Tag Archives: gun control

School Shooting Chardon, Ohio, And Other Tragedy

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Did you hear about the death of the high school student? The young man was a friend of my daughter’s; they knew each other since Kindergarten. I use the term “friend” loosely because they did not hang out together a lot over the years, but when someone is a neighbor and a school mate for 12 years, they’re more or less a friend. The other day, he walked out in front of his house, where he lives with his family, said out loud to someone that there was a note inside explaining something, turned a gun he was holding on himself and pulled the trigger. They say in cases like this that “he died instantly” but that is just to make people feel better. There’s a good chance he was alive for a while, during which time he bled out and his organs shut down one by one.

Did you hear about the other kid that died, this morning? It was in Ohio. A young man pulled out a pistol in a waiting area of a school, where four or five kids were sitting at a table, waiting for a bus. He pointed the pistol at them, and to the horror of various onlookers who later described the scene, walked towards the kids at the table, pulling the trigger again and again. One of the children slumped down on the table and started his process of dying. Another tried to hide under the table but he was shot anyway. One kid ran away and called the police, even though a bullet notched his ear. As of this writing, two kids are in the hospital in critical condition, and two in serious condition, and one is in the morgue.

We can ask why these things happen, why these kids did these things, but there is another question that must also be asked, and that is often left unaddressed until long after the shock and horror of the incident wears off for the news junkies, bloggers, and other voyeurs. This question is: Where did the guns come from? It is extremely unlikely that these weapons were legally owned by these children. They got the weapons from somewhere. It is extremely unlikely that anyone who might have owned these weapons legally would have loaned them out to the children. Most likely they got the weapons by taking them from where they were stored, against the wishes of the owners.

It is hard to find information on where the weapons that children use to kill themselves and each other come from. It is generally felt that in the case of suicides, the weapons are from the home, and they were not properly secured. In the case of “school shootings,” there is an old (but still relevant) study1 that tells us where the weapons are generally from. Continue reading School Shooting Chardon, Ohio, And Other Tragedy →

Interesting gun-related facts

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1Yeah, right, I know, I know.

House vs. Senate: Where to find the tea?

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Have you ever noticed that lower level of a bicameral legislature is often populated by out of control yahoos who aren’t very good lawmakers, while the upper level is more often populated by individuals who seem less willing to totally embarass themselves at every turn? A great example of this unfolded recently in New Hampshire, with some gun-related legislation.

The house crafted a number of bills related to guns:

  • A bill allowing people to carry loaded weapons, including crossbows, in their cars, by redefining what “loaded gun” is.
  • A bill that lets people carry guns on campuses, public sports venues, and the state psychiatric hospital
  • A bill that allows people to carry concealed firearms without a permit
  • Two other bills, I don’t know what they were.

All the bills were quickly rejected by the Senate. Of these bills, Senate President Peter Bragdon said, “We spent a grand total of 6 minutes on 5 bills because we want to focus on the issues that are important to the New Hampshire people.”

Live free or else!

Is the gun permitting process a failure?

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I suppose that depends on what we think the process is for. I would have hoped that gun permits serve the very important role of making sure that gun owners are more likely than they otherwise might be to know how to properly handle guns, and that guns are kept out of the hands of people who will do damage with them.

Japete at Commongunsense.com suggests that this is not necessarily the case:

Continue reading Is the gun permitting process a failure? →

Bring Your Gun to the Florida State Fair

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First of all, how the heck to you have a State Fair in the middle of the winter time????

Second, … in case you needed to know, you can carry your firearms at the fair this year! Yahooo!

Following complaints by a gun rights group, and a law passed by the Florida Legislature last year, you can now carry your gun at the Florida State Fair.

“We have changed the policy to comply with the state law – it allows a person with a concealed weapon permit to come in with a firearm,” said Charles Pesano, executive director of the State Fair Authority. “We’ve changed some signs to reflect that.”

Instead of “No Weapons,” the signs now say, “No Unlawful Weapons.”

Film at 11. Well, actually, film right now (This is about the whole fair, not the gun packing part of the fair):
Continue reading Bring Your Gun to the Florida State Fair →

Guns don’t shoot people; Stray bullets shoot people!

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Since we last discussed this about 17 days ago, Bill Adams and Charles Lake shot themselves while handling their handguns. They weren’t shottin’ intruders or varmints or nuthin’. Just holding or loading. Some guy in florida was “putting his gun away” when the 9mm went off. But bullet passed into his neighbor’s apartment and shot her while she was sleeping. A dood down in Hatchez, Mississippi woke in the middle of the night to a sound he mistook for an intruder. He shot hisself in the damn pinkie toe.

Thoze-all might have been people who knew nohting about guns, hard to say, but Jack Haning of Lubbock has been messing with guns his whole life, but he still managed to shoot himself in the leg after showing off his new handgun to his coworkers. He did not live.

James Crawford of Virginia was playing with a 9mm at a party. He thought the gun was empty so he wuz pretenging like he was shooting himself in the head but then he shot himself in the head for real. He did not live.

Maybe James Crawford was a drunk dumbass teenager with no callin’ to have a handgun, but a security guard in St Petersburg Florida who is licensed to havea gun was hidden in a small closet with two young men in the church explaining to them the safety features of his Ruger 9mm when he pulled the trigger. The bullet went through the wall and hit Hanna Kelly, the 20 year old daughter of the pastor in the head. She is in critical condition and, well, is not really expected to live. Something tells me there is more to that story than meets the eye at this particular moment.

Most of those were in the south, which makes me wonder about the south. But up oi Ohio, Wellington Roemer shot himself through the thigh and gut when his weapon discharged as he exited his vehicle. Previous to that he had posted this on facebook: “I’ll keep my money, freedom & guns, you keep the change.” with a picture of Obama.

Back in the south, in South Carolina in fact, a woman carrying a valid permitted gun in her purse shot her friend in the foot when the gun went off by itself. Though she had a permit, she was in fact not allowed to carry the gun into the mall. No word on if there will be charges, or if anyone is looking into the safety of that particular weapon which appears to, well, not be safe.

While we are on the subject of malls, a woman was shot in Jacksonville, in the arm, by a stray bullet. That may be different from all these other cases because it could have been some sort of violent crime in which an innocent bystander was shot. But I include it here because we might want to have a discussion of the utility of carrying guns around in shopping malls. If only everyone in that mall was packing, that guy who shot the woman by accident would never had pulled that gun out out of fear.

In another case of a person who should know better, a former chief of police of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, shot himself in the hand while cleaning his gun.

It’s important to have unrestricted access to guns so you can do:

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this:

…The argument continued after they left the restaurant and went to one of the women’s homes. It was then that the other man jumped into the argument, standing up for his girlfriend. This angered Lloyd and the two men began arguing.
Lloyd pulled out a gun, unintentionally discharging the firearm. The bullet grazed the other man’s head. ..

or this …

Police were called to Amy’s home on Thursday were they found she had been shot. According to reports, “D.C.I. determined that Hettinger had been shot by a 10-year-old inside the house who had been handling a loaded handgun. The gun belonged to another family member.”

or this …

…As he was standing on the porch his friends were inside “messing around” with handguns. One man decided to practice shooting

what he thought was an empty handgun. When he pulled the trigger the gun fired, sending a bullet through the front door and into the man standing on the porch. The bullet went through the victim’s left shoulder blade. …

Study: “Better medical care has kept gun deaths constant, but total number of people shot has risen dramatically in the United States”

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Photo of Browning 9x19mm Grande Puissance 35 handgun
Browning GP 35 handgun. Photo from Wikipedia.

A study just out compiling data up to the year 2008 shows that the number of Americans killed by firearms has held stead or gone up slightly in recent years, but the total number shot has increased.

The overall change in numbers is not especially dramatic, but the statistical effect is important. If this trend continues, it could begin to appear that gun violence has dropped off while in fact it increases, depending on what statistic is use; What is dramatic is that it is a large number and little is being done about it. Here’s the data: Continue reading Study: “Better medical care has kept gun deaths constant, but total number of people shot has risen dramatically in the United States” →

Legal guns to criminal’s hands: Is it uncontrollable?

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One of the arguments that Gun Rights Apologists (GRAs) make is that guns will always fall into the hands of criminals no matter what you do, so you might as well not bother with rules or laws or procedures that limit the sale, purchase, distribution or ownership of any kind of firearms. This is, of course, a foundation-less assertion and a rather self-serving one at that. There are two reasons why it is wrong. The first and most obvious is that even if there is a flow of guns from legal to illegal ownership, making that process illegal does send a message, secure funding, and keep the process on the radar screen for law makers and law enforcers; The difficulty of enforcing a law can certainly be taken into account when deciding whether or not to bother with the law, but only after it has been designated as unimportant or insignificant on other grounds. Laws about victimless crimes that are impossible to enforce are probably not worth enacting or expending much energy on. Laws about victim-rich crimes, on the other hand, should not be abrogated just because enforcing them is hard.

But there is a second reason that the argument that “guns will fall into the hands of criminals anyway so don’t bother” is wrong: The flow of guns from legal ownership to illegal possession can be affected by the implementation of statue, according to a recent study. Continue reading Legal guns to criminal’s hands: Is it uncontrollable? →

Beau Bridges is for stricter gun control

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This story seems to come a bit out of nowhere: Nothing seemed to prompt it and it rleates to an incident that happened decades ago. But, since Beau is the son of ¿Quién es más macho? Lloyd Bridges, and we’re talking about this topic, I thought I’d point you to it.

“Many years ago … I got held up at a little coffee shop in Los Angeles. … The guy ended up shooting someone in the restaurant in the leg. … I ran out and called the cops. They got the guy… That just gave me another reason to understand that we have to understand the power of guns, and make sure they don’t get into the wrong people’s hands.”

Glock … the book, the gun, the gun nut.

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There is an interesting interview with Paul Barrett, author of Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun, published here. What I find most interesting about it is the way gun owners as a group are characterized. At several moments in time, private ownership of Glock pistols increased significantly for reasons that one would normally find explaining the behavior of toddlers, or dogs, or monkeys in an experimental setting, not sentient adult humans. For instance, the cops start using Glocks, and gun owners automatically want to use what the cops use. Or, a made up fictional Glock (the Glock 7) is described in a Lethal Weapon movie, where everything about it is wrong (remember, it’s fictional) and this enrages gun owners who run out and buy Glocks. And so on and so forth.

Now, one of the things that seems to rive Glock sales is the fact that they have been used in an increasingly larger number of tragic and horrific massacres on American soil. Somehow, the association with angry carnage and hateful violence makes American gun owners want one.

Glocks hold more ammo than other pistols, can be fitted with super-large ammo holders, and have a trigger that is very smooth making it easier for untalented amateurs to be better shots. Glocks should be banned.

A sad anniversary

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One year ago today, nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green was shot to death by Tuscon resident Jared Lee Loughner, using a 9 mm Glock automatic pistol with a high capacity ammunition clip. Seventeen other people were shot in that incident, a total of six of whom died. One of the injured was Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle “Gabby” Giffords, whom had already been “targeted” for removal by radical elements of the Republican Party. It is not clear that Loughner was acting as an agent of these radical elements, but it was widely thought at the time that his decision to attempt an assassination of the congresswoman was spurred on by the hateful and violent rhetoric, often laced with references to firearms, of the Tea Party Movement.

Bullets Flying

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In relation to an ongoing conversation (here) about whether or not a bullet fired up into the air can kill or maim you, we have this editorial concerning an actual (possible) case:

Too many guns. How many is too much? Well, we might start with the nameless half-wit somewhere in Ruskin last weekend who thought it would be fun to shoot off some celebratory gunfire on New Year’s Eve.

A 12-year-old boy, Diego Duran, was on the bloody receiving end of all the revelry. Duran, a popular student at Beth Shields Middle School, was simply trying to enjoy the New Year’s fireworks with his family until the errant bullet struck the top of his head.

The devastating shot could have come from as far as several miles away. The goober shooter might not even know what he or she did. But the Duran family sure knows.

Continue reading Bullets Flying →