CHICAGO, Ill., April 10 – Chicago’s murder rate dropped to its lowest level since 1958, following the adoption of a concealed carry gun law by Illinois last year. Chicago had some of the toughest gun laws in the nation, and in 2012, Chicago led the nation in murders. But the courts said the tough gun laws violated the Second Amendment, and Illinois was forced to adopt a law allowing concealed carry. Chicago police began accepting applications in January of this year. Anti-gun critics predicted an increase in crime, murder and mayhem. Now Chicago police are reporting the lowest level of crime and murder in decades.


When Illinois passed the law allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed hangduns, it became the last state in the Union to do so. The Supreme Court ruled in McDonald v. Chicago that the right of an individual to “keep and bear arms” protected by the Second Amendment is incorporated by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and applies to the states. Then the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Illinois to repeal its law that prohibited concealed carry and gave the state until July 9, 2013 to replace it.

Anti-gun zealots predicted mayhem, warning that high-crime areas, like Chicago, would only see more violence if residents were allowed to carry guns in public. Governor Quinn called the concealed carry bill “extremely disappointing,” saying it “will lead to tragedy” and that “public safety should never be compromised or negotiated away.” He accused the legislature of “surrender[ing]” to the NRA. But the opposite occurred–instead of crime and murder rising, it has decreased.

Chicago has had a significant problem with murder and gun crime. According to the FBI, the U.S. had a national homicide rate of 4.7 per 100,000 people in 2011. Illinois’ homicide rate in 2011 was 6.4 per 100,000, or 136 percent of the national rate. And though during that time it was illegal to carry them, handguns were involved with the vast majority of murders. In 2012, Chicago led the nation with 506 murders. Gun control, evidently, was not working out very well.

However, in the first three months of 2014, Chicago saw six fewer murders than the same time frame in 2013–a nine percent drop–and 55 fewer murders than 2012, making it the lowest first-quarter murder total since 1958. There were 90 fewer shootings and 119 fewer shooting victims, drops of 26 and 29 percent respectively. Compared to the first quarter of 2012, there have been 222 fewer shootings and 292 fewer shooting victims. Overall crime is down 25 percent from last year.

The drop is consistent with academic research that, contrary to gun bullies’ claims, clearly shows that lawful carry of guns by law-abiding citizens reduces and deters crime. It is more guns that leads to more safety, not the other way around. Though this may seem counterintuitive, the findings are confirmed by multiple academic sources. A CDC study ordered by President Obama found lawful carrying of guns was an important deterrent to crime. The CDC study further states that lawful carrying of guns saves lives, noting, “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.” Research by gun crime experts John Lott, Jr. and David Mustard found that “When state concealed handgun laws went into effect… murders fell by 8.5 percent, and rapes and aggravated assaults fell by five and seven percent.” They state that “more guns mean less crime.”

A Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy study by professors Don Kates and Gary Mauser of 36 developed nations–virtually all of which have stronger gun control than the United States–concludes that higher gun control is consistently associated with higher levels of violent crime and homicide, and low gun restrictions are associated with lower levels of violent crime and less murder. They note, “Whether viewed as a cause or coincidental, the long-term macrocosmic evidence is that gun ownership spread widely throughout societies consistently correlate with stable or declining murder rates” (p.673).

They further state, “Laws whose effect is to reduce gun ownership by law-abiding citizens–the ones who obey gun laws–are futile because these laws do not reduce violence or murder” (p.672). Professors Kates and Mauser state it is a criminologist axiom, verified in virtually every study since at least the 1890s, that average, law-abiding people do not commit murder. Instead, they state that career criminals do: 90 percent of adult murderers have adult criminal records, with multiple prior contacts to the justice system. The same is true with minor offenders. Professors Kates and Mauser state that “there is no reason for laws prohibiting gun possession by ordinary, law-abiding responsible adults, because such people virtually never murder… disarming them becomes not just unproductive, but counter-productive” (p. 670). Laws intended to prevent crime by keeping all citizens from having guns are useless because crime is committed by criminals with history of doing so. Criminals simply do not obey gun laws, as Chicago demonstrates.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago’s police chief credit the drop with changes in police strategies, and do not support the new concealed carry law. Honest researchers will rightly tell us correlation does not equal causation–something anti-gun zealots only seem to remember when it benefits their agenda to do so. However, while we may not rightly say Chicago’s decrease in crime is solely attributable to concealed carry, we can say that concealed carry has not resulted in the increase of crime that the anti-gun rights lobby wrongly predicted. The decrease in crime observed in Chicago is consistent with - and to be expected considering  - academic research that clearly shows that lawful gun carrying reduces crime.

By Matt MacBradaigh. Matt is a Christian, Husband, Father, Patriot, and Conservative from the Pacific Northwest. Matt writes about the Second Amendment, Gun Control, Gun Rights, and Gun Policy issues and is published on The Bell Towers, The Brenner Brief, PolicyMic. TavernKeepers, and Vocativ.

Follow Me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/2AFight  

Follow Me on Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/2ndAmendmentFight
 

This article also appears on The Brenner Brief. (Original publication April 10, 2014).

Chicago’s murder rate drops to lowest level in decades following new concealed carry gun law

by Matt MacBradaigh | Apr 10, 2014 | Gun Control Facts | 0 comments

CHICAGO, Ill., April 10 – Chicago’s murder rate dropped to its lowest level since 1958, following the adoption of a concealed carry gun law by Illinois last year. Chicago had some of the toughest gun laws in the nation, and in 2012, Chicago led the nation in murders. But the courts said the tough gun laws violated the Second Amendment, and Illinois was forced to adopt a law allowing concealed carry. Chicago police began accepting applications in January of this year. Anti-gun critics predicted an increase in crime, murder and mayhem. Now Chicago police are reporting the lowest level of crime and murder in decades.

When Illinois passed the law allowing law-abiding citizens to carry concealed hangduns, it became the last state in the Union to do so. The Supreme Court ruled in McDonald v. Chicago that the right of an individual to “keep and bear arms” protected by the Second Amendment is incorporated by the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and applies to the states. Then the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered Illinois to repeal its law that prohibited concealed carry and gave the state until July 9, 2013 to replace it.

Anti-gun zealots predicted mayhem, warning that high-crime areas, like Chicago, would only see more violence if residents were allowed to carry guns in public. Governor Quinn called the concealed carry bill “extremely disappointing,” saying it “will lead to tragedy” and that “public safety should never be compromised or negotiated away.” He accused the legislature of “surrender[ing]” to the NRA. But the opposite occurred–instead of crime and murder rising, it has decreased.

Chicago has had a significant problem with murder and gun crime. According to the FBI, the U.S. had a national homicide rate of 4.7 per 100,000 people in 2011. Illinois’ homicide rate in 2011 was 6.4 per 100,000, or 136 percent of the national rate. And though during that time it was illegal to carry them, handguns were involved with the vast majority of murders. In 2012, Chicago led the nation with 506 murders. Gun control, evidently, was not working out very well.

However, in the first three months of 2014, Chicago saw six fewer murders than the same time frame in 2013–a nine percent drop–and 55 fewer murders than 2012, making it the lowest first-quarter murder total since 1958. There were 90 fewer shootings and 119 fewer shooting victims, drops of 26 and 29 percent respectively. Compared to the first quarter of 2012, there have been 222 fewer shootings and 292 fewer shooting victims. Overall crime is down 25 percent from last year.

The drop is consistent with academic research that, contrary to gun bullies’ claims, clearly shows that lawful carry of guns by law-abiding citizens reduces and deters crime. It is more guns that leads to more safety, not the other way around. Though this may seem counterintuitive, the findings are confirmed by multiple academic sources. A CDC study ordered by President Obama found lawful carrying of guns was an important deterrent to crime. The CDC study further states that lawful carrying of guns saves lives, noting, “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.” Research by gun crime experts John Lott, Jr. and David Mustard found that “When state concealed handgun laws went into effect… murders fell by 8.5 percent, and rapes and aggravated assaults fell by five and seven percent.” They state that “more guns mean less crime.”

A Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy study by professors Don Kates and Gary Mauser of 36 developed nations–virtually all of which have stronger gun control than the United States–concludes that higher gun control is consistently associated with higher levels of violent crime and homicide, and low gun restrictions are associated with lower levels of violent crime and less murder. They note, “Whether viewed as a cause or coincidental, the long-term macrocosmic evidence is that gun ownership spread widely throughout societies consistently correlate with stable or declining murder rates” (p.673).

They further state, “Laws whose effect is to reduce gun ownership by law-abiding citizens–the ones who obey gun laws–are futile because these laws do not reduce violence or murder” (p.672). Professors Kates and Mauser state it is a criminologist axiom, verified in virtually every study since at least the 1890s, that average, law-abiding people do not commit murder. Instead, they state that career criminals do: 90 percent of adult murderers have adult criminal records, with multiple prior contacts to the justice system. The same is true with minor offenders. Professors Kates and Mauser state that “there is no reason for laws prohibiting gun possession by ordinary, law-abiding responsible adults, because such people virtually never murder… disarming them becomes not just unproductive, but counter-productive” (p. 670). Laws intended to prevent crime by keeping all citizens from having guns are useless because crime is committed by criminals with history of doing so. Criminals simply do not obey gun laws, as Chicago demonstrates.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago’s police chief credit the drop with changes in police strategies, and do not support the new concealed carry law. Honest researchers will rightly tell us correlation does not equal causation–something anti-gun zealots only seem to remember when it benefits their agenda to do so. However, while we may not rightly say Chicago’s decrease in crime is solely attributable to concealed carry, we can say that concealed carry has not resulted in the increase of crime that the anti-gun rights lobby wrongly predicted. The decrease in crime observed in Chicago is consistent with – and to be expected considering  – academic research that clearly shows that lawful gun carrying reduces crime.

This article was originally published on Brenner Brief. Original publish date Apr 10, 2014. Original author, Matt MacBradaigh.

Last year was an epic year of fail for gun control advocates. The anti-gun bullies

thought they sensed sea change in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting – that sweeping gun control restrictions were all but a done deal. In retrospect, nothing was further from the truth. They relied on lies and deception to sell their case, pushed an agenda in defiance of the people’s desires, and policies that would have done nothing to make the public safer.
Ultimately, liberal, anti-gun zealots lost in nearly every arena in which they attempted to force new restrictions: whether it was a national assaults weapon ban that died in the Senate or gun control measures that stalled in state legislatures.

Gun control advocates made at least five significant mistakes in the gun control debate in 2013:

1 Colorado recall

Though at first, it seemed the anti-gun lobby won in Colorado, they ended up suffering a significant loss in the state. Initially, state Democrats successfully pushed through two gun control measures. But the people of Colorado responded by recalling the two state lawmakers that spearheaded the legislation.  The Colorado recall election garnered attention, money, and input nationally as a broad referendum on gun control. The special elections were widely seen as a test of whether swing-state voters would accept gun restrictions. Particularly noteworthy is that anti-gun organizations outspent pro-gun groups by a margin of 6-to-1 ($3 million by anti-gun activists compared to $540,000 by recall proponents) and still lost the recall. The Colorado Republican Party said the vote sends “a loud and clear message to out-of-touch Democrats across the nation.” The recall results seem to confirm that assessment.

If the recall effort is truly a referendum nationally, then the message is that gun control is a losing policy for liberals. Colorado Democrats arrogantly pushed their own agenda, in defiance of strong opposition from the people they represent, and from the Colorado Sheriff’s association warning that the bill was not enforceable. They paid for their mistake with their seats in the legislature.

2 Throwing a Fit about Good Guys with Guns

The NRA’s response to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown was to recommend more armed good guys at schools – whether police officers or teachers and other school staff. Liberal politicians, media and school officials went ballistic over the suggestion. The executive director of the Connecticut Association of Schools and the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, said the NRA comments hit her “like a punch in the stomach.” Talking heads had a heyday, trying to spin the NRA as insensitive monsters ‘out of touch’ with the rest of America. Wasn’t it obvious, they mused, that the last thing we need was more guns near children?

It turns out the NRA’s critics were the ones out of touch.

America already makes ample use of armed good guys in schools. According to the Department of Justice, nearly 17,000 officers from police and sheriff departments serve as School Resource Officers (SRO’s) in roughly half of all schools. Following the tragedy at Columbine High School in 1999, President Clinton signed a bill that provided millions in additional funding through the ‘COPS in Schools’ program to do exactly as the NRA suggested following Sandy Hook.

And it turns out, these armed good guys do in fact stop and minimize harm to our children. In February, a 14 year old student was non-fatally shot in the back of the neck at an Atlanta Middle School. However, “an armed guard disarmed the shooter moments after the shooting,” resulting in zero loss of life. Had there been no armed guard able to respond within moments, the incident could have been very different. Likewise, in December, an armed SRO stopped a school shooting at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, CO, where one student was shot and later died. Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson said: “The rampage might have resulted in many more casualties had it not been for the quick response of a deputy sheriff who was working as a school resource officer at the school.” The officer’s quick response meant the incident was over “in less than 80 seconds.” By contrast, the Columbine incident lasted almost an hour. The shooter, a student, clearly intended more harm, bringing a pump-action shotgun, 125 shotgun shells, a machete, and three molotov cocktails with him. It likely would have been much worse without an ‘armed good guy’ to respond.

These real-life stories drive home the point to regular people whose children attend public schools It makes a difference in policy. Following Newtown, some districts have also allowed for school staff to be armed while at school as well. Even Newtown’s school board unanimously voted for more armed security, clearly demonstrating the public believes the anti-gun lobby is on the wrong side of this issue.

3 Background checks falsehoods

President Obama and others falsely claimed “40% of guns were bought without a background check at gun shows”. He was given three Pinocchio’s by the Washington Post Fact Checker, meaning there are “significant factual errors and/or obvious contradictions” The measures, which reportedly enjoyed support of 90% Americans, failed to get out of the Democrat-controlled Senate. They would have surely failed in the Republican-controlled House even if they had passed in the Senate.

The President’s claim rested on falsely citing a 20 year old study of 251 people that was taken from before Federal law even required dealers to run background checks on all sales. Even the study’s authors confirmed the range President Obama cited is false. Department of Justice studies show that less than 1% of criminals obtain guns from gun shows.

Second, it was a myth that 90% of Americans supported “universal” background checks. Multiple articles in the Washington Post cited this as though it were ‘fact’. Given that the public was misled about the truth about the percentage of guns bought at gun shows “without background checks”, this response might have been understandable. But digging into the survey questions revealed that people were only asked if they would support background checks “at gun shows” – not universally. So the surveys didn’t show what they were claimed to show. This was ultimately evident in the failure to get the amendment out of committee in the Senate.

Finally, there are actually no gun show or online gun sale loopholes. According to the ATF, Federal law requires FFL’s to run background checks on all sales, even at gun shows. Online sales are subject to all Federal law requirements as well. Any firearm shipped over state lines must ship to a FFL who must then run a background check. It is pure myth that one can go to “GunsRUs.com” and have a gun shipped to their doorstep.

The fact that anti-gun advocates lost so decisively – even on this issue that was supposedly had almost total public support, shows what a mistake it was to pursue this grossly misguided policy.

4 Obsessing on the “evil” AR-15

Liberal anti-gun organizations, politicians and media love the ‘evil’ AR-15 narrative; that the AR-15 is a “weapon of war”, meant only for soldiers and mass killing. Any news story featuring an AR-15 gets ample airtime; shootings without one quickly fade from headlines. For example, following the Navy Yard shooting, media immediately exploited the supposed role of the AR-15 rifle, prominently displaying images of AR-15 rifles on the front page, and showing computer simulations of how the shooter reportedly “used” an AR-15 – until the FBI confirmed there was no AR-15 used in the shooting.

Anti-gun politicians routinely lie about the AR-15′s capabilities, calling it a a military weapon (it isn’t), designed for close-quarters combat (it’s not), and claiming it can fire “.30 caliber clip in a half-second”, which isn’t even a grammatically – much less technically – accurate sentence. The AR-15 rifle has similar cosmetic appearance to the military M4 rifle. This makes it easy for unscrupulous agenda-pushers to make sound scary to the general public who may be unfamiliar with them.

Appearances aside, the facts reported by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports show that rifles are used to kill very little in the U.S. – just over 300 out of nearly 13,000 murders in both 2011 and 2012, and so-called “assault rifles” are a subset within that category. Even if these anti-gun bullies were to get their way on this issue, there would be almost no reduction in our murder rate. Handguns, not rifles, are used far more often in homicides, accounting for nearly 70% of murders in 2011 and 2012. Mass murder, though sensational, is responsible for less than 100 out nearly 13,000 annual homicides. Focusing on “evil” rifles may be sensational, drive ratings and sell media advertising, but they aren’t responsible for very much homicide in the U.S. Ultimately, anti-gun politicians and lobbyists lost on their renewed push for a so-called “assault weapons ban”, which didn’t even make it out of committee in Congress.

5 Lying to inflate “gun deaths”

Lying is key to the liberal anti-gun agenda, which including lying about the number of “gun deaths” that occur each year. Mainstream media outlets, politicians, and anti-gun organizations all routinely cite “30,000 annual U.S. gun deaths.” when hyping the dangers of guns and the need for more gun control. The truth is 20,000 of these “gun deaths” are self-inflicted suicides with a gun (approximately half of the 40,000 annual suicides). While gun homicides are less than 9,000 in each of the last 3 years, which represents nearly an all time low in the U.S. murder rate.

Suicide is a genuine public health issue, but it is not related to crime, homicide and gun control policy. Magazine capacity, banning certain models of guns (particularly rifles), gun shows and background checks have no bearing on suicides. Mental health professionals confirm a person determined to die will find a way. A Harvard-published study of 36 developed nations by professors Don Kates and Gary Mauser found that gun availability had no effect on suicide rates. Many nations with low gun availability have higher suicide rates than nations with higher gun availability. Many nations with strict gun control and almost no legal guns available have significantly higher suicide rates than the U.S. Does. In fact, though gun sales are setting records in the U.S., the suicide rate is declining and is lower today than it was in the 1950′s, 60′s, 70′s or 80′s.

Anti-gun zealots conveniently leave out the truth that a full two-thirds of the deaths they cite have nothing to do with murder and crime. More importantly, the gun control legislation they propose does nothing to address suicide deaths. They resort to conflating suicide data with homicide crime data to make the case for gun control seem like it’s a bigger problem than it really is.

So what does this all mean?

These five mistakes share some common factors: they almost all involve lies and deception to sell the problem. In the lone exception – Colorado – they skipped selling it altogether and went straight to instituting policy without popular support. This is the second shared characteristic: they all involve attempts to push policy without broad support from ‘We the People’. Finally, each of the proposed policies do nothing to make people legitimately safer. While outside the scope of this article, they all, in fact, are counter-productive. Professors Kates and Mauser’s study found that gun control was counter-productive to reducing crime, homicide and suicide.

But in short, good guys with guns do stop bad guys, background checks at gun shows might stop less than 1% of criminal purchases at best, AR-15 rifles are rarely used in murder, and our murder rate is near an all-time low. Any public policy must be subject to interest-balancing: is the cost of adopting the policy worth the benefit received from doing so. All of these measures fail this test miserably.

As an added bonus that didn’t make it into the original article:

6. Record Gun Sales in 2013

The effect of the anti-gun Left’s rabbid mouth-frothing is to boost gun sales to record-breaking 23 million NICS checks in 2013. The record was previously set in 2012 in the run-up to the election. Gun dealers reported at least a quarter of the sales were to first-time buyers. Naysayers may note that not all NICS checks pass – meaning a sale may be prohibited. That’s true, but it’s an insignificant percentage. And of note is that more than one firearm may be purchased at the same time and the entire transaction will get one single NICS check. So in all probability, more than 23 million firearms were bought in 2013. Special Thanks to Obama, Feinstein, Jumpin’ Joe Biden, Moms Demand Stupidity, Mayors Who’ve Broken the Law, and others.

By Matt MacBradaigh. Matt is a Christian, Husband, Father, Patriot, and Conservative from the Pacific Northwest. Matt writes about the Second Amendment, Gun Control, Gun Rights, and Gun Policy issues and is published on The Bell Towers, The Brenner Brief, PolicyMic. TavernKeepers, and Vocativ.

Follow Me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/2AFight  

Follow Me on Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/2ndAmendmentFight
 

This article also appears on The Bell Towers (Original publication March 6, 2014).

Top 5 Gun Control Failures of 2013

by Matt MacBradaigh | Mar 6, 2014 | Gun Control Facts | 0 comments

2013 was an epic year of fail for gun control advocates. The anti-gun bullies thought they sensed sea change in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary shooting – that sweeping gun control restrictions were all but a done deal. In retrospect, nothing was further from the truth. They relied on lies and deception to sell their case, pushed an agenda in defiance of the people’s desires, and policies that would have done nothing to make the public safer.

Ultimately, liberal, anti-gun zealots lost in nearly every arena in which they attempted to force new restrictions: whether it was a national assaults weapon ban that died in the Senate or gun control measures that stalled in state legislatures.

Gun control advocates made at least five significant mistakes in the gun control debate in 2013:

1 Colorado recall

Though at first, it seemed the anti-gun lobby won in Colorado, they ended up suffering a significant loss in the state. Initially, state Democrats successfully pushed through two gun control measures. But the people of Colorado responded by recalling the two state lawmakers that spearheaded the legislation.  The Colorado recall election garnered attention, money, and input nationally as a broad referendum on gun control. The special elections were widely seen as a test of whether swing-state voters would accept gun restrictions. Particularly noteworthy is that anti-gun organizations outspent pro-gun groups by a margin of 6-to-1 ($3 million by anti-gun activists compared to $540,000 by recall proponents) and still lost the recall. The Colorado Republican Party said the vote sends “a loud and clear message to out-of-touch Democrats across the nation.” The recall results seem to confirm that assessment.

If the recall effort is truly a referendum nationally, then the message is that gun control is a losing policy for liberals. Colorado Democrats arrogantly pushed their own agenda, in defiance of strong opposition from the people they represent, and from the Colorado Sheriff’s association warning that the bill was not enforceable. They paid for their mistake with their seats in the legislature.

2 Throwing a Fit about Good Guys with Guns

The NRA’s response to the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown was to recommend more armed good guys at schools – whether police officers or teachers and other school staff. Liberal politicians, media and school officials went ballistic over the suggestion. The executive director of the Connecticut Association of Schools and the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference, said the NRA comments hit her “like a punch in the stomach.” Talking heads had a heyday, trying to spin the NRA as insensitive monsters ‘out of touch’ with the rest of America. Wasn’t it obvious, they mused, that the last thing we need was more guns near children?

It turns out the NRA’s critics were the ones out of touch.

America already makes ample use of armed good guys in schools. According to the Department of Justice, nearly 17,000 officers from police and sheriff departments serve as School Resource Officers (SRO’s) in roughly half of all schools. Following the tragedy at Columbine High School in 1999, President Clinton signed a bill that provided millions in additional funding through the ‘COPS in Schools’ program to do exactly as the NRA suggested following Sandy Hook.

And it turns out, these armed good guys do in fact stop and minimize harm to our children. In February, a 14 year old student was non-fatally shot in the back of the neck at an Atlanta Middle School. However, “an armed guard disarmed the shooter moments after the shooting,” resulting in zero loss of life. Had there been no armed guard able to respond within moments, the incident could have been very different. Likewise, in December, an armed SRO stopped a school shooting at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, CO, where one student was shot and later died. Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson said: “The rampage might have resulted in many more casualties had it not been for the quick response of a deputy sheriff who was working as a school resource officer at the school.” The officer’s quick response meant the incident was over “in less than 80 seconds.” By contrast, the Columbine incident lasted almost an hour. The shooter, a student, clearly intended more harm, bringing a pump-action shotgun, 125 shotgun shells, a machete, and three molotov cocktails with him. It likely would have been much worse without an ‘armed good guy’ to respond.

These real-life stories drive home the point to regular people whose children attend public schools It makes a difference in policy. Following Newtown, some districts have also allowed for school staff to be armed while at school as well. Even Newtown’s school board unanimously voted for more armed security, clearly demonstrating the public believes the anti-gun lobby is on the wrong side of this issue.

3 Background checks falsehoods

President Obama and others falsely claimed “40% of guns were bought without a background check at gun shows”. He was given three Pinocchio’s by the Washington Post Fact Checker, meaning there are “significant factual errors and/or obvious contradictions” The measures, which reportedly enjoyed support of 90% Americans, failed to get out of the Democrat-controlled Senate. They would have surely failed in the Republican-controlled House even if they had passed in the Senate.

The President’s claim rested on falsely citing a 20 year old study of 251 people that was taken from before Federal law even required dealers to run background checks on all sales. Even the study’s authors confirmed the range President Obama cited is false. Department of Justice studies show that less than 1% of criminals obtain guns from gun shows.

Second, it was a myth that 90% of Americans supported “universal” background checks. Multiple articles in the Washington Post cited this as though it were ‘fact’. Given that the public was misled about the truth about the percentage of guns bought at gun shows “without background checks”, this response might have been understandable. But digging into the survey questions revealed that people were only asked if they would support background checks “at gun shows” – not universally. So the surveys didn’t show what they were claimed to show. This was ultimately evident in the failure to get the amendment out of committee in the Senate.

Finally, there are actually no gun show or online gun sale loopholes. According to the ATF, Federal law requires FFL’s to run background checks on all sales, even at gun shows. Online sales are subject to all Federal law requirements as well. Any firearm shipped over state lines must ship to a FFL who must then run a background check. It is pure myth that one can go to “GunsRUs.com” and have a gun shipped to their doorstep.

The fact that anti-gun advocates lost so decisively – even on this issue that was supposedly had almost total public support, shows what a mistake it was to pursue this grossly misguided policy.

4 Obsessing on the “evil” AR-15

Liberal anti-gun organizations, politicians and media love the ‘evil’ AR-15 narrative; that the AR-15 is a “weapon of war”, meant only for soldiers and mass killing. Any news story featuring an AR-15 gets ample airtime; shootings without one quickly fade from headlines. For example, following the Navy Yard shooting, media immediately exploited the supposed role of the AR-15 rifle, prominently displaying images of AR-15 rifles on the front page, and showing computer simulations of how the shooter reportedly “used” an AR-15 – until the FBI confirmed there was no AR-15 used in the shooting.

Anti-gun politicians routinely lie about the AR-15′s capabilities, calling it a a military weapon (it isn’t), designed for close-quarters combat (it’s not), and claiming it can fire “.30 caliber clip in a half-second”, which isn’t even a grammatically – much less technically – accurate sentence. The AR-15 rifle has similar cosmetic appearance to the military M4 rifle. This makes it easy for unscrupulous agenda-pushers to make sound scary to the general public who may be unfamiliar with them.

Appearances aside, the facts reported by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports show that rifles are used to kill very little in the U.S. – just over 300 out of nearly 13,000 murders in both 2011 and 2012, and so-called “assault rifles” are a subset within that category. Even if these anti-gun bullies were to get their way on this issue, there would be almost no reduction in our murder rate. Handguns, not rifles, are used far more often in homicides, accounting for nearly 70% of murders in 2011 and 2012. Mass murder, though sensational, is responsible for less than 100 out nearly 13,000 annual homicides. Focusing on “evil” rifles may be sensational, drive ratings and sell media advertising, but they aren’t responsible for very much homicide in the U.S. Ultimately, anti-gun politicians and lobbyists lost on their renewed push for a so-called “assault weapons ban”, which didn’t even make it out of committee in Congress.

5 Lying to inflate “gun deaths”

Lying is key to the liberal anti-gun agenda, which including lying about the number of “gun deaths” that occur each year. Mainstream media outlets, politicians, and anti-gun organizations all routinely cite “30,000 annual U.S. gun deaths.” when hyping the dangers of guns and the need for more gun control. The truth is 20,000 of these “gun deaths” are self-inflicted suicides with a gun (approximately half of the 40,000 annual suicides). While gun homicides are less than 9,000 in each of the last 3 years, which represents nearly an all time low in the U.S. murder rate.

Suicide is a genuine public health issue, but it is not related to crime, homicide and gun control policy. Magazine capacity, banning certain models of guns (particularly rifles), gun shows and background checks have no bearing on suicides. Mental health professionals confirm a person determined to die will find a way. A Harvard-published study of 36 developed nations by professors Don Kates and Gary Mauser found that gun availability had no effect on suicide rates. Many nations with low gun availability have higher suicide rates than nations with higher gun availability. Many nations with strict gun control and almost no legal guns available have significantly higher suicide rates than the U.S. Does. In fact, though gun sales are setting records in the U.S., the suicide rate is declining and is lower today than it was in the 1950′s, 60′s, 70′s or 80′s.

Anti-gun zealots conveniently leave out the truth that a full two-thirds of the deaths they cite have nothing to do with murder and crime. More importantly, the gun control legislation they propose does nothing to address suicide deaths. They resort to conflating suicide data with homicide crime data to make the case for gun control seem like it’s a bigger problem than it really is.

So what does this all mean?

These five mistakes share some common factors: they almost all involve lies and deception to sell the problem. In the lone exception – Colorado – they skipped selling it altogether and went straight to instituting policy without popular support. This is the second shared characteristic: they all involve attempts to push policy without broad support from ‘We the People’. Finally, each of the proposed policies do nothing to make people legitimately safer. While outside the scope of this article, they all, in fact, are counter-productive. Professors Kates and Mauser’s study found that gun control was counter-productive to reducing crime, homicide and suicide.

But in short, good guys with guns do stop bad guys, background checks at gun shows might stop less than 1% of criminal purchases at best, AR-15 rifles are rarely used in murder, and our murder rate is near an all-time low. Any public policy must be subject to interest-balancing: is the cost of adopting the policy worth the benefit received from doing so. All of these measures fail this test miserably.

An added bonus that didn’t make it into the original article:

6. Record Gun Sales in 2013

The effect of the anti-gun Left’s rabbid mouth-frothing is to boost gun sales to record-breaking 23 million NICS checks in 2013. The record was previously set in 2012 in the run-up to the election. Gun dealers reported at least a quarter of the sales were to first-time buyers. Naysayers may note that not all NICS checks pass – meaning a sale may be prohibited. That’s true, but it’s an insignificant percentage (historically less than 2%). And of note is that more than one firearm may be purchased at the same time and the entire transaction will get one single NICS check. So in all probability, more than 23 million firearms were bought in 2013. Special Thanks to Obama, Feinstein, Jumpin’ Joe Biden, Moms Demand Stupidity, Mayors Who’ve Broken the Law, and others.

This article was originally published on The Bell Towers. Original publish date Mar 6, 2014. Original author, Matt MacBradaigh.

Banning Detachable Magazines, Pt 1: Would Do Nothing To Reduce Homicides or Mass Murder Shootings

Banning detachable magazines would do nothing to reduce homicides, or prevent mass murder, or mass shootings. While the idea is somewhat of a new fad among gun control advocates, criminology research shows that would be a non-solution to violence. We ought to instead look at underlying, root causes of violence.

California’s state legislature passed a bill that would have banned firearms that accept detachable magazines. The bill failed to become law only because California Governor Brown vetoed it. Gun control advocates have recently put forth the idea of banning detachable magazines as a means of crime reduction or reducing mass murders. MIT Economics Professor Chris Knittel’s made this suggestion in an OpEd earlier this year. The idea has also been put forth by other anti-gun fanatics and unscrupulous politicians. The idea that banning detachable magazines would have any measurable impact on crime, homicides, or decrease in mass murders is asinine, inane and imbecilic – contrary to logic and available research from criminology experts who study mass murder.

Remington Model 8

As a measure to reduce crime, banning detachable magazines is ludicrous. Over 90% of the 1.2 million annual incidents of violent crime do not involve a gun, and of the 120,000 incidents that do involve a gun, less than 9,000 result in firearm homicides (including all handgun,rifle, shotgun and other gun categories). Of those, the majority are the result of handgun violence (6,371 out of 12,765 homicides in 2012) – not rifles (322 in 2012), or mass murder (usually less than 100). These would not be affected by banning detachable magazines. The “logic” behind banning detachable magazines is to reduce potential death by reducing the ability to rapidly reload. However, research shows most firearm homicide victims are shot at less than 10 times, and actually shot less than four times. Reloading would not a requirement in these murders. A ban on detachable magazines is not a ban on capacity in firearms that hold 15 rounds or more. Capacity of over 10 rounds of ammunition – even in internal, attached magazines – has existed for over 100 years; for example, the 1906 Remington Model 8, which originally featured an attached magazine, held 15 rounds.

Despite inordinate reporting of mass shootings to capitalize on ratings and ad revenue, which makes it seem that mass shootings are on the rise, the truth is they are not increasing. Similarly, homicide, violent crime, and even gun crime are at 20 year lows.

Bolt action rifle with detachable magazine

Banning detachable magazines would not have any logical effect on mass shootings. A magazine is simply an ammunition storage and feeding device in a firearm, which may be internal (integral) or detached. All rifles, with the sole exception of single-shot rifles, have them. A ban of detachable magazines doesn’t eliminate magazines from a rifle, just the ability to replace one detachable magazine with another detachable magazine. And that wouldn’t eliminate the weapon’s rate of fire or ability to be reloaded, even quickly reloaded. The remedy to faster reloads for fixed, internal magazines have been in existence since before the invention of detachable magazines. Stripper clips are flat metal devices that hold ammunition in a line which allows rapid reload of semi-automatic internal, or attached magazines (note: available for rifles and handguns). Similarly, speedloaders allow for fast reloading in revolver magazines.

Revolver speedloader

A criminal or mentally disturbed person intent on doing a lot of shooting could simply replace detachable magazines with alternate reloading devices such as stripper clips and speedloaders. Failing that, such a person could simply bring several loaded guns and not bother with reloading any of them. Even a single firearm with no additional reloading mechanism could be used to produce tragedy. Further, guns are no requirement to mass murder, and a determined person will find a way according to the experts. Dr. James Alan Fox of Northeastern University states that most mass murderers plan out their attacks well in advance and expect to die in the event. If one tool – firearms with detachable magazines – is not available, they will simply find another. The worst school massacre in U.S. History, the Bath School disaster of 1927 in which 44 were killed, the perpetrator used bombs, like the Oklahoma City Bombing incident.

Stripper clip

Gun control advocates counter to gun rights advocates is often to complain that they don’t seem to want to do anything. This is not accurate. I advocate a genuine look at the underlying causes of violence – which almost no one is talking about – in lieu of suggestions which are easily demonstrated to be no solution. Banning detachable magazines is no solution to either homicide or to mass murder. However, a real look at gang violence (responsible for half of all violent crime), drug abuse (the single greatest predictor of violence, with or with mental illness), mental illness, and poverty, particularly urban poverty would be genuine steps towards real solutions. Rather than exploiting every gun tragedy to advance non-solutions, politicians and concerned citizens ought to be willing to roll up their sleeves and do the real and difficult work of finding solutions to the root causes of violence rather than cosmetic, feel-good measures that ultimately achieve nothing productive.


Be sure to check out part 2 of this series, which will cover the unconstitutionality of banning detachable magazines.

By Matt MacBradaigh. Matt is a Christian, Husband, Father, Patriot, and Conservative from the Pacific Northwest. Matt writes about the Second Amendment, Gun Control, Gun Rights, and Gun Policy issues and is published on The Bell Towers, The Brenner Brief, PolicyMic. TavernKeepers, and Vocativ.

Follow Me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/2AFight  

Follow Me on Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/2ndAmendmentFight
 

This article also appears on The Brenner Brief. (Original publication November 6, 2013).

Banning Detachable Magazines, Pt 1: Would Do Nothing To Reduce Homicides or Mass Murder Shootings

by Matt MacBradaigh | Nov 6, 2013 | Gun Control Facts | 0 comments

Banning detachable magazines would do nothing to reduce homicides, or prevent mass murder, or mass shootings. While the idea is somewhat of a new fad among gun control advocates, criminology research shows that would be a non-solution to violence. We ought to instead look at underlying, root causes of violence.

California’s state legislature passed a bill that would have banned firearms that accept detachable magazines. The bill failed to become law only because California Governor Brown vetoed it. Gun control advocates have recently put forth the idea of banning detachable magazines as a means of crime reduction or reducing mass murders. MIT Economics Professor Chris Knittel’s made this suggestion in an OpEd earlier this year. The idea has also been put forth by other anti-gun fanatics and unscrupulous politicians. The idea that banning detachable magazines would have any measurable impact on crime, homicides, or decrease in mass murders is asinine, inane and imbecilic – contrary to logic and available research from criminology experts who study mass murder.

As a measure to reduce crime, banning detachable magazines is ludicrous. Over 90% of the 1.2 million annual incidents of violent crime do not involve a gun, and of the 120,000 incidents that do involve a gun, less than 9,000 result in firearm homicides (including all handgun,rifle, shotgun and other gun categories). Of those, the majority are the result of handgun violence (6,371 out of 12,765 homicides in 2012) – not rifles (322 in 2012), or mass murder (usually less than 100). These would not be affected by banning detachable magazines. The “logic” behind banning detachable magazines is to reduce potential death by reducing the ability to rapidly reload. However, research shows most firearm homicide victims are shot at less than 10 times, and actually shot less than four times. Reloading would not a requirement in these murders. A ban on detachable magazines is not a ban on capacity in firearms that hold 15 rounds or more. Capacity of over 10 rounds of ammunition – even in internal, attached magazines – has existed for over 100 years; for example, the 1906 Remington Model 8, which originally featured an attached magazine, held 15 rounds.

Despite inordinate exploitation of mass shootings for the ratings and ad revenue, which makes it seem that mass shootings are on the rise, the truth is they are not increasing. Similarly, homicide, violent crime, and even gun crime are at 20 year lows.

Banning detachable magazines would not have any logical effect on mass shootings. A magazine is simply an ammunition storage and feeding device in a firearm, which may be internal (integral) or detached. All rifles, with the sole exception of single-shot rifles, have them. A ban of detachable magazines doesn’t eliminate magazines from a rifle, just the ability to replace one detachable magazine with another detachable magazine. And that wouldn’t eliminate the weapon’s rate of fire or ability to be reloaded, even quickly reloaded. The remedy to faster reloads for fixed, internal magazines have been in existence since before the invention of detachable magazines. Stripper clips are flat metal devices that hold ammunition in a line which allows rapid reload of semi-automatic internal, or attached magazines (note: available for rifles and handguns). Similarly, speedloaders allow for fast reloading in revolver magazines.

A criminal or mentally disturbed person intent on doing a lot of shooting could simply replace detachable magazines with alternate reloading devices such as stripper clips and speedloaders. Failing that, such a person could simply bring several loaded guns and not bother with reloading any of them. Even a single firearm with no additional reloading mechanism could be used to produce tragedy. Further, guns are no requirement to mass murder, and a determined person will find a way according to the experts. Dr. James Alan Fox of Northeastern University states that most mass murderers plan out their attacks well in advance and expect to die in the event. If one tool – firearms with detachable magazines – is not available, they will simply find another. The worst school massacre in U.S. History, the Bath School disaster of 1927 in which 44 were killed, the perpetrator used bombs, like the Oklahoma City Bombing incident.

Gun control advocates counter to gun rights advocates is often to complain that they don’t seem to want to do anything. This is not accurate. This author advocates a genuine look at the underlying causes of violence – which almost no one is talking about – in lieu of suggestions which are easily demonstrated to be no solution. Banning detachable magazines is no solution to either homicide or to mass murder. However, a real look at gang violence (responsible for half of all violent crime), drug abuse (the single greatest predictor of violence, with or with mental illness), mental illness, and poverty, particularly urban poverty would be genuine steps towards real solutions. Rather than exploiting every gun tragedy to advance non-solutions, politicians and concerned citizens ought to be willing to roll up their sleeves and do the real and difficult work of finding solutions to the root causes of violence rather than cosmetic, feel-good measures that ultimately achieve nothing productive.

This article was originally published on Brenner Brief. Original publish date Nov 6, 2013. Original author, Matt MacBradaigh.