Guns « Quotulatiousness

May 18, 2010

Someone has to make this campaign video

Filed under: Humour, Media, Politics, USA — Tags: ElectionWatch, Guns, TV — Nicholas @ 13:16

Frank J. considers what his campaign video would be like if he was running for office:

This makes me think of the ad I might run if I one day campaigned for an office. I think I could improve on his ad, though. Here’s what I would do in my campaign ad:
* Ride into the commercial on a Liger.
* Every scene, I’d be stroking a different gun.
* Vow that if elected, our enemies will be eaten by genetically resurrected dinosaurs.
* In the middle of the ad, pause to shoot a hippy dead.
* Not only call the other politicians “thugs and criminals” but also promise to lock them in a room with a bear.
* Draw a picture of Muhammad while talking.
* Look up at the moon and yell, “You’re going down!”
* End with an awesome guitar solo while my farm explodes behind me.

Yeah, I’d be so awesome commissioning agriculture or whatever.

By the last item, I was already seeing it . . . someone’s got to make this video. It doesn’t even matter what he’s running for!

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May 6, 2010

That “no fly list” keeps getting worse

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Liberty, USA — Tags: Aircraft, Guns, NannyState, Rights, SecurityTheatre, Terrorism — Nicholas @ 07:42

It’s not bad enough that the list is filled with names of people who should never have been added, and that it’s incredibly difficult to get off the list, but now it’s proposed to restrict the rights of those people even more:

Seems Bloomberg (and Keith Olbermann, more about that in a moment) are on board with the idea the government should be able to take away people’s rights simply by putting them on a list. I don’t think they’d like that idea if say, George W. Bush were president and it was a right they liked. Hey maybe people on the list shouldn’t be able to exercise their First Amendment rights and post to Youtube. Why no Youtube? It’s a jihadi recruitment tool. Surely that’s a danger too.

Now, I’m not a legal expert but I’m pretty sure the 14th Amendment mentions something about “due process” before taking away a person’s rights. Again, not a legal expert but I’m thinking the mere act of the government putting your name on a list is not in fact “due process”.

Notice that Bloomberg calls people on the list “suspects”. Again, I wasn’t aware that rights could be taken away from people simply because the government “suspects” you’ve done something wrong without any notice or opportunity for redress.

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April 27, 2010

Almost right

Filed under: Europe, Humour, Media, USA — Tags: Guns, Maps, Movies, NewYork, Racism, TV — Nicholas @ 09:43

Kathy Shaidle linked to this map at Spleenville, showing an approximation of how Europeans (and implicitly the rest of the world) view the United States:

(Click map to see original image)

[. . .] As a matter of fact, from what I’ve garnered from across the pond, the rest of the world thinks the USA consists of one large metropolis — Newyorkangeles — with a sunny beach where only blond, tanned, perfectly-toned twenty-something models are allowed to go, and the rest of it is a desert wasteland full of racist white cowboys who wear big hats and shoot their guns in the air.

You forgot the teeth: Europeans all seem to believe that Americans all have identical “Hollywood” smiles. Oh, except for the gun-toting racist yahoos, who only have a few teeth each.

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April 22, 2010

QotD: Ignatieff’s gun registry position

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: CrimeAndPunishment, Fail, Guns, MichaelIgnatieff — Nicholas @ 08:40

Ignatieff feels that by tweaking the system, he can make it more palatable to rural Canadians and less objectionable to the eight Liberals who originally voted for its abolition. He thinks that by dropping the renewal fees registered gun owners pay and making failure to register a ticketing rather than criminal violation for first-time offenders, he has struck a compromise that will allow him to rein in his caucus while still being seen as a champion of gun control.

He hasn’t. Ignatieff’s plan won’t make a single Canadian safer. It will make the dysfunctional, obsolete registry more expensive while simultaneously making it weaker. The registry has already failed and permanently alienated large swaths of voters from the Liberal party. Why is Ignatieff the last person to realize this?

To accomplish his “goals,” Ignatieff has not only decided to write off any hopes for a Liberal expansion into rural Canada for a generation, further relegating his party to also-ran status anywhere outside of downtown Toronto and Montreal, but has also called into question his much-discussed respect for Parliament. Private member’s bills have traditionally been opportunities for all MPs to vote their conscience — an important tradition Ignatieff would set aside just to prop up the long-gun registry.

Matt Gurney, “Michael Ignatieff’s brand new mistake”, National Post, 2010-04-22

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March 4, 2010

The jokes just write themselves

Filed under: Law, Politics, USA — Tags: CrimeAndPunishment, Fail, Guns — Nicholas @ 08:59

By way of Kathy Shaidle’s blog, a court case that was custom-designed for certain political campaigns:

A 45-year-old woman, charged with ending a domestic dispute by killing her 26-year-old husband of five days, is a registered lobbyist for a group fighting domestic violence.

Arelisha Bridges was ordered held without bond in the Fulton County Jail. She is scheduled for a preliminary hearing later this month on charges of felony murder, murder, aggravated assault and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.

Officials said Bridges claimed she was unemployed. But records show she is a lobbyist for an organization called the National Declaration for Domestic Violence Order; its Web site says the group is pushing legislation to create a database of those convicted of sex crimes or domestic abuse.

And remember, guns don’t kill people: lobbyists for anti-domestic violence groups do.

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December 18, 2009

The lesson is . . . next time, don’t turn it in

Filed under: Britain, Bureaucracy, Law — Tags: Absurd, CrimeAndPunishment, Guns, NannyState — Nicholas @ 13:06

Remember the report of a man who’d found a shotgun on his lawn, turned it in to the police, and was promptly charged with posession of an illegal weapon? Well, he’s been convicted and will face ~~up to~~a minimum of five years in prison for his “crime”:

A former soldier who handed a discarded shotgun in to police faces at least five years imprisonment for “doing his duty”.

Paul Clarke, 27, was found guilty of possessing a firearm at Guildford Crown Court on Tuesday — after finding the gun and handing it personally to police officers on March 20 this year.

The jury took 20 minutes to make its conviction, and Mr Clarke now faces a minimum of five year’s imprisonment for handing in the weapon.

In a statement read out in court, Mr Clarke said: “I didn’t think for one moment I would be arrested.

“I thought it was my duty to hand it in and get it off the streets.”

The way the law is written, the jury would have had no choice but to find him guilty. If only there were some way for a jury to find that the law was at fault. (Or, among their other limits to civil liberties, has the British government made jury nullification illegal?)

Update: Fixed the mis-statement about the length of sentence Mr. Clarke may face.

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October 10, 2009

Fascinating – bullet impacts at a million frames per second

Filed under: Science — Tags: Guns, Photography — Nicholas @ 00:04

H/T to Patrick Vera for the link.

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October 6, 2009

Parachutes also seen as harmful . . .

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: Guns, JunkScience, Pennsylvania, Statistics — Nicholas @ 13:44

Following up on a report I blogged about a couple of days back, Jacob Sullum uses the same methodology to prove that skydivers would be better off without parachutes:

In Philadelphia, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania find, possessing a gun is strongly associated with getting shot. Since “guns did not protect those who possessed them,” they conclude, “people should rethink their possession of guns.” This is like noting that possessing a parachute is strongly associated with being injured while jumping from a plane, then concluding that skydivers would be better off unencumbered by safety equipment designed to slow their descent. “Can this study possibly be as stupid as it sounds?” asks Stewart Baker at Skating on Stilts. Having shelled out $30 for the privilege of reading the entire article, which appears in the November American Journal of Public Health, I can confirm that the answer is yes.

[. . .]

While the reseachers took into account a few confounding variables related to this tendency (including having an arrest record, living in a rough neighborhood, and having a high-risk occupation), they cannot possibly have considered all the factors that might make people more prone to violent attack and therefore more likely to have a gun as a defense against that hazard. To take just one example, not every criminal has an arrest record. Yet it seems fair to assume that criminals in Philadelphia are a) more likely than noncriminals to be armed and b) more likely than noncriminals to be shot. That does not mean having a gun increases their chance of being shot. Certainly they believe (as police officers do) that having a gun makes them safer than they otherwise would be. Nothing in this study contradicts that belief.

Of course, most people will only see the headline, so the underlying purpose of publishing the “study” has been achieved.

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October 4, 2009

Totally unbiased study says “Guns=bad”

Filed under: Politics, USA — Tags: Guns, JunkScience, Pennsylvania, Statistics — Nicholas @ 23:48

In no way should you try to read the data from this study as being anything other than unbiased and objective:

Medical researchers in Philadelphia have conducted out a study which indicates — according to their interpretation — that carrying a gun causes people to get shot more often. “People should rethink their possession of guns,” say the medics.

“This study helps resolve the long-standing debate about whether guns are protective or perilous,” says University of Pennsylvania epidemiology prof Charles Branas. The Penn announcement is headlined “Gun Possession [is] of questionable value in an Assault”, so it’s pretty clear which way he’s leaning.

The Penn researchers carried out their study by randomly selecting 677 people in Philadelphia who had been shot in “assaults”. Apparently five people sustain gunshot wounds every day in the City of Brotherly Love, so there were plenty to choose from.

According to the profs, six per cent of the shooting victims were packing heat when they got plugged. They compared that to a control sample of Philadelphians who had not been shot, and concluded that “people with a gun were 4.5 times more likely to be shot in an assault than those not possessing a gun”.

Of course, there’s no problem with basing your statistically valid sample on people who have already been shot: given the chance of being shot in Philadelphia, they could just have gone round to a few local bars and found the same numbers, right?

You know that the study has a certain, um, preference, when even the folks at The Register are pointing out that the data may not be randomly selected:

There didn’t seem to be any account taken of the fact that people with good reason to fear being shot — for instance drug dealers, secret agents etc — would be more likely to tool up than those with no such concerns.

The profs’ reasoning, however, would seem to be that if someone sticks you up in the street and you haven’t got a gun, you’ll just hand over your valuables and so escape with a whole skin. If you’ve got a gat, however, you might try to draw it and so get shot. Tactically, of course, it might be wiser to first hand over your wallet and then craftily backshoot the robber as he departed, but no matter.

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September 28, 2009

Random links of possible interest

Filed under: Health, Law, USA — Tags: Absurd, DetroitLions, Guns, NewZealand, Police, Women — Nicholas @ 07:38

More on the ongoing ammunition shortage in the US, as manufacturers are still unable to produce enough to satisfy demand.
Police at G20 take trophy photo including arrested protester handcuffed and kneeling in front of the group. H/T to Radley Balko.
Voyeurs rejoice! What sounds like a report from the Journal of Spike TV reveals that a mere 10 minutes of ogling well-endowed women provides as much benefit to men as 30 minutes in the gym, as far as heart disease, high blood pressure and stress are concerned. H/T to Ghost of a Flea.
New Zealand bans in-vehicle GPS navigation systems . . . but only if they’re running on a mobile phone. Non-phone based systems apparently don’t distract you with directions the way phone-based ones do. Or something.
Detroit Lions fans love the Washington Redskins.

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September 23, 2009

Watch the collector value of M1 rifles drop now

Filed under: Asia, History, USA, Weapons — Tags: Guns, Korea, KoreanWar — Nicholas @ 12:05

The South Korean government is planning to sell off its large holdings of M-1 rifles and carbines, according to this BBC News report:

South Korea has come up with a novel way to boost its defence budget — by selling a vast stockpile of old Korean-war rifles to collectors in the US.

The guns were originally sent to Korea as military aid, and some were also used during the war in Vietnam.

For more than five decades, they have been kept mothballed in warehouses.

Most of those on offer are M1 rifles — a weapon once described by US General George S Patton as “the greatest battle-implement ever devised”.

I recall when the Canadian Forces retired the FN C1 rifle . . . the government freaked at the thought of thousands of “assault rifles” being sold to civilians, so they changed the regulations to move the FN into a more restricted category (which most casual gun owners didn’t qualify for).

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September 10, 2009

British army gets some new kit

Filed under: Britain, Military, Weapons — Tags: Army, Guns, SA80 — Nicholas @ 12:48

In what the British government is announcing as a boost for British industry, the PBI are getting some new equipment:

Thermal sights will be provided for rifles, marksman’s weapons and light machineguns. These can be used to detect hidden enemies and bombs while on patrol, and function even in total darkness – when the regular light-amplifying night vision gear now in use doesn’t work. This stuff is already in use by some units, and is considered good by our sources.

New Lightweight Day Sights will be provided, replacing the SUSAT* sights which came in when the SA80 weapons were introduced during the 1980s. SUSAT was very popular in its day (unlike the SA80s, which were only sorted out twenty years later in a German factory), but according to our sources the new sights are much better, offering improved field of view and a clearer picture. “A gleaming bit of kit,” we’re told.

The new thermal scopes, in a popular bit of good sense, have open Close Quarter Battle Sights mounted on top of them. This means that a soldier in a close-up gunfight doesn’t need to peer through a scope as he shoots, and lose track of what’s happening around him. This gets the thumbs up as well.

It’s typical in situations like this — regardless of the country involved — for the politicians to view any military spending as being primarily to serve political ends, rather than military ones. This often means choosing a less capable piece of equipment if it can be produced in a key state/province/constituency even if it costs more than a competing product. Unusually, this doesn’t appear to have been the case this time:

Overall, then, most of the gear is necessary and popular. Refreshingly, the MoD seems also to be breaking with tradition and simply purchasing stuff from the firms best able to supply it rather than trying to use the buy to subsidise UK industry. Despite minister Quentin Davies’ assertion at DSEi that the FIST cash will “support the British defence industrial base”, actually it seems that at least half the money will go to overseas firms.

The grenade fire-control gadgets and the commanders’ target-marking binos (two of the most expensive systems) are to come from Switzerland, for example. Swiss provider Vectronix say they’ll be making 92 million francs on the deal, about £53m — more than a third of the total spend, and that’s without allowing for prime contractor Thales’ cut off the top. The new day-sights, another pricy piece of kit, will come from Canada and the periscopes from Israel. The only substantial UK buy is the thermal sights, from Qioptiq.

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August 26, 2009

Gun-toting protests ineffective?

Filed under: Liberty, Politics — Tags: FreedomOfAssembly, FreedomOfSpeech, Guns, Rights — Nicholas @ 10:00

Megan McArdle points out that folks simultaneously exercising their freedom to assemble, freedom to petition for redress of grievance, and freedom to bear arms are not likely to succeed:

I think carrying guns to protests is entirely counterproductive. Indeed, I’m not sold on the general virtues of protesting, which worked for Gandhi and the civil rights marcher, but has a dismal track record on other concerns. But I think people have a perfect right to do it, including with guns, though I also think the secret service is within its rights to ensure that they don’t have a sight line on the president.

But the hysteria about them has been even more ludicrous. Numerous people claim to believe that this makes it likely, even certain, that someone will shoot at the president. This is very silly, because the president is not anywhere most of the gun-toting protesters, who have showed up at all sorts of events. It is, I suppose, more plausible to believe that they might take a shot at someone else. But not very plausible: the rate of crime associated with legal gun possession or carrying seems to be very low. Guns, it turn out, do not turn ordinary people into murderers. They make murderers more effective.

So perhaps unsurprisingly, when offered the opportunity to put some money down on the proposition that one of these firearms is soon going to be discharged at someone, they all decline.

I have to agree with Megan . . . when I saw the images of individuals attending the protests while openly carrying firearms, I thought it would have a negative effect on the undecided viewer. I’m in favour of all the freedoms: assembly, speech, bearing arms (not a freedom we enjoy in Canada, BTW), but this was an inappropriate time and place to exercise that last freedom. It makes the debate more murky, and allows people to characterize their opponents in ways totally unrelated to the issue being protested.

A political own-goal, as it were.

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