After he and his brother set off bombs at the Boston Marathon, killing men, women, and children and tearing their bodies limb from limb, he got into a shootout with police. Most of America didn't lose any sleep over it. Brady and their brethren drew another chalk outline around another victim, and if we only have "common sense gun laws" we could eliminate these senseless deaths. Don't worry. I'm sure Michael Brown of Ferguson MO is on one of their lists, too!

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom has proposed a gun control measure for the 2016 ballot. Newsom’s politically courageous measure would ban clips (sic) that hold more than 10 rounds.

I'm sure he meant "magazines". There is a difference, though I suspect much of Mr. Fitzgerald's knowledge of guns comes from Hollywood rather than hands on experience. There may be one slight hitch in this part of Newsom's "politically courageous measure" here in California. It's already been law since January of 2000. We affectionately call it California Penal Code Section 32310:

32310. (a) Except as provided in Article 2 (commencing with Section 32400) of this chapter and in Chapter 1 (commencing with Section 17700) of Division 2 of Title 2, commencing January 1, 2000, any person in this state who manufactures or causes to be manufactured, imports into the state, keeps for sale, or offers or exposes for sale, or who gives, lends, buys, or receives any large-capacity magazine is punishable by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year or imprisonment pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170.
(b) For purposes of this section, "manufacturing" includes both fabricating a magazine and assembling a magazine from a combination of parts, including, but not limited to, the body, spring, follower, and floor plate or end plate, to be a fully functioning large-capacity magazine.

So, we have a journalist quoting studies that have been debunked for fourteen years impressed with someone who apparently hasn't got a clue to what current law actually states, and these guys are going to fix it for us? Please!

Patrick Purdy, the Aurora theater shooter and the Boston Marathon bombers all broke multiple laws in constructing, placing and detonating bombs aside from their gun crimes. Yet if anyone were to come up to you and say, "All we need are 'common sense' bomb laws", you might look at them as if they were insane. We already have "common sense bomb laws" on the books which need to be enforced when violated by evil or mentally ill individuals. BTW, that's the way that some Second Amendment advocates and those who actually know the issues, look at you when you propose something yet again that will not work, will not deter crime or criminals or the mentally ill, but you feel you "have to do something" about these horrific crimes. Or at least, that's what the politicians say.

Despite the media coverage, school shootings are actually decreasing. Homicides are decreasing. Accidental shootings are decreasing. The sensational coverage is increasing.

For liberal politicians, gun control is the gift that keeps on giving. They can pass legislation that they know will not decrease crime or violence one whit, in fact may even make the problem worse by disarming the law abiding, take credit for "doing something" and still have an issue they can run on year after year. 

Bottom line, whenever someone tells you they want "common sense" gun laws, ask them specifically what the law would ban and how specifically that law would have prevented the latest in a long line of tragedies exploited by the Ghouls of Gun Control?

The Ghouls of Gun Control

A response to an Editorial by Eric Grunder, Stockton Record, 12/13/15


A literary pal of mine* once said, "There are lies, damned lies and statistics." Welcome to the hyperventilating world of Eric Grunder! I don't know if he's gullible by nature, but if I met him, I might try to trade a handful of "magic beans" for his BMW!

I wonder if Mr. Grunder is possible of rendering a statistic from a first hand source, and then citing it? He cites a statistic "reported by" the BBC, but where did it come from? We saw Mike Fitzgerald** pontificate on gun control a few weeks back on a discredited study that was fifteen years old. Even though our own CDC spent $10 million dollars to study the problem right after Sandy Hook, but actual, provable statistics don't seem to favor the Ghouls of Gun Control. And then, he cites Vox.com! I see them mocked on an almost daily basis for the mind-numbingly stupid and erroneous things they say. Getting your facts from Vox.com is like getting survival tips from Gilligan's Island.

I haven't seen all the data, but according to that Uber Right-wing*** source "Mother Jones" last December, contrary to Eric Grunder, they were saying that automobile deaths were greater than firearms deaths. Go figure!

But let's do something the Ghouls of Gun Control don't like to do: break down what constitutes a "gun death". Let's do so, so that we can focus on the preventable gun deaths of innocents. Let's look at one of the "gun deaths" of 2013. Tamerlan Tsarnaev had just detonated bombs that killed and maimed men, women and children. Afterwards, he got into a shootout with police who killed him. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was named by a gun control group as a "victim of gun violence". Is there any "common sense" gun law that would have prevented this death? According to the FBI, in 2013, 461 felons were shot by law enforcement. Another 281 felons were shot by citizens. That's 742 justifiable homicides the Left uses to exaggerate their statistics. Tsarnaev was only one of them.

Suicide is a tragedy. The study cited by Mother Jones noted that there were more suicides by gun than homicides. This too may be part of the larger mental health problem we are having in this country, but is there any evidence at all that a suicidal person, denied access to a gun, will not still attempt to kill themselves? Is there a "common sense" gun law that will prevent this? If so, I'd like to hear it. Many countries with very few firearms, and many restrictions upon them, still have high suicide rates.

Accidental deaths by firearms are down. I recently read the material for the gun safety course one must pass in California before being able to purchase a firearm. The section on child safety read like it was word for word out of an old "Eddie Eagle" gun safety program that the NRA was trying to promote in elementary schools. For years, men like Wayne LaPierre "and his ilk", (to quote a contemporary Ghoul of Gun Control), have been trying to improve the safety of children, gun owners and non gun owners alike. Too bad the very mention of the NRA brings a reaction from liberals like the cross does to Dracula.

What about gang violence? Every week we hear the death tolls from places like Chicago with very strict gun control laws, where people who break the law to sell drugs and run in gangs ignore gun laws as well? One study, hoping to ratchet up sympathy for children who die from firearms, used statistics of "children" up to twenty-three years old, many of them shot because of drug or gang activity. Is there one more "common sense" gun law that drug dealers and gangbangers and even bomb makers will obey?

A hysterically emotional, left wing "bumper sticker solution" to preventable gun violence is not the answer either. Nor is accepting every statistic you hear as being accurate or from an unbiased source. If there is one more common sense gun law that will reduce senseless violence, I am open to hear it. But, ill informed emotional responses to over-inflated statistics will not sway those who hold to the principles of the Constitution and the rights you are asking them to surrender.

Eric Grunder would do well to base his opinions on genuine facts from reliable sources. If not, there's always a place for him at Vox.




* Mark Twain
** Another Record columnist
***sarcasm, in case it wasn't detected.