Some recent radio interviews that I have done

with John Carlson and Kirby Wilbur on Seattle's big KVI about the Social Security rules banning gun ownership for some -- available here.

on the Vicki McKenna Show to discuss Obama's new rules banning some Social Security Recipients from having guns -- available here.

on the Larry Elder Show: On Politifact's Claim that it is "Mostly True" that 7 "children" die a day from gun violence --  available here.

Newest piece in Investor's Business Daily: "Gun Control Advocates Really Just Want To Ban Guns"

I have a new piece at Investor's Business Daily.  The piece starts this way:

Gun control advocates keep claiming that they don't want to ban guns — they only want reasonable regulations.  But their actions keep saying otherwise.

• Gun control advocates expressed "concern" after Philadelphia Eagles rookie quarterback Carson Wentz bought each of his offensive linemen a very expensive personalized Beretta shotgun for Christmas this year.  If they believe in gun ownership, why should it bother them that law-abiding adults have shotguns?
• Right before Christmas, President Obama finalized new rules requiring 4.2 million Social Security recipients who have trouble managing their finances to undergo background checks before buying guns.  But just because someone can't manage their finances doesn't mean that he's a danger to others.
• An article in December in the New Republic was clear: "Ban guns. All guns. Get rid of guns in homes, and on the streets, and, as much as possible, on police."

Of course, during the presidential campaign Hillary Clinton repeatedly called for appointing Supreme Court Justices who would overturn the 2008 Heller decision, which struck down Washington, D.C.'s complete ban on handguns.  

Such a change would have again made it possible for governments to ban guns.
It is hard to find any gun control rule that gets proposed that gun control advocates don't support. 

To gun control advocates it seems obvious: Restrict gun access and people will be safer.  But theory and practice don't always match. Too often, gun bans or background checks don't stop criminals and disarm law-abiding citizens, particularly poor minorities. This only makes life easier for criminals. 

To start, it would be almost impossible at this point to ban all guns in the U.S., where there are already 300 million guns in circulation, and more than 12 million enter the market each year. With 3D metal printers, more people will be able to make weapons that are indistinguishable from those purchased in stores. Getting rid of these weapons would require a door-to-door campaign by law enforcement officials, and even that would be of only limited effectiveness. 

But their goal is ultimately a fool's errand.  Every country in the world (that we have crime data for) that has banned all guns or all handguns has seen a subsequent increase in murder rates.  Even island nations such as Ireland and Jamaica — which have easily monitored and defendable borders, relatively speaking — have faced five- or six-fold increases in murder rates after guns were banned.  Some of the biggest spikes in murder rates corresponded with increases in drug gang violence. 

Another example of gun bans is the continual push for gun-free zones, where general citizens are banned from being able to defend themselves.  But these bans only create defenseless targets for mass shooters. One need only listen to the wiretapped recording of an Islamic State supporter who was planning an attack last year. His target was one of the biggest churches in Detroit.  . . .

The rest of the piece is available here. 

Hollywood begins massive assault on gun ownership

These movies and television shows that are pushing gun control make no attempt to treat the arguments on the other side seriously.

"Miss Sloane" -- focuses on a battle-hardened female lobbyist who gives herself the Herculean challenge of taking on the gun lobby

The movie opens on December 9th.  Is already getting a huge amount of publicity simply because it has a political message that the liberal media likes.  Just from the trailer it appears as if they make the NRA look like a bunch of evil guys, not people who really care about letting the most vulnerable people in society have a chance to defend themselves and their family.

"The Senator's Wife" -- it is still listed as "in-development" -- "Harvey Weinstein promised that an upcoming film he’s making, starring Meryl Streep, will make the National Rifle Association “wish they weren’t alive” during an interview with Howard Stern earlier this week, and now it has a title."  
"Weinstein described the film as a 'big movie like a ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,' which he hopes will make audiences think: 'Gun stocks — I don’t want to be involved in that stuff. It’s going to be like crash and burn.'”
This movie's fate may depend on what happens with "Miss Sloane."

Unfortunately, these pushes aren't alone.

gun control groups point to NetFlix’s House of Cards and CBS’ The Good Wife. Everytown worked with House of Cards to push gun control during season four of the series, and “the Brady Campaign consulted on an episode of The Good Wife” for a gun control campaign, as well.

Hollywood begins massive assault on gun ownership

These movies and television shows that are pushing gun control make no attempt to treat the arguments on the other side seriously.

"Miss Sloane" -- focuses on a battle-hardened female lobbyist who gives herself the Herculean challenge of taking on the gun lobby

The movie opens on December 9th.  Is already getting a huge amount of publicity simply because it has a political message that the liberal media likes.  Just from the trailer it appears as if they make the NRA look like a bunch of evil guys, not people who really care about letting the most vulnerable people in society have a chance to defend themselves and their family.

"The Senator's Wife" -- it is still listed as "in-development" -- "Harvey Weinstein promised that an upcoming film he’s making, starring Meryl Streep, will make the National Rifle Association “wish they weren’t alive” during an interview with Howard Stern earlier this week, and now it has a title."  
"Weinstein described the film as a 'big movie like a ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,' which he hopes will make audiences think: 'Gun stocks — I don’t want to be involved in that stuff. It’s going to be like crash and burn.'”
This movie's fate may depend on what happens with "Miss Sloane."

Unfortunately, these pushes aren't alone.

gun control groups point to NetFlix’s House of Cards and CBS’ The Good Wife. Everytown worked with House of Cards to push gun control during season four of the series, and “the Brady Campaign consulted on an episode of The Good Wife” for a gun control campaign, as well.

A machine gun that "it's nearly impossible to prevent its production"

Gun control advocates don't seem to realize how gun control laws primarily prevent law-abiding citizens, not criminals from getting guns.  It isn't just an issue of smuggling guns.  It is also a question of being able to produce them, even machine guns.  Israel can't stop domestic terrorists from making their own machine guns.  From The Times of Israel:

The homemade or craft-produced rudimentary automatic weapon has been used in the majority of shooting attacks on Israeli civilians and security personnel. It’s not accurate and it has a limited range, but it’s cheap and more than powerful enough to cause mayhem and death — and it’s nearly impossible to prevent its production. . . . 

While some more advanced rifles and firearms require specialized tools, the Carlo has remained so popular because of how little machinery and technical know-how is required to produce it, according to N.R. Jenzen-Jones, director of Armament Research Services (ARES), a specialized technical intelligence consultancy. 

A drill press, some welding equipment and blueprints from the internet are all that’s needed to create one of these potentially devastating weapons, a fact that presents a real challenge for Israel and countries around the world that are trying to prevent such guns from winding up in the hands of terrorists and criminals. . . .

Politicians who are being sentenced for crimes point to their efforts to push for gun control as reasons that they should have leniency? Seriously?

At her sentencing hearing, when Former Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane was sentenced Monday to 10 to 23 months in jail for orchestrating an illegal news leak to damage a political enemy, her lawyer argued for leniency because she supported gun control? From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Kane's first year was marked by political and public relations successes. She drew attention for her stands in support of marriage equality and gun control and for crippling Republican Gov. Tom Corbett's move to privatize the lottery - all positions her lawyer cited Monday in arguing for house arrest. . . .

Former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos also has been making a similar argument.

As he tries to avoid a prison sentence, convicted former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos is pointing to the SAFE Act as evidence of his political courage. . . . 

Skelos played a key role in the passage of the SAFE Act, which included a broader ban on assault weapons and tougher penalties for illegal gun possession. It also limited the number of bullets in a magazine to seven, but that provision was struck down in court.
Then the Senate majority leader, Skelos allowed the bill to a floor for a vote, where it passed with votes from Democrats and a handful of Republicans on Long Island, including Skelos. 

The SAFE Act is opposed by conservatives and groups representing firearms owners, particularly those upstate, who were frequently critical of Skelos' decision and paint him as a traitor. 

"We want to tell Dean Skelos: Go home," Buffalo businessman Carl Paladino, the 2010 GOP candidate for governor, said at a 2013 rally against the SAFE Act. "Get another vocation. Go work at the car wash. Get the hell out of here."

Share CPRC's graphic: Do Background Checks on Private Firearm Transfers Help Stop Mass Public Shootings?

Please share our graphic!  Click on graphic to enlarge.  A copy of the paper upon which this graphic is based is available here.

An amazing interview by Kurt Russell on Gun Control, "put some controls? So the people who want to defend themselves can't?"

Kurt Russell: If you think gun control, or something like that, is going to change the terrorists’ point of view, I think you’re, like, out of your mind. I think anybody [who says that] is. I think it’s absolutely insane. 

The problem that we are having right now is that we don't have the concepts of how to turn it around and say, you may think you've got me worried about what you are going to do, Dude, you’re about to find out what I’m gonna do, and that’s gonna worry you a lot more.  And that‘s what we need. That will change the concept of gun culture, as you call it, to something [like] reality. Which is, if I’m a hockey team and I’ve got some guy bearing down on me as a goal tender, I’m not concerned about what he’s gonna do — I’m gonna make him concerned about what I’m gonna do to stop him. That’s when things change. . . . 

Wells: Obama's point was that the guys on the no-fly list, no-fly list because of terrorist connections, can get a gun pretty easily. 

Russell: They can also get a bomb pretty easily, so what?  They can also get knives and stab you. What are you gonna do about that? They can also get cars and run you over. What are you gonna do about that? 

Wells: They didn't kill the people in San Bernardino with . . . 

Russell: Well, they killed others that way.  Haven't they?  Yah. Yah.  So what are you going to do?  Outlaw everything?  That isn't the answer. 

Wells: Just put some controls. 

Russell: Put some controls? So the people who want to defend themselves can't? 

Wells: No, not so you can't, just so the idiots can't get a hold of them. 

Russell:  Do you really believe that they aren't going to?  Are you serious about that?

Listen to the rest of the interview.

Washington Post's Christopher Ingraham again cherry picks research and misstates what those studies show

The Washington Post's Christopher Ingraham has another new post on gun control (earlier ones here), where he is claiming that most people are wrong to believe that permitted concealed handguns make them safer.  In this case, Ingraham is responding to a new Gallup poll that finds that by a 56-to-41 percent margin Americans believe that more people legally carrying permitted concealed handguns would make them safer.

 Summary: Ingraham's piece selectively picks eight studies on right-to-carry laws and crime rates: six find no effect on crime and two claim to find a bad effect.  Of the two that claim to find a bad effect one is inaccurately described (for homicides it provided no evidence of a bad effect and some statistically significant evidence of a benefit) and the other paper is unpublished with severe flaws.  Of the peer reviewed studies that Ingraham references no evidence of a statistically significant bad effect from right-to-carry laws is offered.  With the exception of part of Lott's research, he ignores all the national studies that find benefits from the law.

 I have reached out to Ingraham both by email and telephone to discuss these points, but have not received a response from him.

  Details: Much of the discussion here focuses on the research by John Lott, but Ingraham has again cherry-picked research to give a very selective view of peer-reviewed research on concealed carry.  Table 2 in this paper from the University of Maryland Law Review in 2012 has a survey that shows most research show a benefit from concealed carry, but there are other more recent papers that find a benefit (see papers here towards the end of this list).  As with other gun control advocates, Ingraham wants to imply that it is just Lott's research versus various critics, but this ignores that most of the peer-reviewed academic research using national data supports his and David Mustard's original research.  In a similar vein in claiming that Lott's research was "completely discredited," Ingraham completely ignores our responses here and here to those assertions.

-- "Lott, for his part, still stands by his idea, although he has nuanced it a bit. He's recently argued that studies critical of right-to-carry laws have failed to properly account for state-level differences in how difficult it is to acquire a handgun permit."

The paper that Lott wrote looked at 4 studies.  In direct contrast to Ingraham's claim about me responding to studies "critical of right-to carry laws": two of those papers that Lott discussed found a benefit from right-to-carry laws, one claimed no effect, and one claimed increased crime.  The point of Lott's was that those papers (even the two that found a benefit) were biased towards not finding a benefit.  If Ingraham had looked at the new paper closely or my research from 2000 on, he would also know that the term "recently" is incorrect.  Lott has been trying to account for the change in permits since the second edition of "More Guns, Less Crime" in 2000.

-- "But as Evan DeFilippis and Devin Hughes recently point out at The Trace, even more recent research from Texas A&M looked at the number of permits issued, not just the passage of various laws. Philips found 'no significant effect of concealed handgun license increases on changes in crime rates... this research suggests that the rate at which CHLs are issued and crime rates are independent of one another—crime does not drive CHLs; CHLs do not drive crime.'"

In a previous post on this website we mentioned numerous problems with the Texas A&M study, we mentioned several problems.  One included (emphasis added):

No explanation is offered for why these authors exclude other states or years?  County level permit data are easily available for Illinois and Wisconsin because no permits were issued over this entire period of time.  Oregon, Tennessee, North Carolina, and other states have county level data over this period of time.   This is important because the test that they are preforming compares these states relative to one another during the period that they all have right-to-carry concealed handgun laws.  When authors throw out data there had better be a good explanation for why they are doing it, but no explanation is offered here.

On other studies:

-- "Changes in gun ownership are significantly positively related to changes in the homicide rate" (Ludwig, 2002)

If Ingraham had read the paper he cites here, he would have not only noticed that the paper was done by Mark Duggan, but, more importantly, Ingraham doesn't mention the part of the paper that deals with concealed handgun laws (the purpose of his piece).  In Table 12 of Duggan's paper, out of the 6 results that are reported on murder rates, 5 out of 6 estimates show a drop in murder rates after adoption of the law (three of these are statistically significant).  The sixth estimate was essentially zero.  None of the estimates show a significant bad effect.

 If one looks more broadly at all the violent crime categories (22 of the 36 estimates imply a drop in crime rates, with 15 of those coefficients showing a statistically significant negative effect, and only one coefficient show a statistically positive effect on crime rates).

 Chapter 10 in Lott's "More Guns, Less Crime" explains why Duggan gets the biased results that he did. In particular, that he looks at only before and after averages.  As to the part of the Duggan paper that Ingraham does cite, these results are also questionable as Duggan uses only the sales of one gun magazine to proxy for gun ownership.  Research using the sales of the other six largest gun magazines get the opposite result.  The magazine that Duggan used was unique because it was the only magazine that had to make large self purchases to guarantee those who bought ads a certain level of circulation.

 Ingraham cites a list of seven papers, but he ignores that the debate among published research has been long recognized as one between those who say that there is no benefit and those who say that there is a benefit.  Listing some papers that show no impact from the law doesn't change what has already been discussed.

-- "Right-to-carry laws are associated with substantially higher rates" of aggravated assault, robbery, rape and murder. (Aneja et al 2014)

This website has long had a detailed discussion of the problems with this unpublished paper.  Research shown here as also provided a detailed discussion. More discussion will be added later. Ingraham has this tweet up pushing his claims.  Presumably he is trying to discredit the research by linking it up to the NRA doing "an amazing job selling" it rather than thinking that the academic debate has has some influence here.  Unfortunately, Ingraham ignores most of the academic research, and, as noted above, he doesn't respond the critiques that have made of the research he cites.

 

How Bloomberg's Everytown discusses gun-free zones: unable to debate the facts, they engage in personal attack

Gun-free zones are a serious problem. Shannon Watts, the head of Michael Bloomberg's Moms Demand Action, claimed that research that I had done was "wrong and misleading" and that I was "debunked."  When I responded with a point-by-point refutation of her claim, she accused him of being a Twitter "troll."  Watts makes clearly personal attacks, but she feels that it is improper for someone to factually respond to her claims.  She offers no proof for her claim that I am a "gun lobby researcher," falsely implying that I amfunded by the "gun lobby."  Instead of defending her claims about gun-free zones, Shannon moves on to other personal attacks, saying I supposedly bullied a stalking victim.

Country Music Star Tim McGraw pushes for more gun control

Tim McGraw says that he is headlining a concert for Sandy Hook Promise, not because he supports gun control, but because he supports "education and safety" regarding guns.  No one disagrees with  "education and safety," but the question involves the gun control regulations being pushed by this organization.  If McGraw is raising money for the group, he is helping achieve the gun control regulations that Sandy Hook Promise is lobbying for.  Nicole Hockley's video here talks about her lobbying for "common sense" gun control legislation.

"Let me be clear regarding the concert for Sandy Hook given much of the erroneous reporting thus far," McGraw told FOX411 in a statement. "As a gun owner, I support gun ownership. I also believe that with gun ownership comes the responsibility of education and safety – most certainly when it relates to what we value most, our children. I can’t imagine anyone who disagrees with that."

The problem is that her push to prevent access to what she calls "high powered weapons," like an AR-15, and her desire to lock up guns can lead to more deaths.  Guns that fire .223 caliber bullets are not "high powered weapons."  If she really wants to ban all rifles that fire that size bullet or larger, she would ban the vast majority of hunting rifles.  Mandating gunlocks emboldens criminals to attack people in their homes and makes it more difficult for people to protect themselves.  As criminals are more successful in committing their crimes, you actually see an increase in the number of deaths.

Gun control advocates attack American Hero Chris Kyle

What could possibly justify these vicious comments?  Will gun control advocates keep this movie from "the Oscar spotlight"?  From Fox Nation:

. . . The Washington-based Coalition to Stop Gun Violence has given critics of the upcoming movie a Facebook outlet to rant about the subject of the movie, sniper Chris Kyle, killed after the leaving the military and while he was at a gun range with a vet suffering from PTSD. 

“Good Riddance,” wrote one. “What goes around comes around,” sneered another. 

Kyle is an American hero, a sniper so effective in Iraq that terrorists put a bounty on his head. But the movie is a liberal’s nightmare and the anti-gun coalition’s supporters have been eager to condemn it and keep it out of the Oscar spotlight. . . .

Chris Kyle's widow has her reaction to the new movie here. 

Bloomberg's gun control groups explain their strategy: focus on the states

Gun control advocates are going for a state by state approach, following along what homosexual rights groups have done.  The left wing Salon had this interview with Bloomberg's Shannon Watts:

. . . If you look at what we’ve done in the states alone — in 2013, we helped close the background check loophole in several states (Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New York) … and then we built on that this year. We got six different states, red and blue, to pass laws that would keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers. And those were signed by [governors] from both parties … And then we went to Washington State where our moms were a huge part of the success of getting I-594 passed with 60 percent of the vote … And this is something we can take to two-dozen other states … to get [similar] initiatives passed there … We passed a critical gun-violence restraining bill in California, which is a prototype that we can take to other states … 

We have had huge success with our corporate campaigns. We decided that this was very much a cultural issue, so we took this issue to companies and said, You need to have policies around guns just like you do [for] attire, outside food, smoking, etc. And just in the last year we’ve gotten Target, Chipotle, Starbucks, Sonic, Jack in the Box, Chili’s — we’ve gotten all these major retailers and restaurants to say, We don’t want open-carry in our stores (in fact, some of them have said they don’t want any guns in their stores). 

If you look at how the acceptance of gay marriage came to be in this country, it was just like this; this is pretty much the playbook. You bypass Congress, you go straight to companies, you go straight to the state legislatures, you build a huge amount of momentum, you educate voters about this issue, and when they go out to the polls in 2016, hopefully you get a Congress in place that’s going to do the right thing. Maybe they’ll do the right thing before that, but we’re not going to rest on our laurels. . . .

The errors in this are quite numerous.  None of the states that they point to are "red" states.  An analysis of the 594 initiative is available here.  An analysis of the California restraining order is available here.

The claims in the second paragraph about the success in their corporate campaign are simply false (see here, here, and here.

New "American State Legislators for Gun Violence Prevention" has 200 legislators out of 7383

A new group of state legislators, named the "American State Legislators for Gun Violence Prevention," has been formed to push for gun control.  Reuters has a fairly positive news story on the group, but the article mentions a couple of points.  One thing left out of the Reuters story is some perspective: that the 200 unnamed legislators amount to just 2.7% of the 7,383 state legislators.

-- they will not mention who their members are.
-- they have "not released information on its preliminary donors" [Any guesses? Bloomberg?]

The organization is billed as bipartisan, but at the news conference they had announcing the group's formation: "The only Republican lawmaker was state Representative Barbara Bollier from Kansas."

Unfortunately, last week's attack on the Canadian Parliament seems to have doomed some simple long needed reform of gun control

The Huffington Post is quite happy about this:

The Conservative government appears to be quietly shelving its controversial “Common Sense” gun bill in light of Wednesday’s shooting.  

Government House Leader Peter Van Loan’s office was silent Friday about the future of Bill C-42. Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney’s office refused to comment, directing inquiries to Van Loan. The Common Sense Firearms Licensing Act was scheduled to be debated for the first time on the day of the shootings, with three days set aside for discussion. It no longer figures on the government’s stated agenda. 

But NDP Public Safety critic Randall Garrison told The Huffington Post Canada on Friday that he understands why the government might want to shelve this bill for the time being. 

“I think it’s obvious that the climate where firearms were used to murder a member of the Canadian Forces and to bring an attack into the House of Commons means that the climate for a discussion on a bill that would loosen, in any way, restrictions over the licensing of firearms is unlikely to be something the government wants to do right now,” he said. . . .

Unfortunately, these restrictions are the exact opposite of what they should be doing. 

CNN interviews me on "Why blacks should have more guns"

CNN's John Blake has a new article on how race and guns.  Bob Cottrol is also interviewed for the piece.  Here is part of the discussion where he discusses my work:

Some gun rights advocates say contemporary black communities could learn from that tradition of self-defense.

Restrictive gun control laws often victimize black people more than any other group because they suffer disproportionately from violent crime, says John R. Lott Jr., author of "More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws." 

A black person is 6.5 times more likely to become a murder victim than someone who is white; and 92% of black murder victims are killed by members of their own race, Lott says. 

"Given the anger about police in many black communities, it might make more sense to let the law-abiding citizens in those communities have a greater chance to defend themselves," says Lott, founder and president of the Crime Prevention Research Center, a group that examines the links between gun control and crime. 

There are some who say that gun laws actually discriminate against poor blacks by making it more difficult for them to buy guns for protection, he says. He says states do this by raising the costs of concealed gun permits, training and other fees that price out poor minorities. 

And gun restrictions don't help black people living in violent neighborhoods, he says. Every time guns have been banned, Lott says, murder rates have increased. When the state of Massachusetts increased the costs of gun ownership, the number of registered gun owners in the state plummeted -- and the state's murder rate rose. Other academics say Lott's research is faulty. 

"The big problem," Lott says, "is that law-abiding good citizens, not criminals, obey the gun control laws." 

But are gun proponents like Lott really promoting safety or, as one scholar says, are they selling fear? 

Gallagher, the sociologist, says gun producers and the NRA create a perpetual state of fear so that people can buy their products. An NRA spokesman, Andrew Arulanandam, was repeatedly contacted but declined to answer questions submitted for this article. . . .

Pennsylvania state government moving to protect gun owners from local government regulations

From WTAE.com:

The House voted 143-54 for a bill that would discourage local governments from imposing illegal gun restrictions by giving anyone whose rights are violated by such laws the ability to sue and recover legal fees, as well as reimbursement for any lost income. 

That bill also would require the state police to submit mental health data within 90 days to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, run by the federal government. . . .

Even liberal media outlets are calling Gabby Giffords' gun control attack ads completely over the top

From Politico:

Gabby Giffords, irreproachable figure of sympathy, has fashioned an improbable new role for herself this election year: ruthless attack dog. 

The former Democratic congresswoman, whose recovery from a gunshot wound to the head captivated the country, has unleashed some of the nastiest ads of the campaign season, going after GOP candidates in Arizona and New Hampshire with attacks even some left-leaning commentators say go too far. And Republicans on the receiving end are largely helpless to hit back, knowing a fight with the much-admired survivor is not one they’re likely to win. 

Some of the toughest spots from Giffords’ newly formed pro-gun-control super PAC, Americans for Responsible Solutions, hammer Republican Martha McSally, a retired Air Force pilot who is running for the Arizona seat Giffords once held. One features a wrenching testimonial from a woman named Vicki who weeps and stumbles over her words as she recounts how her 19-year-old daughter was hunted down and murdered by an enraged ex-boyfriend. . . .

Giffords’ bare-knuckled approach isn’t entirely out of character. . . .

As Politico notes, even the liberal Arizona Republic’s had strong words condemning the ads in Arizona.

the Arizona Republic’s editorial page, which is typically liberal leaning, called the “Vicki” ad “base and vile.” The commercial, the newspaper said, put the murder “at McSally’s feet, as if she were responsible. A murder indictment implied. But, of course, McSally had nothing to do with” the death. . . .

Actor Liam Neeson lashes out against gun ownership

From the Independent (UK) newspaper:

. . . “I am totally for gun control in the US,” he says. “The population of America is roughly 300 million and there are 300 million guns in this country, which is terrifying. Every day we’re seeing some kid running rampant in a school. And do you know what the gun lobby’s response to Newtown was?” he asks, referring to the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, which left 20 children dead in December 2012. 

“The National Rifle Association’s official response was ‘If that teacher had been armed…’ It’s crazy. I’ll give Britain its dues, when they had the Dunblane massacre in Scotland, within 24 hours the gun laws were changed so you could not have a handgun.”  

Born in Ballymena, County Antrim, but a resident of New York, Neeson became a US citizen five years ago in the wake of the death of his wife, Natasha Richardson, in a freak skiing accident in 2009.  The actor cites the outpouring of goodwill from Americans as one of the main reasons for his decision. Part of the naturalisation process involves a test on US civics; Neeson, therefore, understands the Constitution as well as anyone. “It is the right to bear arms which is the problem. I think if the Founding Fathers knew what was happening they would be turning in their graves with embarrassment at how that law has been interpreted,” he says, in reference to the Second Amendment to the Constitution. . . .

Mr. Neeson is of course wrong about what the NRA proposed.  I have proposed allowing staff at school to be armed, but the NRA has wanted to have armed guards.

Fortune Magazine completely mangles story on gun sales "declining"

Fortune magazine's Laura Lorenzetti makes a lot of logical mistakes in her "news" article here.

It looks like Americans may be buying fewer guns this year. 

Smith & Wesson  SWHC , the 162-year-old gunmaker, lowered its guidance for the quarter and rest of the year, even as it reported better than expected sales in its fiscal fourth quarter that ended Apr. 30. Shares of Smith & Wesson’s stock had dropped nearly 9% by the close of trading Friday following the announcement. 

The company reported sales of $170 million in its fourth quarter, higher than the average analyst estimate of about $164 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Revenue was almost 5% less than the year-earlier quarter. . . . 

The once high-selling gun industry may be facing a comedown as incidents of gun violence have soared this year. There has been an average of almost one school shooting every week for the past year and a half, the Washington Post reported earlier this month. . . .

Does reporter Laura Lorenzetti have any idea how inaccurate the Bloomberg claim is that there was one school shooting every week for the last year and a half?  The claim that increased gun violence is responsible for a drop in sales makes many errors.  Does a sales drop for Smith & Wesson imply an overall drop in gun sales?  No.

So what do the NICS checks numbers show on gun sales (click on screenshot to enlarge it)?  NICS checks are not a perfect measure of gun sales, but it is hard to see how its biases have changed in a systematic way this past year.

With the exception of background checks in January and February, 2014's background checks exceed those in 2013 and they are well ahead of those in 2012 for all months.  Fortune incredibly fails to even mention the explosion of gun sales right after Newtown and President Obama's re-election.  Does anyone believe that January and February sales in 2013 were normal sales to make comparisons with?  Even if Smith & Wesson's sales might be down for the last quarter, sales for the entire industry during the April through June quarter look like they are still higher than 2013.  How the Fortune reporter can spin a discussion from one gun maker into a general commentary on the entire gun industry is pretty disappointing.