Well, this isn't good - why you should worry about the martyrdom of Charlie Kirk

Unless you've been at the bottom of the Marianas Trench, or only subscribe to MSNBC, you would have been hard pressed to miss the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, at university speaking event in Utah. He's not the first victim of a political assassination, and he won't be the last. But...

Konstantin Kisin commented that it feels like we have crossed the Rubicon for some reason, and (talking to a wide variety of USA friends) I would have to agree. I'm not even sure we can articulate it, but I'm going to have a go. The very broad feeling I have, is that there are fifty to eighty million evangelical Christians in the USA, nearly all law abiding, but many many of whom are heavily armed; imagine those people (and their weapons) being put into a barrel, and someone throwing a Molotov cocktail into it. You are going to experience quite a bang.

Trump's attempted assassination in Butler, PA was a near-miss. It definitely ignited the Republican base - not least because of the lackadaisical approach of the Secret Service leadership in failing to plan his protection - but even back then, people commented about how near a miss it was of an event that would make the climatic scene in "V for Vendetta" look like the Teletubbies.

As Utah author Larry Correia noted:

Everybody is pissed at the left about the trans mass shooter. A few days later everybody is even angrier with the crazy black dude killing a girl after they let him out 14 times and the left covers for it. So what do they do next? Shoot the guy who politely debates college students. I've tried to warn people about the left's knob vs. the right's switch, but they're too stupid to listen. Pray for our country.

— Larry Correia (@monsterhunter45) September 10, 2025

Charlie Kirk was one of the least offensive debaters I've ever seen. He would actively invite those who disagreed with him to the front of the line at his college campus debates, and respectfully engage them. He would use words and reason, not violence, not hectoring, to advance his thoughts - and the success of his organization Turning Point USA (and now Turning Point UK) acrosss student campuses reflected that. He was married with two little kids, who are now without a father. I'm sure that conservatives will ensure that his widow and kids are provided for financially, but you can't replace their dad.

Every conservative with half a brain cell is now thinking: "if they are willing to go after Charlie Kirk... who else is in their sights?" And going online to Lucky Gunner dot com to order a new brick of ammunition.

I have to echo many other conservative bloggers, talking to the radical left on X and other channels tonight:

Are you really, really sure you want to do this? Because it is not going to work out like you apparently think it will.

Guidance for home invasions

To set the scene, Police Chief Jim McSween, of York, Ontario, has been disturbed by recent home invasions in his city, and has therefore enlisted the help of the media in getting his message out to the homeowners.

We are urging citizens not to take matters into their own hands. While we don't want homeowners to feel powerless, we urge you to call 911 and do everything you can to keep yourself and loved ones safe until police arrive, and be the best witness possible.
This could mean locking yourself in a room away from the perpetrators, hiding, fleeing the home, but don't engage unless absolutely necessary.

You see what he's saying? Allow the perp the free run of the house, cower away, and only come out once the police rock up in a few hours time. Or days.

Our service is doing everything posssible to investigate these crimes, and to maintain public safety.

Except, of course, actually catching the perps in the act and ensuring they don't repeat their actions any time soon.

I'd like to remind people that our top priority is the safety of all our communities. [...] The best defense for most people, as you've heard, is to comply.

The safety of all thus including, apparently, the criminal community.

What a spineless, time-serving, git.

Of course, one may wonder what happens if a home invasion does not follow the pattern suggested by Chief McSween. Fortunately, the USA TV channel ABC's "20/20" show is doing a special on a 2022 Idaho home invasion - four college students in a basement house - brutally murdered with a large knife - and as of July the murderer Bryan Kohberger pled guilty and managed to avoid the death penalty.

Of course, Chief McSween was only speaking about one Canadian town (part of the much larger Greater Toronto Area). Realising that this is an internationally-read blog, your humble author aims to give regionally appropriate guidance. If you live in any of the following cities, here's what you can expect from the local police force.

London, UK

"You're nicked, sunshine. What are you doing, interfering with oppressed minorities?"

Manhattan, NY

"What are you doing with a gun? Them just for criminals, and retired police officers. You're heading to Rikers, sonny."

Morristown, NJ (home of retired NYC mafiosi)

"I'm sorry to bother you, Mr DeLuca, but we had reports of a home invasion here... You didn't see anything? Well, have a nice day. By the way, is your son Sonny Scarface around? No? He's out with your car, birdwatching in the NJ coastal marshes? Hope he gets some nice pictures."

San Francisco, CA

"You shoot an intruder, sir, we'll arrest you; he'll sue you, and he'll win."

Houston, TX

"Nice grouping there, sir. Come down to the station this afternoon and we should be able to return your weapon. You've got one spare in the meantime? No? You want one?"

Boise, ID

"Sorry to bother you, ma'am, someone heard gunshots... Car backfiring, you say? By the way, that's one fine clutch of hogs you got there. Sixteen, you say? I bet that feeding 'em is quite the task."

Wichita, KS

"Just make sure the body is within the property line when we turn up, sir."

Little Rock, AR

"Body outside the property line? No problem, ma'am, we'll drag it back inside before we take the crime scene photos."

Juneau, AK

"Y'know, sir, I heard that if you leave a body outside around here, it's just gone by the morning."

Good hunting!

Why the Democrats hate the Second Amendment above all others

Dear readers! My apologies for a lack of recent posting. Rest assured, I continue to post here on topics that are beyond the X.com/Twitter capacity for content.

It has long puzzled me why the Democrat wing of the USA political establishment - and, indeed, only a relatively small subset of those people - demonstrate an antipathy towards the 2nd Amendment of the United States Constitution which can only be described as "rabid". Why do other Amendments not attract the same magnitude of hate? In this post, I endeavour to explain.

First, a primer. After America was founded, they created the US Constitution, and then 15 years later in 1791 published the "Bill of Rights" - the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution. They set out broad areas where the State may not infringe on the rights of the individual, and were ratified by 3/4 of the original States. Select amendments are:

[Amendment I] ("the First Amendment; Freedom of Speech")

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

[Amendment II] ("the Second Amendment, Ownership of Firearms")

A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

[Amendment VI] ("speedy trial and assistance of counsel")

In all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.

The international reader may read this throughout, and ask themselves "so? and what? Therefore... ?" Why would any particular Amendment be more important than the others.

The answer is twofold: the Second Amendment is not amenable to nullification, and the Second Amendment gives the population the ability to say "no" to politicians - and make it stick!

This year, with the frankly meteoric rise of Twitter/X as an un-censored social media platform - Jack Dorsey having ridden off into the sunset, and Elon Musk having taken over and done a Herculean job of cleaning the Twitter stables - we are starting to see clearly the amount of censorship that has been applied to communications in the USA over at least the last four years - COVID, the 2020 election, Hunter's laptop, etc. This has been a very clear demonstration that the elites in the USA have been systematically underminding the freedom that the First Amendment provides for speech.

As Agent Smith points out to Neo in the original Matrix movie: " Tell me, Mr. Anderson... what good is a phone call... if you're unable to speak?"

When YouTube, FaceBook, Twitter (as was) and others all obligingly collude in down-ranking, hiding or just plain deleting speech that government entities don't approve of, the First Amendment might as well have been written on toilet paper. It's easy to give vocal support to the First Amendment, as long as you know opponents can't be heard.

Now we have Elon Musk and the relative freedom of X/Twitter, we are not at the end of Internet censorship, but at least we have turned the page to a more hopeful chapter. Still, Elon is but one man, and we know what can happen to "difficult" men.

The Sixth Amendment implies fairness of the judicial system - a speedy trial and assistance of counsel. Of all the amendments, this one is the most ridiculously easy for the Democratic Party to subvert. Most lawyers, prosecutors, AGs, and nearly all law professors are Democrats. It's wild luck that the Supreme Court happens to have an approximately conservative majority right now - and even that shouldn't be taken for granted. So when the law is wielded as a weapon to silencem , bankrupt, jail, or otherwise ruin individuals for the Democratic Party's ends, no-one is falling off their chairs in surprise. Consider the jokes about Epstein's "suicide" - all those that were made in advance of the actual event.

No, ladies and gentlemen, the Amendment that the Democrats absolutely hate is the Second, and here's why. As noted, it gives the individual - or groups of individuals - power to resist imposition of tyranny. At the small scale, when the Democrats release their usual BLM protestors to riot in a town, in order to bring some local government to its knees, the ownership of firearms is what lets entire sections of the town stand up to them and "encourage" them to go home. See what happened in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina - individual neighborhoods quickly formed posses with shotguns and rifles to guard their entry points against looters. See why Kyle Rittenhouse was armed in Kenosha, Wisconsin - protecting an Indian-owned garage (whose owners appear to be ungrateful bastards, but that's another story) against the next evening of riots.

But guns are unique - they are almost impossible to control. Once they are in the hands of a population, how do you regain control over them?

• Confiscation - good luck. There is no national register of guns, and state-wide efforts to impose local registries have had a tiny complliance rate. When pushed, the good citizen will report "I lost them guns in a tragic kayaking accident. Got a warrant?"
• Neutralization - impossible. There have been a few conversations about giving guns a "kill switch" (ironically) but a) no-one would buy one, and b) 400M+ guns already out there don't have one
• Ammunition - I don't know how much ammunition is already out there, but you can figure it in the hundreds of rounds per gun. Kept in good conditions, ammunition can easily last 50 years.
• Voluntary recall - cities do this all the time, and mostly get rusted-out crap that is more of a danger to the owner than to the victim. Exceptions might be widows who didn't like their husbands' gun collections.

The sheer impossibility of overcoming the Second Amendment is what seems to drive politicians like Hillary Clinton, Kathy Hochul, and Gavin Newsom absolutely crazy. All they can do is try to impose pointless and ineffective restrictions on gun owners, e.g. background checks for buying ammo, which - of course - don't inconvenience criminals one bit, but drive up the blood pressure of legal gun owners, who then go out as soon as they can and buy more guns and ammo in anticipation of the next round of restrictions that they're mostly going to ignore.

When push comes to shove, tyrannical politicians know that at any point they could be looking out of their window at a thousand heavily armed citizens, who have had enough of being pushed around and so have come to introduce them to retirement. And that is a possibility that keeps their worst instincts in check. God Bless the Founders for the Second Amendment.

Why Americans love guns - interpreting for Europeans

Over the past year+ of lockdown, I have attained an unexpected view into the American psyche with respect to legal gun ownership. The summer of 2020 demonstrated to a lot of "regular" American people that

1. city, county and sometimes state governance was not particularly interested in safety for business owners and home dwellers,
2. local police were overstretched at best, and unable to respond in a timely and effective manner to widespread domestic insurgence, and
3. local political interest in protecting the populace was rather racially selective.

As a result, Americans are buying guns and ammunition. A lot of guns, and more ammunition than you can shake a stick at. A best guess^[1] is that 8.4 million Americans became gun owners for the first time in 2020.

If you hail from a gun-phobic country like... most of Europe nowadays, certainly including the UK and Germany, then this might all seem like paranoid insanity. It is anything but. In this blog I'm going to try to explain, to a UK mindset, why the American love of guns is actually very rational - and maybe something to emulate.

The American Gun Situation - Overview

If you want to understand how a very well-informed - albeit highly opinionated - USA gun owner thinks, particularly in regard to mass shootings, you need to read Larry Correia's 2012 blog post "An Opinion on Gun Control". His assertions have repeatedly been proven correct in the past 9 years. Go read that article, then come back here. As an optional exercise, you may like to evaluate the circumstances of this year's San Jose Valley Transport Authority mass shooting with Larry's assertions in mind.

Hopefully, you came away from that article with some understanding of the American gun owner mindset. Let me try to summarize in bullets (hah!):

• Gun ownership in America is much more heavily regulated, at both federal and state level, than you think;
• Mass shootings are highly publicised but a small fraction of overall gun homicides;
• Mass shootings occur almost universally in "gun free zones" because shooters are not stupid, and pick places where people won't shoot back;
• The various federal and state restrictions on firearm ownership ("no assault weapons!") since 1990 have been pointless and ineffective, except in provoking Americans to go out and buy a shedload more guns;
• Defensive gun use saves a lot more lives than offensive gun use takes (this surprised me too, but Larry's source is not exactly known for being a pro-gun camp);
• It is not practically possible to ban guns in America. Really, it isn't.

The Legal Situation

There is the perception in some countries that Americans can wander into their local Walmart, and wander out with a military-grade assault weapon. This is not an accurate statement of the facts. In fact, it's so far off base, it's wandering around the baseball stadium car park.

Suppose you want to buy a gun; that you are of the relevant age (18+ or 21+, depending on state); you are not otherwise disqualified from gun ownership by being a felon, illegal immigrant (yes! you need valid residence and identity documentation) or other locally disqualifying status such as being an accused domestic violence perpetrator.

You rock up to the gun store, browse the various firearms on display - currently, very limited - and pick one that suits your lifestyle and aesthetics. What happens now? You fill in the form for the ATF Form 4473, then - in many states - you leave the establishment and wait for them to contact you. Hopefully within the week, they will inform you that you have passed the checks, and you have 30 days to come in and formally pick up your firearm.

You also may have to, if this is your first firearm purchase, complete a state-defined written multiple-choice test, and there may be a required "waiting period" distinct from the 4473 check until you are allowed to take possession of the firearm.

So next time you hear a politician say "it is easier to buy a firearm than vote!" you know that they are talking complete bollocks.

Now you have a gun, what can you do with it? It varies depending on state. Larger weapons like rifles and shotguns can be taken hunting, can be kept in your house (there are often requirements by states on how they are to be secured) and in some states can be carried around outside ("open carry").

If you want a gun for self-defence in any location other than your home, then practically your only choice is a handgun. Here the states, counties and even cities in the USA have a patchwork of different requirements. Carrying around a (legally owned) handgun with you is referred to generally as "concealed carry", and there is a wide range of what's allowed - from "unrestricted carry" which means you don't even need a permit, to "restricted may-issue" in places like the Bay Area and New York city where they actually don't issue a permit unless you donate generously to the local sherriff's campaign. Allegedly.

Ammunition is generally easy to buy - if you can find it these days - with the exception of gun-hating states like California which restrict who can buy ammunition, where you can buy or import it from, and require background checks for purchaes.

Oh, and "assault weapons"? Go re-read Correia above - but in short, politicians are deliberately conflating a fully automatic ('selective-fire') rifle, exclusive to the military, with a semi-automatic (one bullet per pull of the trigger) rifle which happens to be the most popular kind of rifle in the USA. It turns out that you can't own a "machine gun" in the USA in practice - unless you buy a smuggled one illegally, which criminals do because they don't actually "obey the law".

That's how you get a gun, and what the major types of gun are - now, who's actually getting them?

Gun Ownership in the USA (it's everywhere)

People often make the mistake of underestimating gun ownership in America. They say blasé things like "you know, literally everyone has a gun!"

If you took that as an estimate, you'd be low by at least 20%. In 2018 the USA had more guns than people - 393 million guns compared to 325 million population. There have been a lot more guns bought since then, and guns don't really 'wear out', although they can rust and become unreliable. Note also that these numbers are only estimated, because of the general lack of registration of guns. My personal opinion is that it's a lot higher now; about 40 million guns were purchased in 2020, and we're probably on target to beat that this year if the supply can keep up.

About half of the civilian weapons in the entire world are held in the USA. And civilian weapons are 90% of the total, because there are many more civilians than military.

Obviously, many people have many guns, and many others have none, so it makes more sense to look at per-household gun ownership. This ownership is not distributed evenly. Republican states have a higher rate of household gun ownership in general; Alaska, Montana and Wyoming all have rates above 60%, whereas the populous northeast states are under 20%. But it's mixed - liberal Washington state has a similar ownership rate to redneck Texas (42% to 45%). Even hippie California has a 28% ownership rate, though my guess is that it's higher in the rural parts and lower in the heavily liberal Bay Area.

A joke goes that China's People's Liberation Army is the largest standing armed force in the world - but Texas has a much larger, better trained, and more heavily armed force which deploys in pickup trucks. I would estimate that there is somewhere in the range of 35-40 million firearms in Texas, handily beating the PLA's 28 million firearms. If Beta O'Rourke^[2] really does intend to take away guns in Texas, it's going to take him quite a while. I hope he has a big truck to carry them.

Even in the Bay Area, if you assume that ownership rate is half that of the rest of California, 1 in 7 houses have a firearm. And, since it's so expensive and bloody awkward to buy and supply it, they are probably not just owning the firearm because they like the look of it above their fireplace. (Why do so many homes in sunny California have fireplaces? Why? Why?)

Let's talk about sex, baby; and eth-ni-ci-ty

Sorry, Salt-N-Pepa, I couldn't resist.

Over many visits to shooting ranges, you get an idea of what kind of people - phenotypes - are interested in firearms ownership. Now, I'm only going by what I see locally (Bay Area in California), but it's told me a lot:

• The majority are white men, and generally older (40+). So far, unsurprising.
• There are more women than you might think. Most shoot handguns, but I've seen several shooting rifles including one who's shooting a heavy calibre (7.62mm or .308) with very tight groups at long distance. (Side note: intermediate calibre rifles like the infamous AR-15 are in fact the easiest firearm for smaller people to shoot: they have remarkably little recoil, so are easier to keep on target than a handgun or shotgun)
• Strongly represented ethnic groups: Hispanic, Korean and Chinese
• Under-represented ethnic groups: Black, Indian
• A number of men bring along their children (teens) - and in my experience, this happens disproportionately with Hispanic men. They're clearly interested in teaching their daughters to shoot.

Those people familiar with Bay Area Asian demographics might be thinking: Why Koreans? Well, let's talk about the Rooftop Koreans cultural meme. Back in 1992, the Los Angeles riots resulted (for complex cultural reasons) in Los Angelino criminals - primarily black - looting Korean stores. The Koreans had generally settled in the area in the 1970s-1980s and made a successful living with small retail businesses, but in '92 found rampaging mobs trying to loot and burn their livelihoods.

Korean men - at least, those born in Korea - all serve in the military. When you have a succession of unhinged dictators in North Korea, controlling a huge standing army and artillery, South Korea is going to make damned sure that its populace is trained in military skills and able to react quickly to an attempted invasion. This is not like the previous West German conscription where you had options for conscious objection, or the ability to volunteer in Civil Protection Services - in South Korea, you're going to serve in the active duty military for at least 18 months, and you're going to like it. And if you don't like it, they really don't care. Even famous actors have to do their part. It took until 2018 for South Korea to recognize conscientious objection as even a thing.

As a result, in Los Angeles the Korean male population had a) ready access to firearms and ammunition, because they were in America, and b) the training, discipline, and community coordination to mount an effective defence to looters. It's notable that in 2020 the LA rioters generally stayed well away from Korean businesses - because they knew that the Koreans would shoot them with no compunction, and the local police would not give a crap. Even USA-born Koreans get the indoctrination from their appa (father) about the potential threats to their family's prosperity, and their need to be able to defend the family from them.

Let's not forget Hispanics. The USA Democratic Party likes to think that, because Hispanics are generally lower on the income ladder, that they're sympathetic to Democratic social justice aims. In my experience, this is rather an optimistic reading. If you're struggling to make your way in the USA, as many of them are, the last thing you want is a criminal scumbag coming into your small business and robbing it because it's an easy way for him to make money - and so, you take protective measures into your own hands. And if it's a scumbag criminal Hispanic, you're going to be very relaxed about taking him out, even if he thinks you're his compadre.

Finally, and even The Guardian admits this, middle-class blacks are buying a whole lot of guns. When you see sustained riots in your community, and respected community members gunned down for having the temerity to resist violence, what are you going to think? Are you going to rely on the police? The hell you are. You're going to tool up to defend your family - whether you're a man or a woman.

How it Plays in Practice - Deaths

There are many guns in America, so there are a whole lotta shootings. The connection is undeniable.

There are lies, damned lies, and gun death statistics, but a good place to start is the number of homicides by firearm. You can see that it has kicked up in recent years, but it's about 10,000 deaths per year. Don't confuse this with the number of deaths by gun which is far higher (about 34,000 deaths a year) - because there's a lot of gun-induced suicide, and note that the higher the gun ownership rate in an area, the easier a suicidal person finds it to use a gun instead of hanging / tablets / car exhaust, etc.

Now, remembering our table of household firearm ownership, check out Figure 2 (state-by-state ranking of gun homicide rates) at the americanprogress.org site. Heavily armed Texas is #22. Liberal and lightly armed California is at #25. Those are two very big, populous states with a number of large cities. Liberal and disarmed Illinois (home of Chicago) is #9. Top ranking Montana and Wyoming are #37 and #38 respectively. Now, the overall picture is complex, and it's hard to compare state-to-state completely, but you should at least be convinced that just having a large number of guns doesn't inherently make a state more dangerous.

So Why Do Americans Own Guns?

Based on the ownership numbers, and noting the firearms death numbers, Europeans could be forgiven for assuming that Americans have to be insanely and irrationally paranoid to own all those guns. But as the saying goes, "you're not paranoid if 'they' really are out to get you."

Home defence

Americans do not like people breaking into their homes. Not at all. Over the years many US states - including highly liberal California - have passed laws stating in essence that if someone uses force to break into your house, you don't have to hide or retreat, or wait for an imminent threat of violence to you or someone else. You are presumptively allowed to shoot the invader, and when the police rock up, the worst they will do is temporarily confiscate your firearm (after giving you a receipt), and comment on your shot groupings.

Shooting home invaders who are actively fleeing the property is a little dicier legally (sorry, Tony Martin) but I suspect rural police forces are more tolerant in this regard. In rural Alabama I wouldn't be surprised if they helpfully drag the bullet-ridden body back over the property line into your yard before taking the crime scene photo. And then throw the corpse in jail for 20 years for felony robbery, just to make the point.

Bear in mind just how big the USA is. Even in crowded regions like the Bay Area, the population density is far below the UK's average. It can easily take 10-20 minutes for the police to reach you, even if they're available. Out in rural parts, that number could be half an hour, or much longer. If you have a crime problem, that's a very long time to wait. Americans are not inclined to wait.

Note that, although Antifa are happily rampaging in the center of major cities, there are very few suburbs where they'd try that on. Because the homeowners would shoot them - in many cases, with actual glee - and, again, the police really would not care.

Self defence

If you want one reason why Americans own handguns, self defence (the aforementioned concealed carry) is it. As Larry Correia noted:

Handguns are tools for self-defense, and the only reason we use them over the more capable, and easier to hit with rifles or shotguns is because handguns are portable. Rifles are just plain better, but the only reason I don’t carry an AR-15 around is because it would be hard to hide under my shirt.

Are Americans paranoid about being attacked while out in public? Maybe. But it certainly seems to happen a lot. See my Asian Lives Matter series for what happens in cities like NYC, DC, and San Francisco where handgun carrying is effectively banned. I assure you, these attacks will happen less in concealed-carry-permitting cities, because a bystander will pull out their weapon and shoot the attacker in short order. You will rapidly run out of motivated scumbags.

Take a look at what happened in the West Freeway Church of Christ in 2019. A scumbag pulled out an (illegal) handgun and started firing, killing two church members. A church member pulled out his concealed pistol and shot the scumbag dead, with a single shot to the head, doubtless preventing many more deaths. Interestingly, weapons had not been allowed in places of worship until shortly before then.

Incidentally, if you want to understand some of the issues around effectively using a handgun for self defence, read Correia's article on CCW training. Suffice to say, it's not something to be undertaken lightly.

The Gummint

And now we get to the real point of owning a firearm, and why so many have been bought in recent times.

The essential difference between the American and the British psyches, from my observation, is in their obedience to government. British people often don't like their government, and hold it in polite contempt, but with few exceptions they will still nearly all follow "the rules" even if the rules don't make sense, because - well, they are the rules, and they don't want to make trouble. As a demonstration, see the past year and the COVID restrictions.

Tell a rural American to follow a pointless and obnoxious government diktat, by contrast, and his or her response is very likely to be along the lines of "f*cking come and make me, you bastards." And if you do try to make him or her do it, there is not an insubstantial chance that you will get shot. Ask the Internal Revenue Service about their previous experience trying to collect taxes in places like the Ozarks, for instance.

I don't think most Europeans fully understand how serious many Americans are about having firearms to resist government tyranny. Part of the reason, of course, is the recurring incompetence and actual malice of US governmental institutions. Anyone dealing with the Social Security Administration, immigration authorities or - my favorite - the public school system quickly starts to understand some of this mentality. The government is not generally seen as benevolent, and it doesn't really matter which party the titular President belongs to.

Americans know what malevolent, unaccountable government looks like. They run into it with uncomfortable regularity at a small scale, and they don't like it, at all. It's not a stretch for them to think that the malevolence could scale up with a suitably "we know what's best for you" government. That's what the firearms are a brake on. If you doubt this, ask yourself why approximately eighty million firearms will have been purchased between March 1st 2020 and December 31st 2021. Government saying "we're going to tax, regulate and take your guns" a) is an overtly aggressive act, and b) shows that the government actually thinks that the current firearms are a barrier to them governing "effectively". And the last thing that most Americans want is "effective" government.

What the UK Could Learn

First, it was a mistake to peacefully give up nearly all guns. Probably an unavoidable one, given the media climate at the time, but there is now no practical way for the British population to resist government oppression. Maybe you don't think that's a problem for now, but sooner or later it will be. An unarmed population is remarkably tempting as a takeover target for self-favouring politicians. That's not true in places where they will overthrow you, shoot you, and stick your head on a fence post as a warning to others.

Second, stop respecting all the laws. Politicians make stupid laws, regulations and "emergency powers" impositions all the time. Tell them to get stuffed. Make the politicians and low-level clipboard-carriers fear the people, not the other way around. You think that a fluorescent-vested busybody going around the Alamo in San Antonio telling people to wear a mask outdoors is going to get any traction? He'd be lucky not to be thrown in the nearest pond.

Third, you're going to have to defend yourself and your family eventually. It seems clear that the police are more interested in prosecuting people for silly speech on Twitter than going after actual hard-core criminals, people smugglers etc. - well, you can do the former from an air-conditioned office, but the latter actually requires hard work and personal risk. So if you can't rely on the police to defend you, how are you going to defend yourself?

Fourth... oh, sod it. Just emigrate to the USA. Pick a suitable gun-favouring state, go to the local gun store and ask for help. It'll be the most liberating thing you ever do. Not to mention, it'll annoy Polly Toynbee.

[1] There is no national register of who-owns-which-guns in the USA, and that's very deliberate. A gun ownership register tells you where to go to confiscate guns should you be inclined towards a dictatorial rule.
[2] Actually "Robert Francis O'Rourke", known as "Beto". But I like "Beta" better.

Unrest expected - the firearms indicator

I was at my local gunsmith on Monday - they do exist in California, you may be surprised to learn - and mentioned that I was thinking about acquiring a handgun, so I could practice short-range target shooting. Even in California it eventually gets cold and wet, and outside ranges are less attractive.
"Ah," he said, "are you in a rush for it?"
Well, not break-neck speed; something in the next 3-4 weeks would be good (allowing for the usual - and pointless - California 10 day waiting period). Not looking for anything special or custom, do you have something utilitarian in 9mm? My aim really isn't good enough to justify anything more.
"At the moment, Glock is telling me 6-8 months for a California-legal 9x19."
Wuh? Is this some issue with California's steadily increasingly insane gun restrictions?
"Not even that; I went to Las Vegas the other week, and the Nevada dealers there were having the same problem."
Ah, it must be because of the election, presumably there's a bump every 4 years?
"No man, not like this. Sure, you get a bit of a bump as a Presidential election approaches, but I've never seen anything like this. You can't get a gun anywhere except the ones that no-one with any knowledge wants."

It seems that the combination of civil unrest over the summer, the general abandonment of cities by police chiefs, and the potential election of Joe Biden with gun-grabbing Beta O'Rourke as his stooge, has soured the population on relying on the police force to defend their homes.

To give you some context, even in one of the gun-grabbiest states in the Union, the estimate in 2018 is that 4.2 million California people were gun owners, out of a population of 37 million or so, or about 1 in 7 adults. There were about 20 million firearms - so clearly the average number of firearms owned would be about 4 per owner. One can only imagine what it looks like now - and what it will look like in mid-2021 when the current order backlog is complete.

This is not peculiar to California:

Ammunition sales blew up in March because of COVID-19, said Gary's Gun Shop assistant manager Nick Meyer. But increased sales stayed steady after riots started in May in response to the death of George Floyd and ahead of the presidential election.
"Firearms and ammunition and the Second Amendment are all hot topics for election times," Meyer said, "and it always spurs a little bit of a spree."
But this year is different.
The gun shop only has 20% of its normal ammunition supply on its shelves, Meyer said.

Can confirm: ammunition is increasingly expensive, assuming you can find it. As this gentleman on YouTube notes, it started in March and has gotten increasingly bad over the year. ("Federal" in this video refers to a manufacturer name, not the federal government).

This all signals something, and it's not good for the prospect of peace in the United States.

Never waste a crisis: COVID-19 infringes 2nd Amendment

Living in the Bay Area has its upsides and downsides, but California's general hostility towards the 2nd Amendment of the US Constitution is a source of frequent amusement. Sometimes the hypocrisy can be breathtaking, such as the Santa Clara Sherriff's department apparently only approving concealed carry permits if the application came with a contribution to a political campaign. Still, the basics of 2nd amendment are there: you can apply for and own one or more guns, as long as you clear appropriate hurdles; some important (federal background check) and some completely pointless (10 day waiting period for the gun, 10 round magazine size, no "scary" rifles).

Or so I thought.

You may have seen 2020 news reports about rioting in Oakland (the disambiguation items on that page speak for themselves); these events caused your humble correspondent to re-evaluate their laziness on the matters of household protection, and go looking to acquire a firearm for household defence. Gun shops are generally open, your correspondent is an allegedly upstanding citizen, so this shouldn't have been hard. Except... California requires all firearm purchasers to hold a Firearm Safety Certificate and demonstrate safe handling. Firearm training focused on these tests can be performed at any suitable location, so I contacted one to kick this process off.

No dice, per the instructor:

All courses have been suspended until further notice. The store is open by appointment only, the range has limited use, but the classroom is not available. That won't change until Santa Clara County relaxes the regulations.
I have so many people waiting for courses, I am not taking any more names at this time.

Sounds like the Bay Area politicos are making good use of COVID, by keeping down those activities - such as gun acquisition, church attendance - which they find threatening. Bet the diversity training courses are at full throttle, though.

Black Lives Matter - CBS News edition

CBS News states that Police in the U.S. killed 164 Black people in the first 8 months of 2020. Helpfully, they provide a list of their names. Let's look at the circumstances of a random selection of ten names, shall we?

Had it coming

Dreasjon Reed

High speed chase, ran away, had gun in waistband, gun was discharged twice, police shot him after Taser didn't work.

Zyon Romeir Wyche

Actually seems to have killed himself, after firing rounds at officers after a traffic stop and running away

Dominique Atwon Anderson

Attacked his brother with a machete, charged a police officer, was shot.

Malcolm Xavier Ray Williams

Grabbed a gun and shot at an officer after a routine traffic stop with his heavily pregnant partner (the driver).

Lewis Ruffin, Jr

Didn't want to go back to jail after domestic violence and weapons charges; shot at deputies, who killed him

Accident / Medical issue

Tina Marie Davis

Officers attempted to detain Davis after responding to a call about a woman breaking car windows and found her chasing one of the 911 callers with a stick; officers tasered her, she subsequently died.

Devan Austin Twilley

Car chased by police after apparently forcing his way into a house and threatening the occupants, crashed fatally.

Apparent police misconduct

Breonna Taylor

(The famous no-knock shooting case). Maybe the police didn't violate the law, but something still really needs to change in these kind of heavily armed home entries.

Seems excessive but not unjustified

Tommie Gale McGlothen

Died apparently from stimulent use / severe mental health episode, but police should have checked on him when in patrol car after he'd been tasered and mace'd.

Maurice S Gordon

Mental health episode, struggled with officer and might have gone for his gun. Needed mental health help, but it wasn't recognized.

Summary

It would be nice if CBS News actually did some journalism to highlight the specific cases that indicate a need for changes in police behavior, rather than bulking out the list with a) people who clearly had it coming and b) essentially random deaths which nothing could really prevent other than not arresting anyone who did violent things.

But I guess they're too busy shilling...

Auditing mappingpoliceviolence.org

I recently encountered the site mappingpoliceviolence.org which contends that the US police are out of control and desperately need to be reined in, I thought I'd take a look at the data that their data scientist Samuel Sinyangwe and general spokesperson DeRay McKesson present as evidence of these assertions. The site's data is used as one of the main arguments of campaigns such as Campaign Zero which tries to drum up membership and money for anti-police causes in the light of George Floyd's death.

"Mapping Police Violence" (hereafter referred to as "MPV") asserts that unarmed black people are killed by police much more often that their demographics would suggest, that police are seldom held accountable for this, and that this is therefore a clear signal that the US police are racist. Handily they list *all* the victims for 2014 and 2015, with a brief summary of what happened in each case. So I thought I'd look through the list for 2015 to see whether the facts on the ground correspond with their interpretation.

MPV lists 104 fatalities of unarmed black people, 13 of which ended with police officers being charged with a crime. Let's take the first 26 listed (25%), and see what happened in the other cases - did a guilty police officer escape scot free? From these 26 I'm excluding the cases of Tiara Thomas and Paterson Brown where the officers were actually charged and therefore we can safely say something needs to change.

Police did something significantly wrong

1. Michael Lee Marshall (Denver, CO): In custody with significant mental health problems, restrained by officers in the jail and subsequently choked on his vomit. Denver paid the family $4.65M. Officers involved received a short suspension. They clearly weren't intending to cause him harm, but it seems clear that they were either badly trained or negligent in what they did.
2. Christopher Kimble (East Cleveland, OH): At first I'd categorized this as "accident", but on reflection I moved it. Kimble was knocked down and killed on a crosswalk by a police cruiser responding to a call. The crosswalk and street lights weren't working. That said, the police cruiser had one headlight non-functional and it was driving about 40mph in a 25 zone without sirens or flashing lights. If you're driving a police car then you're responsible for ensuring its road worthiness, and if you're operating outside normal driving restrictions then you're responsible for doing so safely. There was a civil suit against the city, and to my mind the family should win it.

Victim shooting seemed justified

1. Keith Childress (Las Vegas, NV): Violent crime history, advanced towards police with what looked like a weapon despite being repeatedly told to stop.
2. Kevin Matthews (Dearborn, MI): Apprehended after committing a theft, shot while trying to reach an officer's gun during a struggle.
3. Leroy Browning (Palmdale, CA): Arrested for drink driving, starting struggling while being handcuffed and made a grab for officer's gun belt. In hindsight it wasn't clear from evidence that he'd actually managed to touch the gun but it was reasonable for the officers to fire in self defence as he was "poised to gain" control of the firearm.
4. Miguel Espinal (Yonkers, NY): After a reckless car chase escaping from being pulled over by police for tinted windows, ran into woods where an officer caught him and they struggled, Espinal tried to get officer's gun and the officer shot him in self defence. Struggle wasn't witnessed but forensic evidence strongly supported the officer's version of events.
5. Cornelius Brown (Opa-Locka, FL): Schizophrenic, attacked a police car and smashed its windows. Officers tasered twice without effect; when he advanced on them with a stick they opened fire.
6. Richard Perkins (Oakland, CA): Drugged up on meth and morphine, Perkins approached officers while brandishing a gun that turned out to be an Airsoft replica.
7. Anthony Ashford (San Diego, CA): After being apprehended "casing" cars in a car park, Ashford grabbed the police officer's taser and tasered him in the neck, tried to get the officer's gun. The officer shot him in self defence.
8. Dominic Hutchinson (Riverside, CA): Repeatedly declared he had a gun, then ran at the officers carrying some binoculars he'd broken up to look like a gun. "Quintessential suicide by cop" said the police chief, and I'd have to agree
9. Lamontez Jones (San Diego, CA): When stopped by police for disrupting traffic, Jones pulled out a replica gun and pointed it at the officers. Unable to see that it was a replica, they shot him. There is public video evidence of what happened. The family filed a wrongful death claim against the city but I didn't find any evidence that it went anywhere.
10. Junior Prosper (Miami, FL): After crashing his taxicab into a stop sign, and apparently intoxicated, Prosper walked away from the scene of the accident. A police officer caught up with him, a fight started and the officer fired his Taser. They went down an embankment into trees, the officer pursued and caught Prosper, struggled again, Prosper bit hard on and worried at the officer's finger, and the officer shot him. The District Court agreed with the officer that it was a reasonable reaction in self defence.
11. Keith McLeod (Reisterstown, MD): After being chased for trying to buy narcotic cough syrup with a fake prescription, McLeod went for the back of his waistband and pretended to pull out a gun. Although he didn't actually have one, the officer feared for his life and opened fire as McLeod's hand started to move back.
12. Lavante Biggs (Durham, NC): Suicidal, after prolonged negotiations in a stand-off, Biggs walked towards police officers and produced a gun. He put it down and picked it up a few times, hence the "without a weapon" category, but was always close enough to grab and fire it. I don't see that the officers had any real choice but to shoot.

Clearly an accident

1. Bettie Jones (Chicago, IL): stray bullet in an otherwise justified shooting. Police officer was nevertheless subsequently fired.
2. Roy Nelson (Hayward, CA): Voluntarily transported with police for mental health issues, started to struggle. Police applied a body restraint harness as he was a big guy, but that impaired his breathing when coupled with his meth intoxication. He stopped breathing in the car and died. City paid $1M compensation.
3. Alonzo Smith (Washington DC): Arrested by special police officers after running around shirtless and screaming, Smith was arrested and handcuffed but died of cardiac arrest due to high level cocaine intoxication.
4. India Kager (Virginia Beach, VA): Travelling in the same car as her child and the father of her child, Angelo Perry. Perry was a known violent criminal, suspected of being about to murder someone. When police stopped the car, Perry opened fire on officers, who shot back. Both Perry and Kager were killed. The 4 year old child was unharmed. A jury awarded Kager's family $800,000; police were clearly not intending to kill her, but returning fire was inevitable once Perry started shooting.
5. Tyree Crawford (Newark, NJ): Passenger in a stolen car. Police pursued the vehicle. When it stopped, Crawford bailed out and was hit by a police vehicle. Obviously an accident, caused by a poor life choice of getting involved in car theft.

Something needs to be done

1. Michael Noel (St Martin, LA): Schizophrenic whom police tried to take into protective custody at his home, went off the rails and attacked officers , shrugging off two taserings and striking an officer. The officer shot in self defence. It seems to me that better training in de-escalation for mental health crises could have stopped the situation escalating to this point.
2. Nathaniel Pickett (Barstow, CA): Stopped by a deputy after trespassing, Pickett tried to escape. The deputy caught him and there was a struggle. The DA's office found the shooting justified but a federal jury disagreed and awarded the family $33M in compensation.
3. Jamar Clark (Minneapolis, MN): Got into a struggle with two police officers outside a building, police officers claimed he tried to get one of their guns, and shot him in self defence. The available evidence and many witnesses didn't provide a clear picture of what happened, but did not indicate any improper behavior on behalf of the police officers. The city later settled with Clark's family for $200,000.

Not relevant to police

1. RayShaun Cole (Chula Vista, CA): This is an odd one to be included, and very sad. Cole was shot dead by his Customs and Border Patrol girlfriend in a domestic incident; 3 months later she died in a road accident that has a strong whiff of suicide. This had nothing to do with the police, really.
2. Wayne Wheeler (Lathrop, MI): Again, shouldn't really be in the list: a neighborhood dispute that ended in punching and Wheeler being fatally struck in the head. The neighbor who struck him was an off-duty cop, and Wheeler apparently attacked the man when he was in his own yard. Nothing to do with police practice or procedure.

Evaluation

Of the 24 cases actually relevant to the police force we have:

• 12 where the shooting was justified,
• 5 accidents,
• 3 where there seems to be a need for improvements even if the police officers weren't strictly at fault,
• 2 where police were at fault and charged, and 2 more where they seem clearly at fault.

So that's 7 out of 24 where police could reasonably be said to be at fault. If we extrapolate that to the list of 104 (and similarly assume 8 of those 104 cases are not relevant to the police force itself), that would be a total of 28 unarmed black people left to die at the hands of police in 2015.

Now that's still needless 28 deaths too many, but out of about 42 million black members of the US population, it's literally less than one in a million. Looking at 2015 black homicide data, 6,152 victims were male, and 862 victims were female. The black homicide rate is nearly twice the white homicide rate. By all means let's push police-caused deaths down, but there seem to be other, more significant areas that Black Lives Matter could focus on. Incidentally, there were 121 justifiable homicides of black victims by law enforcement.

Similarly, 20 unarmed black people killed by accident by police is tragic, but it's not obvious what the police could do to reduce that in many cases. Note that two of the 5 accidents analysed above were caused by consumption of illegal drugs, and two others by the victim hanging around known miscreants.

You'll also note that only 3 of the cases featured women. 2 of the women were killed accidentally, the other was killed by her police officer boyfriend. For some reason it seems to be that black men interact negatively with the police a heck of a lot more than women. I wonder if the same is true for black men vs white men, and if so why?

Update: analysis of the next chunk of the list in Part 2

Any mentions of Peter Wang or Chris Hixson at today's Marches for Gun Control?

I've been watching the gun control march speeches and Twitter today for mentions of Peter Wang or Chris Hixson - I may have blinked and hence missed it, but it's safe to say that Peter's sacrifice saving 15 of his classmates, and Mr. Hixson's sacrifice for his students, have not been prominent in today's discussions.

Might this be because the organizers find distasteful any possibility that there might be glorification of the military in this event? Peter was a JROTC member, posthumously accepted to West Point military academy, and Chris Hixson was a military veteran.

This whole "March for Lives" thing stinks of politics. This is not a spontaneous grassroots reaction to a school shooting. There's a carefully directed message coming from a central organization somewhere, and it ain't from a bunch of Florida high school students.

When seconds count, the police are minutes away

After last night's terror attack on London Bridge and Borough Market, the main lessons I took away were:

1. Anyone who's motivated can execute this kind of attack: get 1-2 buddies who are similarly motivated - for maximum efficiency - some long knives, and a rented van are all that's needed;
2. Civilians were reduced to throwing bottles and drinking glasses at the attackers to try to keep them away;
3. Unarmed officers were effectively powerless during the incident, reduced to trying (extremely bravely) to distract the attackers from civilians;
4. In the heart of the nation's capital, at near-maximum terror alert, with the densest national concentration of armed officers, the attackers had 8-10 minutes to rampage unimpeded before the armed police turned up and whacked them in short order.

Contrast this with the May 2015 attack in Garland, TX where the heavily armed gunmen just made it out of their car, managed to slightly wound a security officer, and then promptly expired in a hail of bullets. I can't help but notice the complete lack of follow-on terror attacks in Texas since then; presumably word has got around the terror community that it's a poor choice of location.(Glasgow is probably number 2 on the do-not-terrorise list after the terrifyingly vicious response of the residents.).

I can't help but think that the complete dis-arming of the UK civilian population is not working out quite as well as most of its proponents expected.

Always consider what happens when the shoe switches feet

The recent panic from the LGBT+ / Black / Hispanic communities about increased violence in the wake of Trump's victory has caused a sharp uptick in blogs and forum posts from various West Coast people, notably those of the transgender persuasion, claiming a new fear for the personal safety of them and their families. This seems to be based around the assumption that a Trump presidency will embolden the less savoury side of society prone to gay-bashing to perpetrate physical violence on them. Let's say, for arguments' sake, this is true: what should they do about it?

Larry Correia, author of the "Monster Hunter Nation" and related high-output high-sales fantasy book series, penned "A Handy Guide For Liberals Who Are Suddenly Interested In Gun Ownership" which is as sympathetic to the political gripes of Hillary/Bernie supporters as the title suggests, but does provide a lot of good practical advice about how you can go about getting armed and trained in effective self-defence. Correia owned a gun store and did a lot of concealed-carry training before his literary career properly started, so seems to know what he's talking about.

What he really nails is the ever-increasing squeeze on firearms possession, gun ranges and ammo purchase that has been happening in Democrat-controlled states over the past few years, and why it's relevant now:

When the already super powerful government wants to make you even more powerless, that scares the crap out of regular Americans, but you guys have been all in favor of it. Take those nasty guns! Guns are scary and bad. Don't you stupid rednecks know what's good for you? The people should live at the whim of the state!
But now that the shoe is on the other foot, and somebody you distrust and fear is in charge for a change, the government having all sorts of unchecked power seems like a really bad idea, huh?

It's hard enough owning a gun in California anyway, but cities like San Francisco have taken it to extremes. They have used local law changes to force all the gun shops to close down. In last week's voting, there was a strong San Francisco representation pushing state Proposition 63 to make ammunition purchases harder and more expensive. The net effect is that you can guarantee that no-one in San Francisco is carrying a gun unless they're a law enforcement officer or a criminal.

Gay bashing is far from a new crime in San Francisco. Despite the city's image as gay-friendly, there are enough unreconstructed citizens who are not keen on public displays of homosexuality or trans people for there to be a significant risk of violence. Since these folk know that their victims won't be armed, they have no disincentive to engage in these attacks. But if there were a few well-publicised self-defence shootings in reaction to gay bashing attempts, you can bet that the rate of gay bashing attempts would decline rapidly.

For now, California citizens have to deal with the laws as they stand - and as Correia notes, those laws make it hard for law-abiding citizens to be armed effectively:

See, traditionally Democrats don't like the 2nd Amendment and historically have done everything in their power to screw with it. Your gun laws are going to vary dramatically based upon where you live. It might be really difficult and expensive for you to exercise your 2nd Amendment rights, or it might be relatively easy.
But you’re scared right now! Well, that's too bad. Because for the most part Democrats have tried to make it so that citizens have to abdicate their responsibilities and instead entrust that only [the] state can defend everyone... That doesn't seem like such a bright idea now that you don't trust who is running the state, huh?

Perhaps San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee could take time out from his crusade against the gun industry to ensure that his vulnerable constituents can defend themselves against the increasing violence in his city. I'm not holding my breath for this to happen, but if the LGBT+ community wants to be able to protect themselves then Ed might be a good target for their lobbying. "Mayor Lee, why don't you want the gay community to be safe in your city?". They could recommend that Lee work with past SF Democrat mayoral candidate Leland Yee to draw on the latter's expertise in firearms supply.

Soft and hard targets

The ever-enlightened Simon Jenkins in the Guardian has a fascinating insight into how to deal with terrorist attacks:

The modern urban obsession with celebrity buildings and high-profile events offers too many publicity-rich targets. A World Trade Centre, a Mumbai hotel, a Boston marathon, a Nairobi shopping mall are all enticing to extremists. Defending them is near impossible. Better at least not to create them.

Is it just me, or does this sound awfully like "women shouldn't wear short skirts, because it's provocative and makes men want to rape them?" It's a rather odd sentiment, coming from the Guardian of all newspapers.

But let's run with Sir Simon's argument and see where it takes us:

A shopping mall not only wipes out shopping streets, it makes a perfect terrorist fortress, near impossible to assault. There is no defence against the terror weapons of guns and grenades.

That does rather assume that the terrorists can take over the mall in the first place, of course. I invite the gentle reader to consider how far al-Shabaab would have got in a Texas mall. Remember that both the Washington Navy Yard shooter and the soon-to-be-very-ex-Major Nidal Hassan's Fort Hood shooting were only able to carry on as long as they did, and shoot as many people as they did, because both areas were gun-free zones. In both cases, once armed police officers turned up they engaged the gunman and ended up shooting him. From this we can deduce that if you want to stop a determined shooter, having guns and the training to use them is rather important.

You'll never be able to stop a determined shooter from getting off his or her first few shots at innocents. The difference is that in a Texas mall the volume of retaliatory fire will drastically limit the number of casualties, and give the gunman very little time to pick their shots before defending themself from imminent death becomes their overriding concern. For the record, despite the above video, I'd rather the civilians use pistols in a mall - high-powered rifles are probably not the best firearm in a crowded environment with solid flat surfaces everywhere.

As for bombs, it seems that Sir Simon would rather people didn't go to church because it's a near-irresistable target for bombers. I invite the reader to consider where such an approach would lead, and wonder at what an Oxford PPE must do to one's brain, not to mention spine.

The government - people disconnect

I have to admit, I would not have predicted this as a result of the Sandy Hook shootings:

The week after [the Sandy Hook massacre] set a new record for background checks. CBS Connecticut reported that permit applications in Newtown itself more than doubled in the three months following the killings.

This is intriguing. So of the population that's closest to a particularly egregious mass shooting, one of the responses seems to be that people feel that they needed a gun:

Newtown in recent years has issued about 130 gun permits annually. Police say the town received 79 permit applications in the three months since the Dec. 14 massacre, well over double the normal pace.
"A good percentage of people are making it clear they think their rights are going to be taken away," said Robert Berkins, records manager for Newtown police.

What I'd really like to know is what the national figures were for the increase in those 3 months, and whether Newtown's increase was in line with, above or below the national rate. I rather suspect (from some back-of-the envelope math) that it was higher.

Generally it seems that whenever a major shooting-related event occurs, people who did not previously own guns rush to get a permit to own them in anticipation of future denial of this right. People who do currently own guns stock up on ammunition and spare weapons. All of which leads me to the inescapable conclusion that if a government really wants to reduce firearm ownership, they will loudly promise not to change anything in the country's current gun ownership rules. Since the US government has been all over gun owners in the aftermath of Sandy Hook, one can only conclude that they are in pursuit of votes rather than lower firearm ownership.

You can't be too careful

At least, that's the opinion of the head teacher of Haybrook College in Slough, and apparently Thames Valley Police too. A teacher overhears a 15 year old ADHD sufferer with learning difficulties talking about "buying a gun" with a friend and calls the firearms squad:

Helen Huntley, headteacher of Haybrook College, which Millside is linked to, said: "We apologise if the boy's mother is upset. But we have a duty of care and, although there was no weapon, if we hadn't taken action and there had been, the consequences could have been devastating."

The boys in question were fans of playing the video game "Call of Duty" on their Xboxes, where as you gain more credits you can spend them on firearms of increasing potency.

Thames Valley police saw fit to obtain two warrants to search the boys' homes, descending on them with six officers and a dog and arresting both boys before releasing them without charge. It's nice that they have such resources on hand to waste on a pointless exercise. I'd also be fascinated to read the warrant applications, and compare them with the log of the original report from the school, though I'd bet they'll be locked away for decades to come in order to prevent embarrassment.

Is it too much to ask for teachers and police to exercise just the tiniest amount of common sense? A 15 year old boy with ADHD and learning difficulty is rather unlikely to be able to wander in to a gun shop, plonk down several thousand in cash and walk away with a high-powered rifle or assault weapon. Wouldn't it have been just a tiny bit easier, should concerns arise, to call the boy's mother and ask for some context to the conversation? Where was common sense in all of this? What the hell kind of society do we have where a laughably implausible possibility is considered sufficient to trigger an all-arms police raid on two houses without anyone asking if there's not a lower-key way to go about this?

Helen Huntley's "but we have a duty of care..." excuse was a pathetic, mealy-mouthed attempt to disguise a gross error of judgement by both the school and police, and they should both be strongly admonished for such abuse of the public trust in them. Now, had the boy been saying "I'm going to shoot (name of friend)", and had he come from an area where boys of that age were known to have access to guns and use them on other boys, a certain concern may have been understandable. As it was, though, the magic word "gun" seems to trigger a complete abandonment of common sense. This is not as bad as suspending a 7 year old from school for nibbling a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun but it's on the path to that level of stupidity and dogma.

This is, by the way, not giving a free pass to the teen's mother; CoD games generally have an 18 rating, and for a good reason. Letting a 15 year old with ADHD play the game does not strike me as the finest bit of parenting.

[Hat tip: keen hunteress JuliaM]

Terrible arguments about gun ownership

Texas-based English journo Alex Hannaford wrote an article for Salon about concealed carry in the USA where he went so far as to take a 1-day concealed-carry course and carry concealed where he lives in Texas:

To hold a Concealed Handgun License (CHL) in Texas, you must have a state ID, be at least 21, and not have committed any felonies or be addicted to drugs. The ten-hour class covers gun safety, the use of force and dispute resolution. There's also a shooting test at the range; to pass, you must fire off 50 rounds and score 170 points out of a possible 250.

This actually seems pretty stringent to me; during 10 hours of instruction, especially in covering issues like dispute resolution, it should become clear to the course instructors whether any of their students show signs of being unstable. Of course it won't catch everyone, but it does seem to be a good-faith attempt to ensure that only stable people with reasonable gun proficiency get to carry-concealed legally.

Hannaford summarises his experience in an eye-poppingly poorly argued article in the Guardian, taking the traditional Guardian view of the NRA membership as a pack of xenophobic paranoid loons. This much was not a surprise. What was a surprise was how badly thought-out were his comments about the benefits of guns:

Where I live in Austin, there are about 82 home invasions a year – in a city of 820,000 people. You're far more likely to be injured by your own gun than to need one to use against somebody breaking in at night.

Hmm, yes. I wonder why home invasions (breaking into a house with violent intent against the occupants) are so rare in a city where everyone and his dog have a gun? Compare with Oakland, California which has about half the population of Austin but much more restrictive firearms ownership laws, and an endemic of home invasions - many of them by armed ne'er-do-wells.

What really takes the cake is when he addresses the concern of Americans about government tyranny:

The research I did for those stories also reinforced my belief that it's a very vocal minority in America whose affection for the right to bear arms isn't anything to do with hunting or target shooting. It's about arming themselves to the teeth so they can rise up against an oppressive government should the need arise. Because, you know, that kind of thing happens a lot in America. And they're going to be really effective against the most powerful military force in the world, if the need should ever arise.

Well, if I were a tyrannical US Government, I'd put Texas a square last on my list of states to take over. It has 25 million people and, quite probably, more than one gun per person. Even if you assume that gun ownership is concentrated, you're still looking at 5 million or more heavily armed and motivated citizens who know well the expansive lands of their state. Contrast this with a total of 1.4m active and 0.8m reserve personnel in the entire US Armed Forces and note that the actual gun-toting soldiery won't be even half of that. Unless you planned on levelling the entire state with high explosive, you'd be nuts to try to take on Texas. Britain, by contrast, should be a walk-over.

Certainly, the US Government has not yet tried to oppress the population. But then, given the above, how far would it get? And if you want precedent for a native population of North America being overrun and essentially wiped-out by better-armed Government forces, you might want to talk to the remaining Native Americans, such as the Sioux tribes.

Curiosity doesn't just kill cats

In the wake of the shoot-out with the alleged Boston bombers in the streets of Watertown, Esquire has some timely advice from Lt. Col. Robert Bateman who actually knows a thing or two about bullets:

If you are in a place where you hear steady, and sustained, and nearby (lets call that, for some technical reasons, anything less than 800 meters) gunfire, do these things:

• Go to your basement. You are cool there.
• If you don't have a basement, go to the other side of the house from the firing, and leave, heading away from the firing. Do not stop for a mile.
• If you do not think that you can leave, get on the ground floor, as far from the firing as possible, and place something solid between you and the firing. Solid is something like a bathtub, a car (engine block), a couple of concrete walls (single layer brick...nope).
• If you are high up (say 4rd story or higher) just get away from the side of the building where the firing is taking place. You will, mostly, be protected by the thick concrete of the structure.

But for cripes sake, do not step out on to your front porch and start recording a video on your iPhone, unless you actually have a death-wish, or are being paid significant amounts of money, in advance, as a combat journalist/cameraman.

He points out that nearly everything you see in movies and TV about gunfire and bullet impacts is completely wrong. Bullets don't just get absorbed by walls; anything with a reasonable amount of gunpowder behind it will smash multiple bricks with ease, and sheetrock (plasterboard) will barely slow it down. This is why, when EMS crews pull up to the scene of a shooting, they are very careful about positioning the engine block of their vehicle between them and anyone holding a gun (civilian or police).

Remember the Empire State Building shooting last year? Nine bystanders got nailed by bullets fired (16 rounds in total, from handguns) by the responding police officers, and the associated ricochets and fragments when those bullets hit walls, pavement and street furniture. That only the two Boston gunmen and one police officer were hit in the exchange of over 100 rounds of gunfire at Dexter and Laurel is a minor miracle:

David LaRocca, a local sculptor, was in the kitchen of his Laurel Street studio, where he lives and works, when he heard the first series of pops.
Instead of ducking for cover, he went outside to see what was happening, certain that he was too far away to be hit.
"I heard the pop, pop, popping. I could see the activity," LaRocca said, who stood on the sidewalk outside his house while looking down the street to site of the action. "I heard whizzing sounds. But then I later figured it was bullets going by me that I was hearing."

David LaRocca has hopefully learned how much he didn't know about gunfire, and he's lucky that it wasn't the last lesson he ever learned.

The sound of gunfire should be a cue to anyone to get low, get behind cover, and get the heck out of Dodge.

Unforced errors

For an alleged political genius, President Obama sure has been making political errors recently. One can only surmise that he's not actually that good at politics.

Exhibit one: Margaret Thatcher's funeral. The funeral of a major statesperson of one of the USA's traditionally close allies, but no official White House representative was sent:

Normally, that would prompt attendance by a high-level figure in the US government — if not the President or Vice-President, a high-ranking Cabinet official. For instance, why not send John Kerry, the Secretary of State tasked with maintaining good relations with close allies like the UK? Instead, the US delegation will consist of two men who would be traveling as private citizens to the funeral already [James Baker and George Schulz from the Reagan administration], essentially giving an official policy of ignoring the event and snubbing the other world leaders attending it.

There's certainly no reason to expect Obama himself to have travelled to the UK for the funeral, but there's no shortage of administration officials he could send. Instead: zip, nada. The Republicans aren't so dumb: the Republican House speaker Boehner sent a delegation of Republicans to represent Congress:

"Margaret Thatcher was one of the greatest champions freedom has ever known, and her funeral gives Americans and friends around the world an opportunity to pay final respects," Boehner said. "I'm pleased that Congressman Blackburn will lead a House delegation to Baroness Thatcher's funeral to communicate our prayers and condolences to her family and the British people."

The Boston marathon bombing would have been a perfect excuse to avoid sending anyone - except that these decisions were taken before Monday's explosion. Oops. This is a serious snub to the UK government, and it's a politically stupid decision. Regardless of your feelings about Thatcher's politics, she was one of the dominant politicians of the late 20th century. It would cost nothing to send Kerry (or, heck, Biden) to the funeral. Instead, Obama - rightly or wrongly - appears to be letting his well-publicised dislike of the UK rule his political pragmatism. Machiavelli would have chastised him, and rightly so.

Next, let's look at his focus for the past 4 months: gun control. This hasn't turned out as he hoped, as his gun control bill got shot down in the Senate:

Due to procedural steps agreed to by both sides, all the amendments considered Wednesday required 60 votes to pass in the 100-member chamber, meaning Democrats and their independent allies who hold 55 seats needed support from some GOP senators to push through the Manchin-Toomey proposal.
The final vote was 54 in favor to 46 opposed with four Republicans joining most Democrats in supporting the compromise. With the outcome obvious, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, cast a "no" vote to secure the ability to bring the measure up again.
Meanwhile, four Democrats from pro-gun states voted with most Republicans in opposition.

Obama couldn't persuade 8% of his own party to go along with his gun bill, failing to pass it in a Senate nominally under Democrat control. I mean, what the heck? His team must have know that those (gun-affectionate state) Democrats weren't going to vote for the bill as is - three of them have elections coming up within a year - what was it that made him try to push it through regardless? Hope that the Senate Republicans would come to his rescue? Good grief.

The common factor in both these issues appears to be Obama's belief that he is above the grubby business of politics; he doesn't have to negotiate, compromise, or schmooze with people he doesn't like in order to get things done. Unfortunately, politics doesn't work like that. His Democratic predecessor, Bill Clinton, would never have made these kind of mistakes. Bill was (and is) one of the great political animals, friendly to everyone no matter what their politics or interests. He knew that doing something for someone was a favour which he could later call on when he needed it. He would never have let a state funeral of a major ally go by without ensuring his administration was represented. Heck, as Yes, Prime Minister noted, a politician's funeral is an ideal opportunity for politicians from many countries to get together without press scrutiny and thrash out all their outstanding issues without the usual press scrutiny.

Hillary Clinton must have been rubbing her hands with glee watching President Obama screw up like this. She has her flaws, no doubt, but has taken many lessons from her husband's political successes - lessons that Obama doesn't seem to think apply to him.

Insurance as a legislative aid

I've just found this article from late 2012 (after the Sandy Hook shooting) where the Daily Beast's Megan McArdle examines the proposals for making gun owners carry insurance. Given the increasingly puritanical calls from the BMA about alcohol / fat / tobacco / salt and making their consumers "bear the cost" of their indulgences, it's instructive to examine how well this approach works for gun owners.

Megan McArdle argues that mandatory liability insurance for gun owners won't work out quite as people intend:

Accidental death and injury rate from guns is fairly low, compared to both other gun incidents, and other categories of accident: 14,000 injuries and 600 deaths in 2011. This sounds like a lot, but in a population of 300 million, a lot of people die each year from almost anything: dozens of kids a year drown in buckets.

The focus of this law must clearly be homicide. Except - wait! people who commit homicide with guns don't often legally own the gun, and therefore will have at best a "relaxed" approach to owning insurance for the device. Many people commit suicide with guns, but again it's hard to imagine that they're going to be overly concerned about buying and keeping that insurance; and to whom would the insurance pay out? It also turns out that even for really obvious and easy-to-police items, it's hard to ensure that owners have insurance:

One in seven drivers in America is uninsured. That's despite the fact that they are driving a large, hard-to-conceal object which is regularly inspected by the fleet of parking and traffic enforcement professionals hired specifically by governments for this purpose.

You can view the idea of "mandatory liability insurance for gun owners" in two main ways. One is as a subversive attempt to make gun ownership more expensive, in order to reduce the number of law-abiding gun owners. The other is to provide a fund to compensate the victims of gun crime.

It would be interesting to apply this approach to other indulgences. I understand that there's a certain problem with criminal damage and assaults arising from drinking in British town and city centres. So let's only allow adults over 18 years old to buy alcohol from pubs and clubs if they can present proof of alcohol liability insurance. The insurers will look at age (under 30 years of age indicates disproportionate likelihood to cause trouble), gender (males more likely to cause problems to others than females), previous criminal convictions (of course) and presumably employment status - full time employees are less likely to get pissed and commit acts of violence because come Monday morning they'll be lining up with other unemployed people. Maybe there would be different levels of insurance; the lowest level lets you order a glass of wine, then progressively higher levels of insurance are required to be allowed to order strong lager, tequila shots, and the top-end insurance would allow you to drink vodka + Red Bull. In the event of alcohol-caused criminal damage, your insurance would pay out to cover the costs of the injured parties.

Perhaps I shouldn't give people ideas.

Instructive data on the effect of hypothecated bans

There's been a lot of talk about banning certain categories of weapons / accessories / limiting ammunition purchases in the good ol' US of A recently. Nothing's gone onto the statute book yet, but what's the effect? Bob Owens reports that you can't buy a gun or ammunition, but not for the reason you'd think:

The [gun store] owner was standing out front talking to the first customer in line as the clerks inside finished setting up for the daily rush. They would open promptly at 9:00 AM. [...] There were 25 souls patiently queued up from the front door down the sidewalk into the parking lot. This is the new normal, and has been for months. Sometimes the line is shorter, sometimes it is longer, and on days that it is cold and rainy, people sit in their vehicles until the store opens, but there is always a line.

Gun store owners jokingly laud President Obama as the best salesperson they've ever had, but there's a kernel of truth to it. If you threaten to ban something, those who want that item will (as long as that item has a long shelf life) pre-emptively stock up on it. After all, even if no ban comes to pass, they're still going to use up the item over time, so they've paid a small premium in return for security of supply.

Of course with the various UK plans to ban coffee, bacon and alcohol, getting the populace to lay in a stock for the future is a little trickier. Setting up one's own pig farm or still would seem to be the best strategy. You can always trade booze for coffee.

Donald Sensing anecdotally supports the above report from Bob Owens:

The problem is finding ammo. The gun counter had a sign posted that sales of ammo were restricted to three boxes per customer, and no more than one box can be of 9mm, .40-cal or .45-cal. Those calibers are also sold only from behind the counter now, no longer being placed on the shelves. As for .22-cal. long rifle, it is to laugh.
I chatted with the sales attendant for awhile, who told me that the store gets ammo delivered at 8 a.m. on MWF. "The line to buy starts forming outside at 6 a.m." He also said their ammo delivery amounts are just as high as ever, it just does not stay in stock.

Bear in mind that Sandy Hook (the trigger for the talk of firearms banning) was 3 months ago; this is not a flash in the pan. This is a sustained high demand, surpassing the industry's ability to ramp up production.

The net effect of all the talk on banning or restricting firearms? Bob Owens has no doubts.

In my estimation, this is the most heavily-armed the American people have ever been. I'm including the World Wars. Even then, the guns and ammo were going to military units deploying overseas, not going towards suburban stockpiles, and under freshly turned earth in hidden caches.

It's just possible that people like Senator Dianne Feinstein of California are secret agents of the NRA, proposing pointless bans on "assault-type" weapons in order to spur the populace to be better armed. Someone from the Huffington Post should probably write a conspiracy article about that.