4/18/2013

Talk at 12:15 today at the University of Akron Law School

For those interested, I will be talking about gun control today at 12:15 at the University of Akron Law School.

4/17/2013

More on Democrats now criticizing Obamacare

From The Hill newspaper:

"I just see a huge train wreck coming down," [Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) ] told Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius at a Wednesday hearing. "You and I have discussed this many times, and I don't see any results yet." . . .
"Small businesses have no idea what to do, what to expect," Baucus said.
Citing anecdotal evidence from small businesses in his home state, Baucus asked Sebelius for specifics about how it is measuring public understanding of the law.
"You need data. Do you have any data? You've never given me data. You only give me concepts, frankly," he said. . . .

Labels: obamacare

Jon Stewart Show makes fun of my concern that government taxes are preventing poor people from owning guns for protection

The brief video segment can be seen here. The rest of my discussion was cut where I explain that those who are most likely to be victims of violent crime need guns for defensive uses the most.

Labels: MediaAppearance

4/15/2013

Decorated war veteran arrested for "rudely displaying" (carrying) guns while on walk for protection

From Todd Starnes at Fox News:

Army Master Sgt. C.J. Grisham told Fox News he was illegally disarmed by members of the Temple Police Dept. – even though he held the proper permits to carry his weapons.Grisham and his son were on a 10-mile hike in a rural area populated by wild boars and cougars. He was carrying an AR-15 rifle and a .45 caliber pistol.
He was charged with resisting arrest – even though video his son filmed of the incident clearly showed that Grisham did not resist arrest. Police later reduced the charges to interfering with a peace officer while performing a duty – a class B misdemeanor.
“I’m still frankly and honestly 100 percent confused about what I’m being charged with,” Grisham said.
Temple Police told local media that the Fort Hood soldier refused to hand of his weapon – leading to his arrest. However, the video shows that Grisham complied with their demands.
One of the officers told Grisham that anyone holding a gun is considered dangerous, according to a 15-minute video obtained by Fox News. . . . .

Labels: ConcealedCarry

4/13/2013

New Ad by "Mayors Against Illegal Guns"

Text:

“The grief was staggering, and now more than 100 days after the massacre at Newtown, the US Senate starts to act.”
“Some Democrats and Republicans are coming together to support comprehensive background checks on gun sales that will protect the Second Amendment and help keep guns out of the hands of dangerous criminals.”
“Ninety percent of America supports comprehensive background checks. Call your senators and urge them to support the bipartisan effort for comprehensive background checks. Demand action now.”

This isn't obnoxious like a radio ad that I recently heard from Bloomberg's group and unfortunately it is right that this move is bipartisan, but these guys aren't working "to protect the Second Amendment." The background check bill is an attempt to make it more costly for law-abiding people to obtain guns for protection, establish a national gun registry, and apparently include voluntary mental help that people may have gotten as a permanent prohibition on getting a gun. As to the accuracy of the poll see my discussion here.

Labels: background checks, ObamaGunControl

If the Police understand that giving media attention to Celeb "Swatting" encourages more of it, why can't we do the same for multiple victim public shootings?

If publicity is encouraging these Celeb "Swattings" and if the police are going to stop releasing information to discourage those attacks, why can't this police be employed elsewhere? The most obvious case involves multiple victim public shootings where it is now becoming clear that even the latest Newtown attack was just another case where the killer planned his attack for over two years to get media attention. From CBS News in LA:

The Los Angeles Police Department said Thursday that they will no longer offer immediate information to the media on bogus 911 calls that target celebrity homes.
“We think that whoever is doing this is motivated by watching the police on TV and watching the helicopters come in, and we don’t want to allow that opportunity,” said Cmdr. Andrew Smith.
Smith said the department will also stop broadcasting the “swatting” calls so news organizations can’t hear the location of the star’s home. The media will now have to file a public records request, which can take 10 days.
When asked if residents have the right to know about a potential safety concern, Smith said, “Our officers will always talk to the families and the people who live in the neighborhoods about what’s going on and reassure them that it’s not an actual emergency there. What we won’t do is broadcast the street to the media, we won’t broadcast whose house it was.” . . .

Labels: Guns in Media, media coverage encourages crime

Fox News: "Experiment measures crime after free gun giveaway"

Fox News has an interest discussion available here on experiments across the country that are trying to help arm poor people in high crime areas.

The most interesting takeaway from this segment is how liberals claim that they support the right of people to defend themselves, but even when poor people in high crime areas pass background checks and get training, gun control advocates still seem to find all sorts of reasons to object to these people owning guns.

It is hard for me not to notice how gun control advocates are pushing for taxes on gun ownership that is primarily being used to disarm the law-abiding poor.

Labels: hypocrisy of gun control advocates

Rasmussen: "Only 41% believe more background checks will reduce gun violence."

While Scott Rasmussen indicates that background checks has "overwhelming support," he notes that relatively few think that it will actually lower crime rates. What would happen to the percent of support if:

1) the question noted the creation of a gun registry,

2) the fees that would be required on the transfer of guns, or

3) that it was almost always law-abiding citizens who have been stopped from buying guns.

Even in liberal New Jersey with heavy gun control law, people are no better than split on whether gun control laws work.

New Jerseyans are split on whether stricter gun laws would reduce violence with 47 percent agreeing and 47 percent disagreeing. But among gun-owning households, 69 percent say stricter gun laws would not reduce violence compared to 53 who feel differently. Similarly, 74 percent of NRA supporters believe violence would not be reduced, compared to only 28 percent of opponents. A solid majority of Democrats (61 percent) say stricter laws would reduce violence, but only 39 percent of independents and 35 percent of Republicans agree. . . .

Here is an additional discussion from the National Journal:

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows that 65 percent of women favor stronger gun laws, compared to 44 percent of men. That’s consistent with previous polling; a recent Quinnipiac University poll showed 61 percent of women and 45 percent of men in favor stricter gun laws. . . .

Although gun ownership among women has increased over the previous decades, men are still three times more likely to own guns than women, according to a March Pew Center survey. And opinions on the effectiveness of gun laws vary greatly depending on whether you own a gun or if there is one in your house. According to the Pew survey, 66 percent of people who live in gun-free homes say stricter gun laws would reduce mass-shooting casualties; only 35 percent of people in gun-owning households agreed. . . . .

Labels: background checks

Radio interview with Mark Levin on Senate Gun Control Bill from April 10th

The audio of my radio interview with Mark Levin is available here.

Labels: GunControl, MediaAppearance, Radio

"Terry McAuliffe's Solyndra"

Is this how Democratic politicians such as Terry McAuliffe want to fund businesses? This looks like an amazingly bad decision for someone who wants to run for a high profile position such as governor. Presumably this type of stepping over the line behavior should really damage McAuliffe in his race to be Virginia's governor this year. From the WSJ:

. . . Virginia was particularly alarmed by GreenTech's use of an opaque visa program, called EB-5, to fund itself. Part of a 1990 immigration law, EB-5 lets foreigners who invest at least $500,000 in a U.S. company receive green cards. A federal immigration agency approves "regional centers" that administer the program.

While these centers can be run by local government, GreenTech proposed running a Virginia center itself. One official at the Virginia development agency wrote to colleagues that she couldn't view Greentech's EB-5 program as "anything other than a visa-for-sale scheme with potential national security implications." . . .

Labels: Terry McAuliffe

4/12/2013

How quickly would House of Representatives vote on gun control if a bill passes the Senate?

With the narrow Republican majority in the House, it won't take many Republican switches to pass a gun control bill.

Republican leadership aides have cautioned against the expectation of quick House action, noting that the Senate has already been working on gun legislation for nearly four months. The House, an aide said, would expect to take at least as much time.
For gun-control advocates, the political atmosphere in the GOP-controlled House underscores the heavy lift even to expand background checks and crack down on gun trafficking and straw purchases, . . .

Labels: background checks

What the New York Times regards as "killer" amendments on guns

To the New York Times, if you have ever had a mental illness, you should be banned for life from owning a gun. How is that reasonable? What incentives does that create for people to seek help? As to concealed handgun permits, again, is their opposition to letting people carry concealed handguns across state lines reasonable? Why are these considered killer amendments?

. . . That lobby has lined up several senators to do its bidding by offering amendments that will pose a real threat to the background-check bill. The worst — a huge priority of the N.R.A. — would require every state to honor the concealed-handgun permits of other states, overriding their own restrictions. That would allow a resident of Florida, where deliberately lax laws have given out such permits to hundreds of felons, to carry a concealed gun in New York or Connecticut, where the laws are much more strict and sane.

If this amendment were to be attached to the background-check bill — and there may be enough votes to make that happen — the underlying bill would no longer be worth passing.

Another potential killer amendment, sponsored by Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, would reverse current law and allow people who have been involuntarily committed to mental institutions to own guns, a ludicrous undermining of the background-check system. Only those who are found to be an “imminent danger” would be prevented from owning guns, even though that standard isn’t required in many states to commit people to institutions. . . .

Labels: GunControl, mediabias, newyorktimes

4/11/2013

Fox News Live: "John Lott asks if the legislators understand all the issues involved in reforming gun control"

The video is available here.

Labels: MediaAppearance, ObamaGunControl

4/09/2013

My newest op-ed at Fox News: Fact vs. fiction on background checks and the gun control debate

My newest Fox News piece starts this way:

Will Senate Democrats be able to end debate on their new gun control bill Tuesday night? President Obama says that it is “not right” to continue the debate. But he might be more afraid that Senators will point out all of his false claims and reveal the gun control bill’s dangers.

Mr. Obama got it all backwards in his April 3rd speech in Colorado: "tougher background checks . . . won’t infringe on the rights of responsible gun owners, but will help keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people."

The president kept claiming this week and last week that: “as many as 40 percent of all gun purchases take place without a background check” and that "background checks have kept more than 2 million dangerous people from buying a gun.” But both statistics are false. . . .

Labels: ObamaGunControl, op-ed

Concealed carry permit holder stops robber at Burger King

From the Washington Times:

A father who was trying to eat with his family at Burger King was able to defeat an armed robber by pulling his own weapon and shooting at him, Miami police said.
It was at the height of lunch time, about 1 p.m., when a would-be robber walked into a Burger King, flashed his gun at one of the family diners, and demanded the diner fork over money and valuables, police said in a CBS report. The robber was exiting when the father, who feared for his and his family’s life, CBS said, took out his own gun and shot the suspect in the leg. . . .

Labels: ConcealedCarry, DefensiveGunUse

Concealed carry permit holder defends himself against five men

From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

A concealed-carry permit holder exchanged gunfire on a St. Louis street Monday night with men who tried to rob him.
No one was hit by any of the shots, police say.
It happened at about 9 p.m. Monday in the 5200 block of Goodfellow Boulevard.
Police say a man was approached by five men who tried to rob him. When he refused to turn over any of his property, one of the would-be robbers fired a shot at the victim but missed.
The victim pulled his own handgun and fired several shots at the suspects. None of his shots hit anyone either, police said.
The suspects ran off. . . .

Thanks to Tony Troglio for the link.

Labels: ConcealedCarry, DefensiveGunUse

Politico: "Using sales taxes as a gun control tool"

I recently made the same argument in an op-ed for Fox News. These taxes are just a way to reduce gun ownership.

State and local officials are pushing a new way to expand gun control: taxes.

Gun owners in and around Chicago last week started paying a new $25 tax on every firearm they purchase. In California, a statehouse panel on April 15 will hear testimony on a nickel-per-bullet tax measure, and in New Jersey, lawmakers want to slap an additional 5 percent sales tax on guns and ammo.

The effort to impose new taxes on guns and bullets faces serious opposition from pro-gun groups, but it shows how far some states and localities are willing to go in this new frontier on gun control — especially as Washington struggles to find consensus even on the most scaled-back gun proposals being debated in Congress. . . .

Gun Owners of America legislative counsel Michael Hammond called gun taxes “an effort to say the poor can’t own firearms because we’re going to impose a tax which they can’t afford to pay.” . . .

Labels: GunControl, Taxes

Multiple victim public shooting in Serbia

Another attack in Europe. From the New York Times:

A 60-year-old man went on a shooting rampage in a village near Belgrade early on Tuesday, killing 13 people, including his son, his wife and a 2-year-old child before attempting suicide, police officials and Serbian media reports said.

The police and the Serbian media said that the man, identified as Ljubisa Bogdanovic, used a handgun to kill six men, six women and the child, whose parents were among the dead. The Serbian Police director, Milorad Veljovic, said the gunman’s motive was not immediately known. Mr. Bogdanovic had lost his job last year, the Serbian media reported, and was a veteran of the Balkan wars of the 1990s, having fought in Croatia in 1992.

The killings happened between 5 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. in the sleepy village of Velika Ivanca, 30 miles, southeast of Belgrade. Police officials said Mr. Bogdanovic first shot his son in the head, before leaving his home and going from house to house, where he killed several of his neighbors and relatives, some of whom were sleeping. Mr. Veljovic said that the neighbors in the village had left their doors unlocked and all were shot in the head. . . .

They said he was not known to have a history of mental illness or a criminal record. The Serb media reported that he had a license for the gun used in the shootings. . . . .

Labels: EU, multiplevictimpublicshooters

Obama's absurd last ditch push on gun control

Normally I would say that you can tell when a politician is getting desperate because he starts making absurd unjustifiable claims. The problem with Obama is that he is always making such ridiculous claims. Take this one by him on Monday:

“What’s more important to you: our children or an A Grade from the gun lobby?” Obama, wearing a green bracelet to honor the Sandy Hook victims, said in his speech. . . .

But does anyone believe that these background checks would have stopped the Sandy Hook attack? How could the background checks in Harry Reid's bill possibly have stopped the attack when the guns were stolen?

Labels: ObamaGunControl

Survivor of Communism explains the importance of gun ownership by US citizens

Labels: SecondAmendment

Cook and Ludwig keep falsely claiming that their 1997 NIJ uses data from 1993 and 1994

A 1997 NIJ survey claims that they studied purchases of guns in 1993 and 1994.

If you look at the data you will see that the survey was from November 1991 to November/December 1994, not 1993 and 1994 as Cook and Ludwig keep claiming. If you go through the data, you will see you only get their sample size and numbers that match theirs if you go back for three years. Note also that people are asked about purchases over the preceding year so questions asked in November 1994 cover November of each preceding year.

You might think that this is pedantic, but more than 40 percent of their data is obtained during the November 1991 to November/December 1992 period. It has disappointed me that Cook and Ludwig keep repeating this false claim.

The longer the time period not only places more of the purchases before the February 28, 1994 Brady Act but it also creates the type of biases that I discussed regarding the Washington Post survey for Maryland. One can't even just assume that purchases are uniformly made over this period. The problem is that sales were massive before the Brady Act went into effect and then plummeted right after the law went into effect. As to the biases, the buying of a gun is probably a much more memorable event than whether there was a background check. If so, people will remember the purchases, but not remember whether there was a background check that went along with it. You will see a discrete jump in how important this bias is once you ask people about more than just events over the previous year.

Cook and Ludwig redo should get a top figure of 16%, not 22% that Cook and Ludwig claim.

Labels: background checks

Progress on what people should do during mass shootings

Well, at least they are now encouraging active resistance by victims and faster responses by police. It would be even better if they left people defend themselves with guns, but this is a small start. From The New York Times:

The speed and deadliness of recent high-profile shootings have prompted police departments to recommend fleeing, hiding or fighting in the event of a mass attack, instead of remaining passive and waiting for help.

The shift represents a "sea change," said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which recently held a meeting in Washington to discuss shootings like those in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo.

The traditional advice to the public has been: "Don't get involved, call 911," Wexler said, adding that "there's a recognition in these 'active shooter' situations that there may be a need for citizens to act in a way that perhaps they haven't been trained for or equipped to deal with."

Wexler and others noted that the change echoes a transformation in police procedures that began after the shootings at Columbine High School in 1999, when some departments began telling officers who arrived first on a scene to act immediately rather than waiting for backup. . . . .

"We used to sit outside and set up a perimeter and wait for the SWAT team to get there," said Michael Dirden, an executive assistant chief of the Houston Police Department. "Now it's a recognition that time is of the essence, and those initial responders have to go in," he said, adding that since the Virginia Tech shootings in 2007, the department has been training first responders to move in on their own when they encounter active gunfire.

Research on mass shootings over the past decade has bolstered the idea that people at the scene of an attack have a better chance of survival if they take an active stance rather than waiting to be rescued by the police, who in many cases cannot get there fast enough to prevent the loss of life. . . . .

Labels: multiplevictimpublicshooters, Police

4/08/2013

Government, not parents, should be responsible for raising children?

Do people really believe that the government cares more about their kids than they do?

New PoliceOne's Gun Policy & Law Enforcement Survey: Police and their views on gun control

The new PoliceOne.com survey of police and their views on gun control is available here (article is here). Here is information on previous surveys as well as a piece that I wrote for the WSJ.com.

A full 86 percent feel that casualties would have been reduced or avoided in recent tragedies like Newtown and Aurora if a legally-armed citizen was present (casualties reduced: 80 percent; avoided altogether: 60 percent). . . .
In addition, the survey asked, “On a scale of one to five — one being low and five being high — how important do you think legally-armed citizens are to reducing crime rates overall?”
Three quarters of you (75 percent) answered either four or five, with more than 50 percent answering five. . . .

I find myself in virtually complete agreement with the police in answering this survey. I am not a big fan of open carry, but I am of concealed handguns. I agree with them on the efficacy of gun buybacks, bans on ammunition magazines that hold more 10 rounds, national databases on gun ownership, and background checks.

Labels: assaultweaponsban, background checks, gunbuybacks, gunregistration, Police, poll

4/07/2013

What do Democrats mean by "choice"?

I would also add the choice of where one can go to school. From the United Features Syndicate.

Labels: Abortion, education

Obama again claims that the guns used in these attacks are machine guns

Jake Tapper: Last night, at a-no-cameras allowed Democratic fundraiser in San Francisco President Obama misstated the kind of weapon used in the Sandy Hook shooting advocating for stricter gun control the president said, quote, "It is possible for us to create common sense gun safety measures that respect the traditions of gun ownership in this country and hunters and sportsmen, but also make sure we don't have another 20 children in a classroom gunned down by a semiautomatic weapon -- by a fully automatic weapon in that case, sadly."

That is not correct. It was a semiautomatic weapon not a fully automatic weapon. Most fully automatic weapons, machine guns, are essentially banned to the public. When asked for an explanation, the White House said the president misspoke. This is not the first time a leading advocate for gun control has stumbled on the facts. Here is New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg on ABC's Nightline just after the Sandy Hook tragedy.

Host: That would ban most pistols. That would ban most . . .
Bloomberg: No, pistols are different. You have to pull the trigger each time. An assault weapons you basically hold and it goes [sound indicating rapid fire].
Host: No, those are fully automatic weapons.
Bloomberg: OK.

Tapper: . . . It might help the advocates of gun control if they in their advocacy for stricter measures they seemed more familiar with what they are trying to ban.

Unfortunately, there are many times when Democrats have claimed that these guns are military weapons, machine guns (e.g., see here). Tapper also shows a similar misstatement by Bloomber.

Labels: ObamaGunControl

Navy SEAL Chris Kyle's legacy: "Hundreds of Texas educators take free concealed handgun class"

Three school boards in Texas allow teachers and other school personnel who have concealed handgun permits to carry in their school. Hopefully, legislation to expand it to other schools will be passed this session. From Fox News:

. . . More than 700 teachers and administrators attended the all-day session on gun laws and safety at Kennedale High School in Dallas-Fort Worth area, The Dallas Morning News reported.

The free class was organized by Dalworthington Gardens Police Chief Bill and Kyle, who was fatally shot at a North Texas shooting range in February.

"It went from 20 to 30 teachers to the more than 700 we have here today. It just exploded with Chris’ involvement," Dalworthington Gardens Police Chief Bill Waybourn told the paper.

Teachers from across the state and at least one representative from each school district in North Texas attended the class, which was organized in response to the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., according to the report.

Participants who complete the required live-ammunition firing training will be eligible for concealed-handgun licenses, the Fort Worth Star Telegram reported.

Last week, the Texas Senate Education Committee approved a plan to train armed teachers for gunfights in classrooms or at campus sporting events or board meetings. . . .

Labels: GunFreeZone, schoolsecurity, TeachersGuns

Now 13 Senators Promise to Filibuster Senate Gun Control Bill

Politico has this update here: Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Jerry Moran (R-Kansas), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Richard Burr (R-NC), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Jim Risch and Mike Crapo (R-ID), Dan Coats (R-IN), and Pat Roberts (R-KN).

UPDATE: Of course, on the other hand, John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) have said that they will oppose the filibuster.

UPDATE: Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has joined those promising to filibuster the bill.

Labels: ObamaGunControl

ACLU understands that the bill before the Senate next week is essentially a gun registration system

Harry Ried's bill that will be before the Senate this next week reads in part:

. . . shall include a provision requiring a record of transaction of any transfer that occurred between an unlicensed transferor and unlicensed transferee accordance with paragraph . . . .

A top lobbyist for the ACLU describes the bill to the Daily Caller this way:

“The first is that it treats the records for private purchases very differently than purchases made through licensed sellers. Under existing law, most information regarding an approved purchase is destroyed within 24 hours when a licensed seller does a [National Instant Criminal Background Check System] check now,” Calabrese said, “and almost all of it is destroyed within 90 days.”

Calabrese wouldn’t characterize the current legislation’s record-keeping provision as a “national gun registry” — which the White House has denied pursuing — but he did say that such a registry could be “a second step.” . . .

The point is that over time the bill will record a larger and larger percentage of who owns guns in America. It will be a gradual gun registration bill. As the ACLU lobbyist warns:

“[U]nfortunately, we have seen in the past that the creation of these types of records leads sometimes to the creation of government databases and collections of personal information on all of us,” Calabrese warned. “That’s not an inevitable result, but we have seen that happen in the past, certainly.”
“As we’ve seen with many large government databases, if you build it, they will come.” . . .

He comes to the same conclusion that I have come to reading the bill.

“Contrast this with what the existing [Reid] legislation says, which is simply that a record has to be kept of a private transfer,” Calabrese highlighted, “and it doesn’t have any of the protections that we have in current law for existing licensees.” . . .

Yet, Obama denies that the bill involves registration:

"We're not proposing a gun registration system; we're proposing background checks for criminals," he said Wednesday in Denver. . . .

Though his own Justice Department claims that background checks won't work without registration.

the NRA says the memo proves that the administration “believes that a gun ban will not work without mandatory gun confiscation” and thinks universal background checks “won't work without requiring national gun registration,” according to the AP. . . .

The problem with this information is that it means the polls on background checks are pretty useless. 91 percent may claim that they are in favor of some idealized version of background checks (partly because of the false claims the president has made about 40 percent of gun sales being made without background checks and 2 million prohibited people supposedly being denied from buying guns because of background checks), but how many people support gun registration? Some news stories note: "Opponents says they fear that universal background checks will eventually lead to gun registration." But that is wrong. You don't have to wait for eventually. The would begin the registration process immediately.

Of course, registration could never lead to confiscation of guns in the US, right? Well, it has already done so in California.

Anyone who wanted to keep one of the named firearms must have owned it prior to June 1, 1989, and had to register it by March 30, 1992. Registration gave the state a list of owners. . . .

In August 1998, however, a California appellate court held the Attorney General could not legally allow the gun owners to register their weapons after the March 1992 deadline. That ruling came after many owners had already identified themselves by registering late. The Attorney General had led the law- fearing lambs into a trap: citizens had voluntarily informed the state that they were felons. . . .

Then California lawmakers passed SB 23. On January 1, 2000, any Californian who possesses a magazine-fed centerfire rifle or carbine may be guilty of a felony. The 1989 law banned weapons only by their names -- the 1999 law bans all such firearms by their features (e.g. pistol grip, thumbhole stock, flash suppressor). . . .

Other examples of registration being used to confiscate guns include:

(1921) New Zealand, registration of revolvers required -- ownership allowed in the name of personal defense. In 1974, this list was used to confiscate all revolvers.
(1921) The United Kingdom instituted handgun registration. About every 10 years or so, they further restrict what can be owned and use the registration rolls to collect what is illegal.
(1967) In New York City, a registration system enacted for long guns was used in the early 1990s to confiscate lawfully owned semiautomatic rifles and shotguns. The New York City Council banned firearms that had been classified by the city as "assault weapons."
(1989) California revoked a grace period for the registration of certain rifles (SKS Sporters) and prohibited certain semiautomatic long-rifles and pistols. Upon the death of the owner, they are either to be surrendered or moved out of state.
(1990) Chicago enacted registration of long guns and used that same registration to confiscate semi-auto long guns.
(1995) Canada prohibited previously legal and registered small-caliber handguns. The guns are to be forfeited upon death of the owner with no compensation to the estate.
(1996) Australia banned most semiautomatic rifles and semiautomatic and pump shotguns, then used its list of registered semi-auto hunting rifles to confiscate all those weapons. . . .

Some polling data is available here.

Labels: gunregistration, ObamaGunControl

4/06/2013

Some reasons not to buy an electric car

From Fox News:

. . . But I wouldn’t buy an electric car if you paid me. Here’s why: . . .

It isn’t cost effective. I spent my career in the high-tech industry. When I tell you that it’s smart to be a late adopter of anything new, especially technology, you should listen. In time, competition increases, prices come down, and reliability goes up. Let rich people like rock stars and actors buy Teslas and Volts. They’re not for you. . . .

You have to plug it in. Hybrids are great. They’ve come down the technology learning curve. They’re actually more efficient than standard gas powered engines. They deliver more bang for the buck. They don’t have to be subsidized. And, more importantly, you don’t have to plug them in. Ever.

The whole government subsidy thing. I bought a solar array. It was government subsidized. Do I think it should have been? No. But for our needs, solar power made fiscal sense. I’m not going to cut off my nose to spite my face. Do I think the U.S. government should subsidize specific companies like Solyndra and Fisker? No. That’s just plain idiotic. That’s for venture capital and private equity firms with limited partners with beaucoup bucks and high risk tolerance, not for a government that owes $17 trillion or American taxpayers who can’t pay their bills.

Who says electric power is clean? When China has electric cars, they will be powered by electricity from coal plants that pollute the atmosphere, big-time. The assumption that, just because a car is electric, it must be green, clean, renewable, whatever, is nonsense. Just to be clear, I don’t have a problem with where our electricity comes from. I think we should drill, frack, and nuke to our heart’s content. I want America to actually export energy. What I don’t get is why anyone would think an electric car is in any way greener than a hybrid. It’s not.

I don’t like dumb fads. I guess the bottom line is that I don’t like the color green for the sake of being green. In other words, I don’t like fads, especially fads that are fueled by overblown hypocrites and bad science. In case you’re wondering, by “hypocrites,” I mean Al Gore. And by “bad science,” I mean man-made global warming, climate change, or whatever the hypocrites are calling it these days. . . .

Labels: electric cars, Environment

Fisker: Another government investment is about to go bankrupt after a half-billion-dollar federal loan

It has been clear for well over a year that Fisker was having trouble. From Fox News:

Fisker Automotive -- the electric-car maker that was granted a half-billion-dollar federal loan and on Friday dismissed about 75 percent of its remaining workforce -- is purportedly facing a lawsuit from the same firm that sued the government-funded Solyndra company. . . .

Employees told the publication they were give no severance pay besides compensation for unused vacation days. . . .

A source told the news agency that Fisker will retain about 53 senior managers and executives to primarily help sell off company assets.

Fisker has received $193 million of a $529 million Energy Department loan, mostly for work on its luxury Karma vehicle that sells for about $100,000. The deadline to repay the loan is purportedly in late April. . . .

Labels: electric cars, Environment, fiskerauto, Solyndra

Privatizing police and personal security

With police officers being cut in cities, people are turning to themselves to keep safe. For example, there has been a massive increase in people carrying permitted concealed handguns (going from about 4.6 to 9.3 million between 1997 and 2012). Because of budget cutbacks, some police are recommending that people move to protect themselves. Yet, some have also gone in a different direction and are hiring security guards to help protect them.

Oakland, California:

On the streets of Oakland, budget cuts have made the beat cop a rare breed, and some of the city’s wealthy neighborhoods have turned to unarmed security guards to take their place.
After people in Oakland’s wealthy enclaves like Oakmore or Piedmont Pines head to work, security companies take over, cruising the quiet streets to ward off burglars looking to take advantage of unattended homes.
“With less law enforcement on the streets and more home crime or perception of home crime, people are wanting something to replace that need,” says Chris de Guzman, chief operating officer of First Alarm, a company that provides security to about 100 homes in Oakland. “That’s why they’re calling us and bringing companies like us aboard to provide that deterrent.” . . .

Explaining why cross-sectional data is not useful for comparing the impact of gun ownership on crime rates

I have made this point so many times, but it seems that people need this point made again. I don't really expect much from the leftwing Center for American Progress, but they are again using purely cross-sectional data to make their claim that "Weak State Gun Laws" are associated with more gun violence. Reuters and others have picked up on the claim without any attempt to talk to academics or others who might be critical.

Here are just two of paragraphs from my book The Bias Against Guns:

First, the cross-sectional studies: Suppose for the sake of argument that high-crime countries are the ones that most frequently adopt the most stringent gun control laws. Suppose further, for the sake of argument, that gun control indeed lowers crime, but not by enough to reduce rates to the same low levels prevailing in the majority of countries that did not adopt the laws. Looking across countries, it would then falsely appear that stricter gun control resulted in higher crime. Economists refer to this as an “endogeniety” problem. The adoption of the policy is a reaction to other events (that is, “endogenous”), in this case crime. To resolve this, one must examine how the high-crime areas that chose to adopt the controls changed over time —not only relative to their own past levels but also relative to areas that did not institute such controls.

Unfortunately, many contemporary discussions rely on misinterpretations of cross-sectional data. The New York Times recently conducted a cross-sectional study of murder rates in states with and without the death penalty, and found that “Indeed, 10 of the 12 states without capital punishment have homicide rates below the national average, Federal Bureau of Investigation data shows, while half the states with the death penalty have homicide rates above the national average.” However, they erroneously concluded that the death penalty did not deter murder. The problem is that the states without the death penalty (Alaska, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Rhode Island, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Vermont) have long enjoyed relatively low murder rates, something that might well have more to do with other factors than the death penalty. Instead one must compare, over time, how murder rates change in the two groups – those adopting the death penalty and those that did not.

Of course, there are times when cross-sectional data still shows more guns mean less crime (see also here), but that is still a wrong way to look at the data. As I have described in my books More Guns, Less Crime and The Bias Against Guns, you need to use panel data. When that is done the results clearly show more guns, less crime.

UPDATE: Ken Mauer emails me the following:

There was once a cholera epidemic in Russia. The government, in an effort to stem the disease, sent doctors to the worst-affected areas. The peasants of the province of S_____ discussed the situation and observed a very high correlation between the number of doctors in a given area and the incidence of cholera in that area (i.e. more doctors were observed in cholera areas than elsewhere). Relying on this hard fact, they rose and murdered their doctors.

Franklin M. Fisher, The Identification Problem in Econometrics, (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966) pp. 2-3.

Labels: data, GunControl

4/05/2013

Obama's favorite poet, Maya Angelou, admits to using guns for protection

Maya Angelou discusses an example where she used a gun defensively.

Labels: DefensiveGunUse

Actor Jeremy Irons is a new hero of mine

You have got to admire Jeremy Irons' willingness to speak out on controversial issues where Bloomberg and others are paternalistic. See the video here.

Labels: libertarianism

"Spokane Grandmother Of 10 Holds Burglar At Gunpoint At Her Home"

From the CBS affiliate in Seattle:

Spokane police say a grandmother held a burglar at gunpoint at her home until authorities arrived.
KXLY-TV reports that Sandy Mize, a grandmother to 10, fired a warning shot and held the suspect, 35-year-old Sean Denny, in her living room until he tried to get away. That’s when authorities apprehended him in her backyard early Wednesday morning.
“I told him I was armed,” she told KREM-TV. “He kept coming, so I started backing up.”

Mize says she fired a warning round at the suspect but it did not hit him.
“He laid on the couch. I stood there for a very short period of time. I asked him, ‘Did I hit you?’ There was no response. No movement,” Mize told KREM. “So I made my way to the telephone and dialed 911.” . . .

Thanks to Anthony Troglio for the link.

Labels: DefensiveGunUse

4/03/2013

Washington Post: "Obama administration pushes banks to make home loans to people with weaker credit"

Obama has apparently learned nothing from the recent economic collapse. I have pointed to evidence on this previously and of course Obama has some complicity in creating that collapse (on this last point see the first chapter in my book Debacle). But now here is a story from the Washington Post.

The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place.
President Obama’s economic advisers and outside experts say the nation’s much-celebrated housing rebound is leaving too many people behind, including young people looking to buy their first homes and individuals with credit records weakened by the recession. . . .

Labels: financialmarkets, obamadoesntunderstandeconomics

Is Gun Research by John Lott Discredited?: Responses to Media Matters' false claims

Note that I have tried to make many of these responses after the posts that Media Matters has made about me, but they do not allow me to put them up in the comment section. I have tried putting out these points on twitter or in a few Fox News op-eds, but Media Matters never responds to those discussions, presumably because it would draw attention to my responses. Unfortunately, as I have discovered over the years, Media Matters is uncritically read by many in the media, and possibly that is another reason that they don't allow my responses to be posted. I also think that by constantly posting discussions about me being "discredited" they hope to influence Google searches (see the screen shot below from this morning showing a total of about 160 posts where they attack me (some of the 172 are not really about me)). Anyway, here are some of my responses:

"The Nine Worst Claims About Guns From John Lott's New Book." -- response is available here.

"Who Is Gun Advocate John Lott?" -- response is available here.

"Mother Jones and Media Matters bungle study on Mass Public Shootings" -- response is available here.

"Why Is NY Times Citing Discredited Gun Researcher John Lott?" -- response is available here in the section labeled "update".

"Gun "Researcher" Pushes Sham Statistics In The Wall Street Journal" -- response is available here.

"Discredited Gun Researcher John Lott's Failed Attempt To Correct Obama's Gun Statistic" -- all one needs to see is the Washington Post Fact Checker article available here. Kessler is making a similar argument to the one that I made here. Will Media Matters attack Kessler in the same way that they attacked me?

Other responses to Media Matters by me:
Media Matters, 'Stand Your Ground' and me
David Brock, Media Matters and gun control hypocrisy
MEDIA MATTERS' POTENTIALLY LETHAL DISTORTIONS ON GUNS

"Media Matter's dishonest attacks on Fox News" -- discussion here.

Often Media Matters and others will point to one single paper or two that criticize my work. In fact, there is a large academic literature that exists on these topics, and when you look at the whole literature you will see that most academic peer-reviewed studies support my findings (see a list of published research in Table 2 available here).

A list of all my posts regarding Media Matters is available here.

Labels: mediamatters

Poll on "Do more guns lead to less crime?"

Eric Veronikis at PennLive has a brief summary of a talk that I gave at Dickinson College on Monday. It was a fun talk.

For those living in Pennsylvania, PCN (Pennsylvania's version of C-SPAN) is going to again play the talk that I gave on Wednesday morning.

Labels: GunControl, MediaAppearance, television

A couple of notes on Piers Morgan's show from Monday night

"305 post conviction since 1989 have been exonerated." These exonerations also involved many crimes that occurred long before 1989. Even just since 1989 there have been over 32 million violent crimes committed between 1989 and 2011. I could look up the number of people convicted over that period of time, but even if it is about six or seven million, the exoneration rate is so trivial the only conclusion is that the legal system has obviously been working very well. It is probably lower than 0.005%. Suppose that only a quarter of those cases have DNA evidence available. The exoneration rate is still no higher than 0.02%. To put it differently, at least over 99.98% of the violent criminals were guilty. That is not perfect, but it is hard to think of a system that has that low of an error rate.

The saving money claim from eliminating the death penalty is completely specious. One thing that Ms. Clifton didn't include in her numbers is that there are plea bargains that occur because prosecutors have the death penalty as a potential threat. If someone is obviously guilty of a murder and he is going to get life in prison either way, the criminal is going to trial. It gets him out of prison for a week or two and he gets something different to do. Murder trials, even when the penalty involves life in prison, are extremely costly.

On the gun issue, I would have said: the murder rates vary across countries for lots of reasons, but one thing is clear: gun bans cause murder rates to rise. They still might be lower than the US, but they were even lower before they had those gun control laws.

Labels: piersmorgan

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Confessions of a Colorado Conservative

Thursday, April 18, 2013

John Lott's Website

4/18/2013

Talk at 12:15 today at the University of Akron Law School

4/17/2013

More on Democrats now criticizing Obamacare

Jon Stewart Show makes fun of my concern that government taxes are preventing poor people from owning guns for protection

4/15/2013

Decorated war veteran arrested for "rudely displaying" (carrying) guns while on walk for protection

4/13/2013

New Ad by "Mayors Against Illegal Guns"

If the Police understand that giving media attention to Celeb "Swatting" encourages more of it, why can't we do the same for multiple victim public shootings?

Fox News: "Experiment measures crime after free gun giveaway"

Rasmussen: "Only 41% believe more background checks will reduce gun violence."

Radio interview with Mark Levin on Senate Gun Control Bill from April 10th

"Terry McAuliffe's Solyndra"

4/12/2013

How quickly would House of Representatives vote on gun control if a bill passes the Senate?

What the New York Times regards as "killer" amendments on guns

4/11/2013

Fox News Live: "John Lott asks if the legislators understand all the issues involved in reforming gun control"

4/09/2013

My newest op-ed at Fox News: Fact vs. fiction on background checks and the gun control debate

Concealed carry permit holder stops robber at Burger King

Concealed carry permit holder defends himself against five men

Politico: "Using sales taxes as a gun control tool"

Multiple victim public shooting in Serbia

Obama's absurd last ditch push on gun control

Survivor of Communism explains the importance of gun ownership by US citizens

Cook and Ludwig keep falsely claiming that their 1997 NIJ uses data from 1993 and 1994

Progress on what people should do during mass shootings

4/08/2013

Government, not parents, should be responsible for raising children?

New PoliceOne's Gun Policy & Law Enforcement Survey: Police and their views on gun control

4/07/2013

What do Democrats mean by "choice"?

Obama again claims that the guns used in these attacks are machine guns

Navy SEAL Chris Kyle's legacy: "Hundreds of Texas educators take free concealed handgun class"

Now 13 Senators Promise to Filibuster Senate Gun Control Bill

ACLU understands that the bill before the Senate next week is essentially a gun registration system

4/06/2013

Some reasons not to buy an electric car

Fisker: Another government investment is about to go bankrupt after a half-billion-dollar federal loan

Privatizing police and personal security

Explaining why cross-sectional data is not useful for comparing the impact of gun ownership on crime rates

4/05/2013

Obama's favorite poet, Maya Angelou, admits to using guns for protection

Maya Angelou discusses an example where she used a gun defensively.

Actor Jeremy Irons is a new hero of mine

"Spokane Grandmother Of 10 Holds Burglar At Gunpoint At Her Home"

4/03/2013

Washington Post: "Obama administration pushes banks to make home loans to people with weaker credit"

Is Gun Research by John Lott Discredited?: Responses to Media Matters' false claims

Poll on "Do more guns lead to less crime?"

A couple of notes on Piers Morgan's show from Monday night

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