Advocates cannot see any harm in gun control, but it has a nasty downside. Its victims number in the tens of millions. Its downside is genocide: the mass-murder of civilians on account of religion, language, or political views. Since 1900, at least seven major genocides have occurred worldwide involving 50-60 million victims (see table).
Showing posts with label 2nd amendment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2nd amendment. Show all posts
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Saturday, May 9, 2009
College Student Shoots, Kills Home Invader
COLLEGE PARK, Ga. -- A group of college students said they are lucky to be alive and they’re thanking the quick-thinking of one of their own. Police said a fellow student shot and killed one of two masked me who burst into an apartment.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Pistol-packing woman, 85, forces intruder to call 911
POINT MARION, Pa. — An 85-year-old woman boldly went for her gun and busted a would-be burglar inside her home, then forced him to call police while she kept him in her sights, police said.
Smith heard someone break into her home Monday afternoon and grabbed the .22-caliber revolver she had been keeping by her bed since a neighbor's home was burglarized a few weeks ago.
After the 17-year-old boy called 911, Smith kept holding the gun on him until state police arrived at her home in Springhill Township, about 45 miles south of Pittsburgh.
Friday, July 4, 2008
Joe Horn cleared by grand jury in Pasadena shootings
A Harris County grand jury on Monday ended the rancorous seven-month debate over Pasadena resident Joe Horn's decision to gun down two illegal immigrant burglars in his front yard, concluding the act was a justifiable use of deadly force and not murder.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Surprising Fact: 1/2 of Gun Deaths are Suicides!
Suicides accounted for 55 percent of the nation's nearly 31,000 firearm deaths in 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There was nothing unique about that year — gun-related suicides have outnumbered firearm homicides and accidents for 20 of the last 25 years. In 2005, homicides accounted for 40 percent of gun deaths. Accidents accounted for 3 percent. The remaining 2 percent included legal killings, such as when police do the shooting, and cases that involve undetermined intent.
Friday, March 21, 2008
The DC Gun Ban Doesn't Work
It is not a coincidence that a black market in D.C. handguns has been going on for decades and that the handgun ban in D.C. has been in effect for 32 years. The handgun ban itself gives rise to a black market in handguns, just as making drugs illegal has given rise to a black market in drugs.
There are two lessons to be learned from this.
First, making guns illegal gives rise to collateral crime — theft of guns. Why is this? Because the illegality makes the price of guns in D.C. artificially high, making it extremely profitable to steal them in Virginia and sell them in D.C. (The drug war has produced a similar cascade of collateral crime, such as muggings, thefts, and robberies in order to get the money to pay the exorbitant black-market prices of illegal drugs.)
Second, real criminals don’t give a hoot about gun-control laws. In other words, a robber or a rapist in D.C. isn’t going to say to himself, “I can’t use a gun to commit this crime because that would be illegal.”
Is it any surprise that Washington, D.C., has been called the murder capital of the United States? After enacting their gun ban 32 years ago, D.C. officials should have initiated a nationwide advertising campaign proclaiming: “Attention robbers, murderers, muggers, burglars, rapists, and thieves! Come to the most glorious model city in the country — Washington, D.C. — a gun-free zone, one where people are prevented from defending himself from you.”
Monday, February 25, 2008
Panel says pull your gun if you feel endangered
HB 2629 would provide immunity from prosecution for anyone engaged in "defensive display" of a firearm. That ranges from telling another person you are armed to showing off the weapon, as well as actually holding the gun, provided it is not pointed directly at another person.
The legislation says the display of a firearm is justified "to the extent a reasonable person would believe that physical force is immediately necessary to protect himself against the other's use or attempted use of unlawful physical force."
Friday, February 22, 2008
Utah Students Hide Guns, Head to Class
Nick, who asked not to be fully identified so his fellow students wouldn't know he carried a gun, says he has had a concealed weapons permit for more than three years. But it was Seung-Hui Cho's murderous campus rampage that made him take a gun to class.
"Last year, after Virginia Tech, I thought 'I'm not going to be a victim,' " Nick said.
He started carrying a gun to class after the massacre at Virginia Tech, but the student says he's not part of the problem of campus shootings and could instead be part of a solution.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Montana: 'Any Person' Has Right to Own a Gun
U.S. Rep. Virgil Goode, R-Va., has asked President Bush to order the U.S. Justice Department to submit a brief to the high court supporting the rights of individuals under the 2nd Amendment. A similar request already has been submitted by officials for the Gun Owners of America, whose executive director, Larry Pratt, warned:
"If the Supreme Court were to accept the Solicitor General's line of argument, D.C.'s categorical gun ban of virtually all self-defense firearms could well be found to be constitutional. ..."
He warned such a precedent to affirm any and all gun restrictions if they are considered by a judge to be "reasonable" would place those rights on the lowest rung of the constitutional ladder.
But officials in Montana, including dozens of state lawmakers as well as Secretary of State Brad Johnson, have joined together in a statement that the U.S. already has determined the application, and 2nd Amendment rights apply to "any person."
Monday, January 21, 2008
Public 'threatened' by private firearms ownership
(World Net Daily)
Since "unrestricted" private ownership of guns clearly threatens the public safety, the 2nd Amendment can be interpreted to allow a variety of gun restrictions, according to the Bush administration.
"Given the unquestionable threat to public safety that unrestricted private firearm possession would entail, various categories of firearm-related regulation are permitted by the 2nd Amendment," he wrote in the brief, the Times reported.
Since "unrestricted" private ownership of guns clearly threatens the public safety, the 2nd Amendment can be interpreted to allow a variety of gun restrictions, according to the Bush administration.
"Given the unquestionable threat to public safety that unrestricted private firearm possession would entail, various categories of firearm-related regulation are permitted by the 2nd Amendment," he wrote in the brief, the Times reported.
Friday, December 21, 2007
Do Guns ever Save Lives? Would we see it in the News if they did?
(Original Article)
“Oh come on, Vin,” someone will protest at this point. “It wouldn’t matter even if these places did allow people to carry guns. Hardly anyone goes armed, so how often would a plain old non-policeman with a gun really save lives?”
Pretty often, it turns out.
1) In 1997, Luke Woodham slit his mother’s throat, grabbed a .30-30 rifle and headed to Pearl High School in Pearl, Miss. — another gun-free zone — to start shooting people.
The moment Vice Principal Joel Myrick heard the first shots, he took off at a sprint for his truck. (Because Mr. Myrick kept a handgun in his truck for just such an eventuality, a deadly stupid federal law required him to park it far from campus.)
Woodham shot until he heard sirens, then ran to his car. His plan, authorities subsequently learned, was to drive to nearby Pearl Junior High School and shoot more kids before police could show up.
Joel Myrick foiled that plan, positioning himself to point his gun at Woodham’s windshield. Woodham swerved and crashed the car. Myrick held the killer at gunpoint till police arrived, stopping the killing spree.
2) In 2002, as Mr. Lott reported in The National Review, “Two law students with law-enforcement backgrounds as deputy sheriffs in another state stopped the shooting at the Appalachian Law School in Virginia. … The students ran to their cars, got their guns, pointed their guns at the attacker, ordered him to drop his gun, and then tackled him and held him until police were able to arrive,” thus saving many lives.
3) At the Trolley Square attack in Utah this year, “Possibly the ban there was even more noteworthy because the off-duty police officer who stopped the attack fortunately violated the ban by taking his gun in with him when he went shopping,” Mr. Lott reports.
4) Fortunately, we saw the way it works when citizens are armed, less than a week after the Omaha shootings. Shortly after midnight on Dec. 9, Matthew Murray, who had been rejected from a missionary school in Colorado, shot and killed two staffers there. Twelve hours later he drove to the parking lot of the related New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where about 7,000 people were present for the midday service, and opened fire in the parking lot, killing two young women.
Jeanne Assam, 42, a member of the congregation who used to work as a police officer, volunteers to guard the church.
Assam hid. She waited until Murray — carrying a rifle, two pistols and a backpack with more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition — entered the church. Then she “came out of cover, identified myself and took him down,” she told a packed news conference Monday.
The coroner later reported the wounded assailant took his own life — but not till Assam had blown him to the ground.
Authorities and her minister say Assam saved untold lives — lives that would have been lost, had Murray attacked in a disarmed-victim city like Los Angeles, New York or Washington.
“There are plenty of cases every year where permit holders stop what would have been multiple victim shootings, but they rarely receive any news coverage,” Mr. Lott protests. “When will part of the media coverage on these multiple-victim public shootings be whether guns were banned where the attack occurred?”
“Oh come on, Vin,” someone will protest at this point. “It wouldn’t matter even if these places did allow people to carry guns. Hardly anyone goes armed, so how often would a plain old non-policeman with a gun really save lives?”
Pretty often, it turns out.
1) In 1997, Luke Woodham slit his mother’s throat, grabbed a .30-30 rifle and headed to Pearl High School in Pearl, Miss. — another gun-free zone — to start shooting people.
The moment Vice Principal Joel Myrick heard the first shots, he took off at a sprint for his truck. (Because Mr. Myrick kept a handgun in his truck for just such an eventuality, a deadly stupid federal law required him to park it far from campus.)
Woodham shot until he heard sirens, then ran to his car. His plan, authorities subsequently learned, was to drive to nearby Pearl Junior High School and shoot more kids before police could show up.
Joel Myrick foiled that plan, positioning himself to point his gun at Woodham’s windshield. Woodham swerved and crashed the car. Myrick held the killer at gunpoint till police arrived, stopping the killing spree.
2) In 2002, as Mr. Lott reported in The National Review, “Two law students with law-enforcement backgrounds as deputy sheriffs in another state stopped the shooting at the Appalachian Law School in Virginia. … The students ran to their cars, got their guns, pointed their guns at the attacker, ordered him to drop his gun, and then tackled him and held him until police were able to arrive,” thus saving many lives.
3) At the Trolley Square attack in Utah this year, “Possibly the ban there was even more noteworthy because the off-duty police officer who stopped the attack fortunately violated the ban by taking his gun in with him when he went shopping,” Mr. Lott reports.
4) Fortunately, we saw the way it works when citizens are armed, less than a week after the Omaha shootings. Shortly after midnight on Dec. 9, Matthew Murray, who had been rejected from a missionary school in Colorado, shot and killed two staffers there. Twelve hours later he drove to the parking lot of the related New Life Church in Colorado Springs, where about 7,000 people were present for the midday service, and opened fire in the parking lot, killing two young women.
Jeanne Assam, 42, a member of the congregation who used to work as a police officer, volunteers to guard the church.
Assam hid. She waited until Murray — carrying a rifle, two pistols and a backpack with more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition — entered the church. Then she “came out of cover, identified myself and took him down,” she told a packed news conference Monday.
The coroner later reported the wounded assailant took his own life — but not till Assam had blown him to the ground.
Authorities and her minister say Assam saved untold lives — lives that would have been lost, had Murray attacked in a disarmed-victim city like Los Angeles, New York or Washington.
“There are plenty of cases every year where permit holders stop what would have been multiple victim shootings, but they rarely receive any news coverage,” Mr. Lott protests. “When will part of the media coverage on these multiple-victim public shootings be whether guns were banned where the attack occurred?”
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Supreme Court To Weigh Ban on DC Gun Ownership
(Full Story)
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court said Tuesday it will decide whether the District of Columbia can ban handguns, a case that could produce the most in-depth examination of the constitutional right to "keep and bear arms" in nearly 70 years.
Gun-control advocates say the Second Amendment was intended to ensure that states could maintain militias, a response to 18th-century fears of an all-powerful national government. Gun rights proponents contend the amendment gives individuals the right to keep guns for private uses, including self-defense.
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court said Tuesday it will decide whether the District of Columbia can ban handguns, a case that could produce the most in-depth examination of the constitutional right to "keep and bear arms" in nearly 70 years.
Gun-control advocates say the Second Amendment was intended to ensure that states could maintain militias, a response to 18th-century fears of an all-powerful national government. Gun rights proponents contend the amendment gives individuals the right to keep guns for private uses, including self-defense.
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