Our friends at the Violence Policy Center (VPC) have just updated their Concealed Carry Killers report which now shows that at least 1,313 people have been killed by shooters with concealed-carry (CCW) licenses since May, 2007. Of these events, more than 500 were suicides, which is far below what must be the real gun-suicide number because rarely do suicides, regardless of how they occur, make the news. And since the VPC report is based on open (mostly media) sources, by definition the numbers must be read and treated with care.
But that’s not the point of this column. The point of this column is to address a statement made last week in Iowa by Kamala Harris, who told reporters that she not only is a gun owner, but owns her gun for personal defense. Now she didn’t say what kind of gun she owns, and she also made it clear that she supports ‘smart’ gun-safety laws; I assume she means gun-safety laws that work. And with all due respect to my friends in Gun-control Nation who keep touting the idea that ‘reasonable’ gun owners support ‘reasonable’ gun laws, my response is this: So what? Know what happened to the gun homicide rate in Colorado after comprehensive background checks went into effect in 2013? It went up by fifty percent.
When Harris announced she was going to run against Schumck-o Don in 2020, she became an immediate darling for the gun-control crowd, in part because as California Attorney General she incurred the wrath of Gun-nut Nation by arguing against unrestricted CCW in the Peruta case. This case was a test of this stupidism known as ‘Constitutional carry,’ which Gun-nut Nation considers to be one of the hundred-million Constitutional ‘rights’ given by God and protected by the revered 2nd Amendment.
I’m not sure that gun control issues will be as important in 2020 as they might have been in 2018, but what I do know is that once again, the arguments on both sides are being fashioned and pronounced with little, if any relationship to the truth. Last week, Kirsten Gillibrand went on CNN and made a bunch of statements about the NRA which simply fly in the face of reality, chief among them a statement that the NRA is ‘largely’ supported by the gun manufacturers, which happens not to be true.
It’s not even close to being true. It’s simply false. The ‘truth’ was then immediately offered up by home-school queen Dana Loesch, who delivered one of her brain-dead video spiels for the ‘losing’ NRA-TV where she starts off in typical Dana Loesch fashion, which means throwing a series of personal insults at the person speaking for the other side.
Now let’s get back to Kamala and her attempt to stick herself into the middle of the gun debate. I don’t know whether she actually walks around with a gun or not, but her statement that she ‘needs’ to carry a gun as a protective device also happens not to be true. There isn’t a single study which even remotely proves that carrying a gun keeps you safe, there happens to be substantive research which shows exactly the reverse. To which my friends in Gun-nut Nation will immediately ask: So how come more than 15 million Americans now have the legal right to walk around with a gun? To which my answer is very simple: More than 30 million American adults smoke every day. Does that mean that those 30 million are healthier than people who don’t smoke?
Once again, my friends in Gun-control Nation are backing themselves into a corner by pushing the idea that we can reduce gun violence by the development and application of ‘reasonable’ laws. Obviously Kamala Harris considers CCW to be a reasonable gun law, at least when the cops have discretion to decide who can and who can’t walk around armed.
If that’s Kamala’s idea of how to reduce gun violence, welcome to another political campaign where the truth about guns and gun violence will take a whack.
Apr 15, 2019 @ 13:47:46
Mike, why do feel that background check laws, tightly written, won’t reduce gun violence?
Apr 15, 2019 @ 20:28:28
Having background check laws won’t have too much of an effect if there isn’t registration and lost/stolen gun laws that are meant to be enforced.
Registration to make sure that guns are tracked to know who owns them.
Lost/stolen laws to ensure that these guns are promptly reported to the police.
From my days working on this issue. People who sell on the black market will say the guns are lost and stolen when they show up at a crime scene.
So, we need to make sure that there is a reason to know who is selling the guns and when to make the background check thing work.
Apr 16, 2019 @ 12:16:44
The missing link is that registered guns can be stolen as easily as unregistered ones, and it makes no sense to worry about closing the door when, as they say, the metaphorical horses have left the barn or in this case, when the guns are out on the street. One has to keep the horses in the barn.
Something rarely to never discussed is providing tax incentives to buy things like gun safes and car gun boxes. Many progressives are aghast at doing anything to suggest they actually might do things to help rather than hinder safe (well, as safe as guns can be owned…), private gun ownership.
Sure, its tough to prove whether safes are in use but like the other side says, “…if it saves one life…”. I gladly took advantage of a hefty tax break to put photovoltaic panels on my roof. Would have been happy to include the receipt for the gun safe in my tax return as well but it does give me that warm fuzzy feeling, which is worth something.
Jun 21, 2019 @ 13:07:13
Actually, there’s the traceability of registered guns v. unregistered ones. It’s hard to prosecute someone if you can’t prove they once owned the firearm. As is, the current system is pretty ineffective.
And while you can’t stop gun crime all together, you can make it harder in the hope of deterring it.
Or, you can just say “fuck it, human life isn’t that important. Let’s let guns remain easy to get.”
Apr 15, 2019 @ 14:20:22
I don’t think there is a single study out there that says that UBCs, taken alone, make much of a dent in gun violence. Most of the studies (for example, the Connecticut one) suggest a combination of efforts as well as reduced gun ownership have to be introduced and even those studies have uncertainties you can drive a truck through.
But especially with respect to suicides, which make up most gun deaths. If you have a gun and decide to turn out the lights, its darn effective. I’ve yet so figure out how anyone would know I am suicidal unless I broadcast it to the authorities. Probably the first hint they would have of my intentions would be the muzzle flash.
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Apr 16, 2019 @ 13:56:05