If the Globe is right, it seems only a bit of sloppily written verbiage in the new report on the registry — interpreted by dissimulators with badges, and faithfully broadcast by writers with poor financial instincts — could possibly have led anyone to believe the gun registry is a bargain. (The Firearms Centre in Miramichi has 240 federal employees, guys! $4 million wouldn’t cover 12 weeks of payroll expenses, right?) And maybe I’m just some Western flake, but in retrospect it does seem as though the propagation of $4 million figure was possible only because the RCMP played undisguised politics with the report, dawdling over a “translation” (a tactic that the Conservatives somehow ended up taking most of the blame for) and making sure to pass it around to friendly, gullible media outlets in a timely way before the vote on C-391. All of which, now, can serve only the electoral interests of the Conservatives themselves — keeping alive the hated totem and allowing them to exploit the real financial numbers in their search for a Commons majority.
Colby Cosh, “Junius explains that gun-registry math”, Macleans.ca, 2010-09-21
September 22, 2010
QotD: Gun registry math
September 18, 2010
A day at the range
Someone at Elizabeth’s office organized a trip to the Orono Fish & Hunt Club to allow employees and family members to try shooting various weapons. Victor (who’s home from Trent this weekend) and I went with the group for a bit of fun plinking. The line-up was pretty long and slow for the first portion (.22 rifle and .22 pistol), but after that, the wait to try other weapons was much shorter. It was a a lot of fun.
Victor found the .22s a bit tame, but really enjoyed firing the Lee Enfield (.303) and the M-14 (.308). I took a few pictures, but safety required only shooters and coaches on the line, so they’re all from behind the shooting zone.
This is Victor firing a Lee Enfield
This is just a split second after he fired the M-14, as the rifle recoils.
September 5, 2010
Detroit Police save money by eliminating pistol practice?
At least, based on this story, you’d have to think it’s the most likely answer:
Cop Fires Twelve Shots at Dog, Hits Two Animal Control Workers Instead
[. . .]
Detroit Police needed to remove the dogs, so they called the Michigan Anti-Cruelty Society. While the rescuers were setting traps for the three pit bulls, one got loose and started running towards a police officer. That’s when, we’re told, she pulled her gun and fired off twelve rounds.
[…]
“The police pulled a gun out and shot, but she missed the dog. I guess she was scared or something, and she hit the animal control person,” he said.
One animal rescue worker took a bullet in the back of the leg. Another grazed his back side. A stray bullet also clipped his co-worker’s boot.
Not quite the best advertisement for range safety, weapons handling expertise, or accuracy.
September 4, 2010
When you’ve lost the Globe, you’ve lost the argument
At least it means you’ve lost the argument to keep the long-gun registry:
The Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police cannot be faulted for their recent unanimous vote in support of the national long-gun registry. Police will understandably always want as much information about those they investigate as they can lay their hands on. It is in the nature of their business. A national fingerprint registry of Canadians would no doubt also be seen as an aid to police work. But just because police chiefs would like a long-gun registry does not make it good public policy or a wise public expenditure.
[. . .]
If passed, a vote in Parliament on a Conservative MP’s bill to end the long-gun registry would not represent the end of gun control in Canada. Stringent and necessary requirements will remain in place for handguns, and restricted weapons such as automatic rifles. A process that already requires gun owners to be licensed before obtaining a firearm would remain, with safety and background checks required for gun owners. Rules for safe handling and storage of guns will remain in place. What will end is the cost, the red tape and the stigmatization of the “law-abiding duck hunters and farmers,” often cited by Prime Minister Stephen Harper. In the absence of any meaningful evidence of the long-gun registry’s efficacy, the program should be ended.
I can’t possibly emphasize how unlikely an editorial like this from the Globe and Mail would have seemed just days ago. Did we enter an alternate universe with that New Zealand earthquake? Does Spock not only have a beard, but also a Mohawk and body piercings?
May 19, 2010
QotD: Action movie lines
“I know what you’re thinking, punk: Did I fire six bullets or only five. Being this is a Glock with seventeen rounds, it’s a moot point, but I’m doing a cognitive psychology study on people’s ability to count in stressful situation. You’ll get twenty dollars to participate. So, do you feel like helping science? Well, do ya, punk?”
Frank J. Fleming, “Action Movie Lines”, IMAO, 2010-05-18
May 18, 2010
Someone has to make this campaign video
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!
May 6, 2010
That “no fly list” keeps getting worse
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.
April 27, 2010
Almost right
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.
April 22, 2010
QotD: Ignatieff’s gun registry position
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
March 4, 2010
The jokes just write themselves
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.
December 18, 2009
The lesson is . . . next time, don’t turn it in
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 toa 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.
October 10, 2009
Fascinating – bullet impacts at a million frames per second
H/T to Patrick Vera for the link.
October 6, 2009
Parachutes also seen as harmful . . .
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.
October 4, 2009
Totally unbiased study says “Guns=bad”
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.
September 28, 2009
Random links of possible interest
- 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.
