No, that’s not a typo.

1887.

As in the 19th Century.

As in back when Grover Cleveland was in the White House and Robert Gascoyne-Cecil was at 10 Downing Street.

As in back during the days of the Wild West.

Now given the Media’s love of breathless reportage of any and all incidents involving an AR-15 (or just someone nearby who can spell AR-15), one would think that police are dropping like flies due to these dreaded “assault weapons”. Witness this unquestioning quotation from the clueless Titusville, PA, Chief of Police:

“What concerned our officers the most,” Titusville police Chief Gary Thomas said, “was a Bushmaster AR15. This is the same type of weapon our department uses.”

And the bullets in the AR15 are called “cop killers” for a reason, Thomas said.

“When fired from an assault-type weapon at a high velocity, they can penetrate a protective vest,” he said.

Mind you, this was a report on a drug bust that didn’t involve an exchange of gunfire. And no, there isn’t any evidence that the less-than-curious reporter bothered to ask His Chiefiness why the Titusville PD is armed with cop-killer guns. Nor did he ask if it’s not the case that any rifle round other than a .22LR can pierce common police body armor. No, that would probably get in the way of the accepted narrative.

Now the truth is that during this time when police firearm deaths have declined to a 126-year low, sales of modern rifles like the AR-15 have been soaring. During the last year for which there is data from the NSSF, so-called “Assault weapons” accounted for nearly 25% of all firearms sales; and most of those were AR-15s. Between 1986 and 2012, somewhere between 3.3 and 3.5 million AR-15 rifles were bought by Americans. So as the rifle that has Chief Thomas’ knickers in a thorough bunch became more and more popular, police fatalities due to all firearms declined.

So where else, other than from a few of us pajama-clad blogger types, have you heard this story? ABC? CBS? NBC? CNN?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

While we understand and respect every person’s right to own and bear arms, we at Toby Keith’s I Love This Bar and Grill, with guidance from the State of Virginia and based on insurance regulations, have adopted a no weapons policy. It is our desire to provided a safe, enjoyable and entertaining experience for our patrons and staff.

But, as mentioned before, the Commonwealth of Virginia has no such requirements. It is perfectly legal to carry a permitted concealed handgun into a bar or restaurant. As for “insurance regulations”, we must presume that they mean the requirements of their underwriter. (This writer could not find any such “regulations” in Virginia; though, I did find this article from an insurance industry trade publication that indicates that there was no detrimental effect from Virginia’s law allowing firearms in establishments that serve alcohol.) The obvious solution would be to find an underwriter that isn’t biased against law abiding gun owners. There must be at least one in the Commonwealth since other Virginia restaurateurs seem to have secured coverage for their businesses. But of course, that assumes a lack of anti-gun bias on the part of “Hollywood” and his restaurant. They would have to want to show real respect for their law-abiding, gun-owning patrons. That clearly isn’t the case.

Speaking of insurance, does this response imply that “Hollywood” and his restaurant will guarantee the personal safety of their now disarmed guests?

Now others have pointed out that Mr. Keith isn’t the manager of the restaurant. And it’s probably the case that he’s simply licensing his name to the restaurant’s owners. However, if he’s really a friend to gun owners, it’s hard to imagine a way to justify making that sort of agreement with people who so clearly bear hostility toward a sizable part of his fan base. CHP holders in Virginia are permitted to carry in establishments that serve alcohol, provided that they don’t drink; so any argument that the restaurant is merely banning an illegal activity is simply wrong. The restaurant’s management is banning legally carried firearms because they want to.

Now the question for Toby Keith is this: Are you OK with this? It is, after all, your name that’s hanging over the door.

(And by the way, silence generally signals acceptance. I only mention this because it’s been more than a few days since this story first broke.)

The latest loop in the space-time continuum comes courtesy of the California Legislature; just like it did the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that, and… You get the picture.  This time, the Legislature’s pointless exercise is to retain records of long gun sales just as is currently done with handguns sales. 2011′s AB809 goes into effect on January 1, 2014. And as was the case its impotent predecessors, you can probably guess what comes next…

• Only the law-abiding will obey the new law
• Criminals will continue buying illegal guns as though nothing happened
• Gun sales will increase rather than decrease (H/T: NRA-ILA)
  
• Not a soul in this State will be one bit safer

These results are easily predictable; they’ve happened time and time again here. Laws regulating the sales of firearms only apply to legal businesses. They do not, and cannot, apply to “some guy from the neighborhood” selling stolen guns out of the back of his ’73 Impala. And if the authors of the law were intending to reduce the number of guns “on the street”, they’re failing just as they’ve failed before. Gun sales are up as a result of this law. Those who remember the last time we did this will recall that every attempt to regulate firearms in this State, as well as Federally, has caused people to buy the very guns that anti-gun legislators are trying to restrict. (Don’t believe me? Then perhaps you’ll trust The Grey Lady.)

Anyone up for whacking a few balls through the event horizon of an outgoing wormhole?

Part of scientific research is coming up with data that confirms what others have already said. Where science advances is when the new experiment is designed in such a way that it is not only capable of confirming a theory, but is also capable of showing that it’s wrong. (An example of this would be the Michelson-Morley experiment which failed to find the “aether” that was believed to be the medium upon which light waves propagate. This “most famous failure” was a tremendous step forward in the advancement of our understanding of electromagnetic theory.)

The latest advancement in the our understanding of how gun laws do and do not work comes from Quinnipiac University economics professor Mark Gius. Professor Gius’ ”An examination of the effects of concealed weapons laws and assault weapons bans on state-level murder rates” failed to find evidence that  laws that restricting concealed weapons or “assault weapons” can actually lower murder rates. (H/T: Reason) Contrary to the anti-gun lobby’s theories, Professor Gius found that restricting CCW does not lower murder rates. In fact, his results argue that just the opposite is true: Restricting CCW may increase murder rates.

The article’s abstract reads:

The purpose of the present study is to determine the effects of state-level assault weapons bans and concealed weapons laws on state-level murder rates. Using data for the period 1980 to 2009 and controlling for state and year fixed effects, the results of the present study suggest that states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murder rates than other states. It was also found that assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level. These results suggest that restrictive concealed weapons laws may cause an increase in gun-related murders at the state level. The results of this study are consistent with some prior research in this area, most notably Lott and Mustard (1997).

For those who are concerned, Professor Gius appears to be tenured.

That was intended to sound snarky.

Earlier this year, the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence tried to make the claim that “gun violence” in California has dropped 56% since 1993. The well funded group of Bay Area lawyers go on to claim that California’s gun control laws deserve the credit. (Shocking, no?) However, reality and their claims are two entirely different things.

California civil right attorney Chuck Michel has dissected the group’s report to find out what the numbers really say. (And by “dissected”, I mean “tossed the report into a woodchipper”.)

Gun deaths have dropped by 31% nationally, while California’s gun death rate dropped by 52%. That’s good news for Californians. But suicides constitute 61% of all those gun deaths. Since 1993 California’s suicide rate has fallen four times faster than the national rate, plummeting by 47%, while the United States suicide average dropped only 11%. No gun control law prevents suicides. Suicidal people typically use their own legally purchased handguns, so California’s “assault weapon” bans, extra capacity magazines bans, background checks, and all the rest had nothing to do with the overall reduction in suicides. The reduction in suicides, not gun control laws, accounts for nearly all of California’s better than national average reduction in overall gun deaths.

These slick, SanFran lawyers have used a trick that the anti-gun lobby has been using for years: Conflate gun suicides with all other gun homicides. They’re hoping that you aren’t paying close attention. Those of you who are paying attention no doubt noticed the way I worded that first sentence. You know that there are three different categories of gun deaths that are included in that phrasing: Suicides, illegal homicides, and legal homicides.

Of those three types of gun related deaths, gun control laws cannot really affect the  first type. As Chuck Michel points out, suicides by gun rarely involve the anti-gun lobby’s favorite bugaboos, “assault” weapons or “high capacity” magazines. And as many economists have pointed out, the overall suicide rate isn’t affected by gun laws either. Those intent upon self-destruction will find other means to do so if a gun isn’t available. As for the third type of gun death, while much smaller than the other two, it is one that no one in their right mind (i.e. no one who isn’t an anti-gun extremist) would want to see gun laws affecting. Of course, none of us wants to see situations where the “good guy with a gun” is forced to shoot the “bad guy with a gun”. But what we really don’t want to see is law abiding citizens or the police disarmed so that violent criminals can safely have their way.

So that leaves us with the second category, illegal homicides. Now the proper question to ask becomes: Did California’s gun control laws affect illegal homicides. As Chuck Michel points out, the answer is “no”. So what did?

Criminologists have long noted that most violence occurs at the hands of repeat offenders, and occurs disproportionately among inner city gangs (recently Yale sociologists concluded that 40% of inner city homicides are caused by four percent of the population). In 1994, California passed its first “three strikes” law specifically designed to address repeat violent offenders. The public was fed-up with escalating crime, and 72 percent of California voters responded by enacting Proposition 184. Two years later voters targeted criminals misusing guns with the 10-20-Life law, putting thugs in jail for long stretches, some lasting forever.

By targeting these repeat offenders who use guns to commit rapes, robberies and murders, California effectively reduced the violence on our streets, and saved many lives. These “criminal control” laws are behind California’s successful fight against gun violence. “Gun control” laws had nothing to do with it.

So how can you tell when an anti-gun lawyer is lying? When his lips are moving, there are numbers are coming out.

It used to be, back in the day, that Liberals had a sense of humor.

They perhaps even had a sense of tolerance, before someone made a decision to demonize opponents so as to monetize any one particular cause.

And while this very same demonization is currently being demonstrated by Liberal Elitists calling for the banning of pro-gun speech from public forums to political halls, they are also going after one side in what amounts to a religious debate that has been in North America since the Puritans landed.

The American Left likes to claim that they own the word “tolerance”. Of late, they’ve been busy showing that in their dictionary “tolerance” means “agree with us or else.” So in that sense, I suppose, they do own the word.

And isolation doesn’t make the crazy go away.

This should serve as a cautionary tale for any who identify with a particular ideology. There’s always the risk that you will limit yourself to conversations with those who already agree with you. This kind of echo chamber can make you believe that everyone agrees with you since everyone you know agrees with you. ”How could McGovern lose? Everyone I know voted for him” goes the quote attributed to a New York film critic in 1972. That critic and her liberal pals all inhabited the same little bubble and assumed that the universe was indeed contained within their little bubble.

A similar bubble universe has blown into existence at Robert Redford’s The Sundance Channel. For reasons that will escape anyone who isn’t part of that little universe, a “family drama” called Cold Dead Hands has been green-lighted by the powers that be at Sundance. The show…

centers on the fictional and polarizing head of the NRA, Trip Thibodeaux, and the drama that swirls around him both at work and at home. Trip is a father and husband — and he also happens to be the nation’s most powerful gun-rights advocate and the de facto CEO of the gun industry. A charismatic and polarizing figure, he’ll be forced to navigate a volatile landscape in American culture and politics, as well as crises of his own faith, when his rarefied world spirals out of control.

The show’s writer is a former reporter for the L.A. Times. Go figure.

Now there will be three reactions to this show: Praise, ridicule, and “That sounds kinda boring”. If you work at The Sundance Channel, write for the L.A. Times, or are majoring in gender inclusive medieval art history, then yours is probably the first reaction. You think that this is a wonderful idea and can’t imagine why it hasn’t been done before. If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you probably had the second reaction. The majority of the country, however, will probably hold the third view.

Now this is something that gun rights advocates need to keep in mind. A majority of Americans don’t care all that much about who’s right on the 2nd Amendment. Unfortunately, their opinion tends to be whatever it was they last heard or read in the Media. The important thing for us is to make sure that they hear more than the Sundance Channel’s side of the argument. We need to keep them out of that little bubble universe. We also need to avoid forming one of our own. We need to have a better understanding of the public’s attitudes than the executives at Sundance apparently have.

A thorough understanding of the Federalist Papers is a good thing; but you also need to understand why your neighbor thinks guns are icky before you can do anything about it. This means popping a bubble or two.