I just heard on the radio that Nigeria has changed its law that required a police report from the victims of gunshot injuries before these same victims could be treated for their wounds in a hospital.
Apparently one of the factors leading to this change was a high level of gun deaths.
Imagine that.
At least for conservative in the Tennessee legislature. For me it’s just a one-fer. I like states’ rights. And though I don’t like guns, I think the gun folks here are absolutely right.
Perhaps those who support medicinal marijuana and other states’ rights issues should appreciate the parallels.
“An effort by the federal government to regulate intrastate commerce under the guise of powers implied by the interstate commerce clause could only result in encroachment of the state’s power to regulate commerce within its borders.”
Richard Locker writesin the Memphis Commercial Appeal.
“This bill simply asserts that if a firearms and/or ammunition is made totally within the state of Tennessee, then the federal government has no jurisdiction over that item in any fashion, so long as it remains in the state and outside of interstate commerce,” Sen. Mae Beavers, R-Mt. Juliet, the bill’s sponsor, said on the Senate floor when it passed there in June.
…
[The ATF says no:] “It’s analogous to a speed limit. If the speed limit on the interstate is set at 70, a city along the interstate can’t come along and say there is no speed limit on the interstate through our city. The highway patrol could still enforce the speed limit,” he said.
Er, that’s a horrible and unfortunate analogy, since it actually makes the opposite point. The feds don’t make speed limits. States do. That’s the 10th Amendment. Plus there’s the 2nd Amendment, which says nothing about driving speed.
Realistically, though, the interstate commerce law is viewed so broadly that it covers everything. At least in the war on drugs.
It sounds like a gun-lover’s crime-free dream world: an army of professional and well-trained armed men and women with extensive knowledge of firearms and firearm safety. Everybody has a gun. This will keep the crazy murders at bay!
Then on a military base in Iraq, a soldier shot and killed five other soldiers. If an army with guns can’t prevent a crazy killer, what chance do the rest of us have? This, my gun-loving friends, illustrates the basic position of my gun-hating friends: guns don’t keep you safe. An unarmed world is safer than an armed world.
If anybody wants to hear a civilized and somewhat intellectual discussion about gun control (outside of reading this blog, of course), check out my favorite radio show in the world: Extension 720. It’s broadcast on WGN, AM 720 in Chicago.
I would love to be a guest on the show (if anybody has any connections, work them. My press failed at this simple request). Uncle Milt, as he’s sometimes known, is a professor at the University of Chicago and has been doing this radio show for 36 years. I’ve been listening to him for probably 30 of those years. I started listening to the show as a little kid when it was wayabove my head. But it often came on right after many away Cubs games, so I would just listen. My father always said it’s the highest-brow show on commercial radio. Probably public radio, too. Milt Rosenberg is probably the best radio interviewer I’ve ever heard (sorry Terry… but I’d love to be on your show, too).
The show I’m talking about is March 26, 2009. The link is here. But hell, they’re all good.
This time in New York.
The fallacy of gun-control (and I say this as a supporter of gun control) is that it never answers the question: how do you get the gun out of the hands of the criminal? Passing more feel-good laws is not the answer. Laws don’t make you safer. You need observanceof laws. And criminals are not partial to observing laws.
That being said, anybody who thinks there is no possible good in any kind of law that restrict or regulates guns in any way is, well, crazy.
Sometimes they do. Hey, I’m just trying to be fair and balanced. It’s one of those nasty character flaws of liberals like me–the desire to see all sides of a issue even if it doesn’t support their position. The story from WSBTV in College Park, Georgia:
Bailey said he thought it was the end of his life and the lives of the 10 people inside his apartment for a birthday party after two masked men with guns burst in through a patio door.
“They just came in and separated the men from the women and said, ‘Give me your wallets and cell phones,’”
…
Bailey said the gunmen started counting bullets. “The other guy asked how many (bullets) he had. He said he had enough.” …That’s when one [college] student grabbed a gun out of a backpack and shot at the invader who was watching the men. The gunman ran out of the apartment.
The student then ran to the room where the second gunman… was holding the women.
“Apparently the guy was getting ready to rape his girlfriend. So he told the girls to get down and he started shooting. The guy jumped out of the window.” … [He was later] found dead near his apartment, only one building away.
…
One female student was shot several times during the crossfire. She is expected to make a full recovery.
So I’m writing a comment about guns when this story pops up on my screen. It illustrates both the good and bad of gun ownership perfectly: “[Off duty] Officer John Castro, left his gray BMW running … when the thief hopped in and sped off shortly after noon…. ‘The man ran after the car and jumped on top of it.’ … The wild chase ended when Castro, who works at JFK Airport command, fired a round into his own car.” The good is that, thanks to a gun, the guy stopped his car from getting jacked. The bad is he could easily have been killed doing so.
Let’s leave aside the crime victim was a cop. I don’t think that matters.
Had the victim died–been thrown off his own car and killed–it would have been a very stupid thing to do. But he didn’t die. And the thief get’s caught. All because the victim had a gun.
This man risked his life by jumping on his car (and also risked the life of a criminal by shooting at him). All this for a car that would have been covered by insurance. Was it worth it? Some will say yes; some will say no. So was it a good or bad action on the part of the victim? I bet your opinion depends on your attitude toward guns.
States with higher gun ownership rates and weak gun laws have the highest rates of gun death: Louisiana, Alabama, Alaska, Mississippi, and Nevada. Ranking last for gun deaths were Hawaii, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York.
If you want to argue that increased gun deaths are a small price to pay for freedom… well, I respectfully disagree. But let’s at least all be on the same page and accept that fewer gun restrictions and more gun ownership means more gun deaths.
The report and the rankings from the Violence Policy Center.
What do you do with an 11-year-old murderer? Really. I have no idea.
Here’s an excerpt of the story in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:
Jordan Brown, a fifth-grader from New Beaver, Lawrence County, allegedly killed his father’s pregnant girlfriend, Kenzie Marie Houk, 26. Police say he used the child-sized 20-gauge hunting shotgun his father, Chris, had given him for Christmas. Ms. Houk, who was due to deliver a son in a couple of weeks, was shot while lying on her bed in the family’s two-story farmhouse near New Castle. Her body was found by her 4-year-old daughter, Adalynn.
Mr. Bongivengo described the killing as “premeditated and cold-blooded.” He said Jordan shot his future stepmother, put the shotgun back in his bedroom, got rid of the spent shell casing and rode the bus to Mohawk Elementary School with Ms. Houk’s 7-year-old daughter, Jenessa. Jordan’s father was at work at a local factory at the time of the killing.
The whole store is here. What do you now do with the kid? I don’t know. Any ideas?
Of course, for starters, not giving your 11-year-old a child-sized 20-gauge hunting shotgun comes to mind! Oh, snap! Yes, I didgo there. Sorry, it doesn’t answer the question, but it needed to be said. Am I back sounding like a two-bit commie gun-hating liberal again?
Next year little Jordan is getting a lump of coal for Christmas, that’s for sure.
This is the kind of shootings that makes cops smile. Bad guys gets what he had coming. Reminds me of the time in roll call when the sergeant was describing a complicated shooting in Sector One on Barclay St. or Greenmount Ave. It was a confusing tale of a Mexican guy, a black guy, a woman (perhaps girlfriend to one and prostitute to the other), money, a gun, and finally a man shot and killed.
A friend of mine interrupted to ask, “Who got shot? The robber or the rob-ee. I kind of like it when the robber gets shot.” But in that case is was the rob-ee.
Not here:
Sometimes people are surprised to learn that yes, you can (and should) shoot a man holding a gun at somebody. No you don’t need to say anything. No, you don’t need to give a warning. In fact, doing so could endanger an innocent life. If somebody is threatening people with a gun and he points it toward you or anybody else, you cap him. Double tap. Plain and simple. That’s a good shooting.
In this case it just so happened that an on-the-ball 65-year-old retired police captain was working security. If there had been no security guard, it is true that the odds are nobody would have been killed. But those are odds I wouldn’t want to play.
The retired officer shot the robber four times (quadruple tap?) and is not being charged. Nice bit of shooting, I would say.
This robbery and violence related to a legal and regulated drug. That goes against what I say about regulation and drug violence (namely that the former prevents the latter). Too bad there was no legal way for the addict to get his drug. If there were, robbery prevented, addict lives to stay addicted another day, and the retired police officer wouldn’t have to shoot anybody. Everybody wins.