Those Damn Guns Again

[Greed]

Politics and Numbers - Numberphile

Do political beliefs affect mathematical ability!?
Published on Oct 1, 2013
Featuring Dr James Grime.
Here is the paper referred to: http://bit.ly/wrecksmath

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[QueEx]

Nevada school shooting:
Teacher killed, two students wounded​

Parents escort a child from Agnes Risley Elementary School after the shooting.
​

Monday, October 21, 2013


(CNN) -- A student opening fire with a handgun he took from his parents. Screaming students running for cover. A teacher, trying to help, shot dead. Two students wounded.

As authorities investigated, details were still trickling out hours after a deadly shooting Monday at a Nevada middle school.

An official used one word to describe the scene at Sparks Middle School: chaos.

The shooter took a handgun from his parents, a federal law enforcement source who was briefed on the situation told CNN's Evan Perez.

The gunman shot and killed himself, Sparks Deputy Chief Tom Miller said Monday evening at a news conference.

Teachers train to face school shooter

Authorities said the shooter's motive was unclear.

"It's too early to say whether he was targeting specific people or just going on an indiscriminate shooting spree," said Tom Robinson, deputy chief of the Reno Police Department.

Mike Landsberry, a math teacher at the school, was killed in the shooting, Sparks Mayor Geno Martini told CNN.

In addition to his work as a teacher, Landsberry also had served in the Marines and served several tours in Afghanistan as a member of the Nevada Air National Guard, his brother, Reggie, told "Anderson Cooper 360."

"He was the kind of person that if someone needed help he would be there," Reggie Landsberry said. "He loved teaching. He loved the kids. He loved coaching them. ... He was just a good all-around individual."

Reggie Landsberry said his brother was probably trying to "talk the kid down and protect whoever he could. That sounds like Mike."

One 13-year-old witness told the Reno Gazette-Journal that he saw a student in a school uniform open fire as the teacher tried to get him to put the gun down.

"The student fired a shot at the teacher, and the teacher fell, and everybody ran away," the student said.

The witness told the newspaper that he heard four or five shots as he ran for cover, hiding out with several others in a house nearby.

At the school, one wounded student was shot in the stomach, and the other injured student was shot in the shoulder, Mieras said. The two 12-year-old boys are both in stable condition, Miller said.
​

FULL ARTICLE HERE

 

[thoughtone]

I can't imagine why the "usual suspects" would fail to post this story!



source: New York Post

LAX gunman wanted to ‘kill TSA and pigs’

LOS ANGELES — A suicidal New Jersey native carrying a note that said he “wanted to kill TSA and pigs” opened fire inside a packed Los Angeles Airport terminal Friday morning — gunning down one agent and sending hundreds of passengers racing desperately for exits.

Paul Ciancia, 23, was shot and critically wounded during a running gun battle with airport police that left five other people injured, including three wounded TSA employes, authorities said.

Ciancia, who grew up in Pennsville, N.J., texted his brother Friday morning saying he was thinking of taking his own life. Police officials believe the shooting was a glorified attempt at “suicide by cop.”

Ciancia was carrying a hidden AR-15 assault rifle when he entered LAX’s Terminal 3 about 9:20 a.m., sources said.

He was carrying a plane ticket, but pulled out the weapon and started shooting in the public area of the terminal, said LAPD Chief Patrick Gannon.

He shot his way past the TSA screening area, where he is believed to have gunned down the agent who has been identified as Gerardo I. Hernandez, 39.

Witnesses said Ciancia targeted only TSA employees as he headed far into the secure area of the terminal, while passengers screamed and dashed for cover.

“He wasn’t running, He was walking calmly,” said passenger Leon Saryan, who was in a security checking line.

“He walked up to me and looked at me and with a quizzical look said, ‘TSA?’ I shook my head no. I wasn’t wearing a uniform so he moved on. He fired about three or four shots towards agents in uniforms.”

“Shortly after, I saw TSA running after the gunman with pistols,” Sayran said. “I was cowering against the wall. I heard maybe 20 shots. It;s hard to count when you are trying to save yourself.”

Los Angeles Airport Police flooded the area but Ciancia kept firing and “got far back into the terminal” — which serves such airlines as Virgin America, AirTran, Alaska Airlines, Horizon Air and JetBlue, Gannon said.

He was wounded in a shootout outside a Burger King. A source said Ciancia was shot in the mouth and leg by two airport police officers.

Sources said the officers who stopped Ciancia were not hurt. They were identified as Sgt. Steve Zouzounis and Officer Brian Lopez.

Gannon praised the airport officers who ran towards the gunfire.

“They did not hesitate, they went after this individual, they confronted this individual in our airport,” he said.

Investigators said the mayhem could have been much worse. Ciancia had three magazines of ammunition in his rifle when he was stopped, sources told CNN.

Passengers told harrowing stories of their brushes with death.

“We just hit the deck. Everybody in the line hit the floor and shots just continued,” said Xavier Savant, who was heading back to New York with his family and was waiting in the security line.

“My whole thing was to get away from him,” said Savant, an advertising creative director.

Ben Rosen said he was sitting at the Starbucks eating oatmeal when he heard gunfire erupt and saw people running in all directions or crouching. He grabbed his phone and tried to lie as flat on the ground as he could.

Police showed up with guns drawn, shouting, “This is not a drill! Hands up!”

People put their hands up and then were led out of the terminal to the adjacent international terminal, Rosen said. As they were led out they saw broken glass from a window that looked as if it had been shot out.

The chaos forced the evacuation of terminals, and dozens of passengers were led onto the tarmac.

As a result of the chaos, 23 airlines were shut down at LAX’s three terminals. That triggered cancellations of more than 200 flights across the country, delayed several hundred others and snarled air traffic for tens of thousands of travelers.

Celebrities were among those indirectly caught up the airport drama.

“At #lax Some (expletive) shot up the place,” tweeted actor James Franco, who included a self-portrait in an airplane window seat on a flight that landed after the shooting occurred.

“Currently waiting on the plane in a remote parking area. I am safe. Praying for the victims of this shooting,” tweeted Nick Jonas.

The Transportation Security Administration has identified the officer killed at LAX as Gerardo I. Hernandez, 39. He’s the first officer killed in the line of duty in the agency’s 12-year history.

He was described as a behavioral detection officer who was stationed throughout the airport looking for suspicious behavior.
No other details were released about Hernandez or the two other TSA officers who were wounded.

Sayran said he saw one bleeding agent. “I asked him if he was OK. I just prayed to God,” he said, sobbing.

President Obama was alerted to the shooting, but investigators quickly ruled out terrorism and said no one but Ciancia was involved.

“We believed he was a lone shooter,” Gannon told reporters.

Ciancia was believed to be living in the Los Angeles area after leaving Pennsville, in southern New Jersey. Police in Pennsville said they never had an trouble with him.
His father called Pennsville Police Chief Allen Cummings early Friday afternoon for help in locating his son, Cummings said.

The chief called Los Angeles police, which sent a patrol car to Ciancia’s apartment. It wasn’t clear whether the police visited before or after the airport shooting.

“Basically, there were two roommates there,” Cummings said. “They said, ‘We saw him yesterday and he was fine.’”

Outside the father’s home Friday in Pennsville, neighbor Josh Pagan, 17, said it had been two years since he last saw Ciancia.

“He was never weird toward me. He never gave me any weird vibes,” he said, adding that in the 10 years he’s lived across the street from the Ciancia family “they’ve been nothing but nice to us.”

Ciancia’s father owns an auto body shop, Cummings said.
“I’ve been here 23 years and they are a good family,” he said.

 

[olly1969]

hey people an AR15 is not an assault rifle

 

[thoughtone]

hey people an AR15 is not an assault rifle

Should TSA personal be armed?

 

[big pimp]

hey people an ar15 is not an assault rifle

c/s.

 

[Greed]

Has The Right To Bear Arms Outlived Its Usefulness?

Has The Right To Bear Arms Outlived Its Usefulness? (50:30)
by NPR STAFF
November 21, 201312:45 PM

If Americans were writing the Constitution over again in 2013, would it make sense to include the right to bear arms? Or has it become outdated?

Some argue that states should have the ability to decide the laws they want around guns, instead of having a national standard. And they point to the Second Amendment's language about the need for well-regulated militias as evidence of its anachronism.

Others counter that the right to bear arms has become fundamental to the notion of self-defense and safety today — that without guns, people would be unable to protect themselves from criminals. They say it's important for that right to continue to be enshrined in the Constitution so that it is ensured for all citizens, no matter which state they call home.

Recent mass shooting tragedies have renewed the national debate over the 2nd Amendment. Gun ownership and homicide rates are higher in the U.S. than in any other developed nation, but gun violence has decreased over the last two decades even as gun ownership may be increasing. Over 200 years have passed since James Madison introduced the Bill of Rights, the country has changed, and so have its guns. Is the right to bear arms now at odds with the common good, or is it as necessary today as it was in 1789?

A group of scholars recently faced off on the motion "The Constitutional Right To Bear Arms Has Outlived Its Usefulness" in an Oxford-style debate for Intelligence Squared U.S.

Those debating:

FOR THE MOTION

Alan M. Dershowitz is the Felix Frankfurter professor of law at Harvard Law School. He joined the Harvard Law faculty at age 25 after clerking for Judge David Bazelon and Justice Arthur Goldberg. He has published more than 1,000 articles in magazines, newspapers, journals and blogs such as The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and the Harvard Law Review. Dershowitz is the author of numerous best-selling books, and his autobiography, Taking the Stand: My Life in the Law, was recently published by Crown.

Sanford Levinson, who holds the W. St. John Garwood and W. St. John Garwood Jr. Centennial Chair in Law, joined the University of Texas' law school in 1980. Previously a member of the Department of Politics at Princeton University, he is also a professor in the Department of Government at the University of Texas. The author of over 350 articles and book reviews in professional and popular journals — and a regular contributor to the blog Balkinization — Levinson is also the author of four books, most recently, Framed: America's 51 Constitutions and the Crisis of Governance (2012). He has edited or co-edited numerous books, including a constitutional law casebook, Processes of Constitutional Decisionmaking. He received the lifetime achievement award from the law and courts section of the American Political Science Association in 2010.

AGAINST THE MOTION

David B. Kopel is the research director of the Independence Institute in Denver and an associate policy analyst with the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. He is also an adjunct professor of advanced constitutional law at the University of Denver's Sturm College of Law. In 1999, he served as an adjunct professor of law at New York University. He is the author of 16 books and 85 scholarly articles, on topics such as constitutional law, counterterrorism and police practices. His most recent book is Firearms Law and the Second Amendment (2012), a law school textbook. Kopel was a member of the Supreme Court oral argument team in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008). His Heller and McDonald amicus briefs for a coalition of law enforcement organizations were cited by Justices Samuel Alito, Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens. He is currently representing 55 Colorado sheriffs in a federal civil rights lawsuit against gun bills passed by the Legislature in March 2013.

Eugene Volokh teaches First Amendment law and tort law at UCLA School of Law, where he has also taught copyright law, criminal law and a seminar on firearms regulation policy. Before coming to UCLA, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and for 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski. Volokh is the author of two textbooks and more than 70 law review articles; four of his articles on the Second Amendment have been cited by Supreme Court opinions, as well as by more than two dozen opinions from other courts. Volokh is a member of The American Law Institute, a member of the American Heritage Dictionary Usage Panel, the founder and coauthor of the blog The Volokh Conspiracy, and an academic affiliate for the Mayer Brown law firm.

http://intelligencesquaredus.org/de...ight-to-bear-arms-has-outlived-its-usefulness

 

[QueEx]

Re: Has The Right To Bear Arms Outlived Its Usefulness?

Progress On Gun Control Seemed
Inevitable After Sandy Hook, But
Apparently That Was Wrong



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[QueEx]

Re: Has The Right To Bear Arms Outlived Its Usefulness?

SHERIFF: SHOOTER
INSIDE COLO. SCHOOL



Authorities believe at least two people have been injured in a
shooting Friday at Arapahoe High School in Centennial,
Colorado, Sheriff Grayson Robinson told CNN affiliate KMGH.

The shooter is still believed to be inside the school, Robinson
said.

Emergency personnel are advising parents to go to King Soopers,
a grocery store in the vicinity of the school, to pick up their
children, CNN affiliate KDVR reported.

The high school, with a student population of 2,229 students,
has 70 classrooms. The school, which was built in 1964, is part
of the Littleton Public Schools system.

All schools in the system have been put on lock down,
authorities said.


http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/13/us/colorado-school-shooting/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

 

[thoughtone]

Those Damn Guns Again!

 

[actinanass]

you can take away everyone's guns, and someone would still get shot.

This is the liberal's "deportation" argument.

Some of the far right would be like "we need to deport everyone who is illegal". Something that's impossible to do.

The real issue is these kids who can't take a loss in life. These kids who thinks they are entitled to everything with little effort. The fact that it's looked down upon for disciplining your child.

Think about it like this, all of my family pretty much kept a gun in the house. The reason I never stole my grandparents gun is the fact that I knew that I was going to get my ass kicked if I was caught. I feared God, and the belt/switch/extension cord.

My point is, there's no discipline anymore.

 

[thoughtone]

source: Mother Jones

At Least 194 Children Have Been Shot to Death Since Newtown

The NRA says arming more adults will protect kids—but most are killed at home, our investigation shows, often with unsecured guns.


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You've heard this story before, the one that played out again the week of Thanksgiving—this time in Lakeland, Florida—where 2-year-old Taj Ayesh got his little hands on his father's loaded pistol, pulled the trigger, and crumpled to the ground. You may have heard about 9-year-old Daniel Wiley, who was playing outside his house in Harrisburg, Texas, when a 13-year-old mishandled an unsecured shotgun, blasting Wiley in the face. You may also have heard about 2-year-old Camryn Shultz of Forty Fort, Pennsylvania, whose embittered father put a bullet in her head before turning the gun on himself. Maybe you didn't hear about the case in which a child shot others and then committed suicide, but that also happened this year. Twice.

A year after the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Mother Jones has analyzed the subsequent deaths of 194 children ages 12 and under who were reported in news accounts to have died in gun accidents, homicides, and suicides. They are spread across 43 states, from inner cities to tiny rural towns.

Following Sandy Hook, the National Rifle Association and its allies argued that arming more adults is the solution to protecting children, be it from deranged mass shooters or from home invaders. But the data we collected stands as a stark rejoinder to that view:

• 127 of the children died from gunshots in their own homes, while dozens more died in the homes of friends, neighbors, and relatives.
• 72 of the young victims either pulled the trigger themselves or were shot dead by another kid.
• In those 72 cases, only 4 adults have been held criminally liable.
• At least 52 deaths involved a child handling a gun left unsecured.

Additional findings include:

• 60 children died at the hands of their own parents, 50 of them in homicides.
• The average age of the victims was 6 years old.
• More than two-thirds of the victims were boys, as were more than three-quarters of the kids who pulled the trigger.
• The problem was worst over the past year in the South, which saw at least 92 child gun deaths, followed by the Midwest (44), the West (38), and the East (20).

Our investigation drew on hundreds of local and national news reports. In some cases specific details remain unclear—often these tragedies are just a blip on the media's radar. As with previous reports in our ongoing investigation of gun violence, Mother Jones has published all the data we collected in downloadable spreadsheet form. (For an ongoing tally of reported gun deaths, see this Slate project.)

As I reported in May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that over the last decade an average of about 200 children ages 12 and under died from guns every year. But those numbers don't capture the full scope of the problem, due to inconsistencies in how states report shootings, and because the gun lobby long ago helped kill off federal funding for gun violence research. Our media-based analysis of child gun deaths also understates the problem, as numerous such killings likely never appear in the news. New research by two Boston surgeons drawing on pediatric records suggests that the real toll is higher: They've found about 500 deaths of children and teens per year, and an additional 7,500 hospitalizations from gunshot wounds.

"It's almost a routine problem in pediatric practice," says Dr. Judith Palfrey, a former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics who holds positions at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children's Hospital. Palfrey herself (who is not involved with the above study) lost a 12-year-old patient she was close with to gun violence, she told me.

No other affluent society has this problem to such an extreme. According to a recent study by the Children's Defense Fund, the gun death rate for children and teens in the US is four times greater than in Canada, the country with the next highest rate, and 65 times greater than in Germany and Britain.

The pediatric community has been focused on elevating the issue. Public health researchers have found that 43 percent of homes with guns and kids contain at least one unlocked firearm. One study found that a third of 8- to 12-year-old boys who came across an unlocked handgun picked it up and pulled the trigger. On Tuesday, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a video emphasizing physicians' role in keeping children safe from gun violence. The academy also issued specific recommendations this fall, including making sure firearms have trigger locks and storing them unloaded and under lock and key.

State legislators around the country have sought to require such precautions for gun owners, but the gun lobby has fought them vigorously. The NRA and other groups downplay the dangers firearms pose to children—in part by citing deficient federal data.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine, research has shown that when doctors consult with their patients about the risk of keeping firearms in a home, it leads to "significantly higher rates" of handgun removal or safe storage practices. Here, too, the NRA has done battle: It backed the so-called "Docs vs. Glocks" law passed in Florida in 2011, which forbid doctors from asking patients about firearms.

That law may have come with a price: Among the 194 child gun deaths we analyzed, 17 took place in Florida. Seven were accidents, including three involving unsecured weapons in homes. "The children were covered in blood," a shaken witness told a reporter after toddlers in a Lake City home played with a gun and fatally shot an 11-year-old boy in the neck.

Florida's tally was second only to that of Texas, which saw 19 children killed over the last year. By comparison, the other two of the four most populous states, California and New York, saw 11 and 3 deaths, respectively. Already known for strict gun regulations, California and New York both passed additional restrictions after Sandy Hook. Texas, meanwhile, enacted 10 new laws deregulating guns, including weakening safety training requirements for concealed-carry permit holders and blocking universities and local governments from restricting firearms. Florida tightened mental health controls this year—one of 15 states to do so—but has otherwise operated as a de facto laboratory for permissive gun laws, including its Stand Your Ground statute made famous by the Trayvon Martin case.

In scores of the cases we studied, the type of weapon involved was either unknown to law enforcement authorities or not specified in news reports. But at least 76 involved a handgun, while another 34 involved long guns. (Semi-automatic handguns are also the most common weapon used in mass shootings.)

Often when kids are killed in gun accidents, public outrage focuses on the parents. But legal repercussions are another matter: While charges may be pending in some of the 84 accidental cases, we found only 9 in which a parent or adult guardian has been held criminally liable. And in 72 cases in which a child or teen pulled the trigger, only four adults have been convicted. According to the nonpartisan Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which tracks state regulations closely, only 14 states and the District of Columbia have strong laws imposing criminal liability for negligent storage of guns with respect to children. (Florida, Texas, and California are among the 14.)

What happened a year ago in Newtown is still in some ways hard to fathom. The nation mourns again for the victims and families. But asPalfrey also puts it, "Newtown concentrated the horror in one place." Whether by malice or tragic mistake, the day-to-day toll of children dying from guns goes on.

The data from our investigation can be viewed in two ways. See an interactive photo gallery of the 194 victims:



See the full data set behind the investigation in spreadsheet form:



Also see our full special report, Newtown: One Year After, and our award-winning investigation, America Under the Gun: A Special Report on the Rise of Mass Shootings.

 

[QueEx]

you can take away everyone's guns, and someone would still get shot.

You're right.

One could lock-up all the idiots, yet one would still slip through.

But who would argue the world would not be better off ? ? ?

An idiot ? ? ?

 

[actinanass]

You're right.

One could lock-up all the idiots, yet one would still slip through.

But who would argue the world would not be better off ? ? ?

An idiot ? ? ?

Ok, so it's idiotic to point out the fact that before the evil guns were invented, there were still massacres?

Taking guns out of the equations do not fix the fact that men are capable of evil. That's the true elephant in the room that most left-leaning folks do not want to confront.

 

[Upgrade Dave]

Ok, so it's idiotic to point out the fact that before the evil guns were invented, there were still massacres?

Taking guns out of the equations do not fix the fact that men are capable of evil. That's the true elephant in the room that most left-leaning folks do not want to confront.

Nonsense.
You've been noticeably absent and come back with this noise?

There were not even close to the number of one man/one event massacres (most likely none but the world can be funny) before the invention of guns.
You are the only one giving a moral dimension to inanimate objects but I understand that it's "conservatives'" (a brand name, not a factual statement) way of clouding issues and not having to actually debate with facts and information.
Guns aren't anymore evil than swords or hammers or shoes but evil (and sick) people use the relatively easy access to guns to kill people in mass numbers.

God Almighty, what's the magic number of dead people to make apologists for gun makers and their advocates to reassess their priorities?

 

[QueEx]

You're right.

One could lock-up all the idiots, yet one would still slip through.

But who would argue the world would not be better off ? ? ?

An idiot ? ? ?

Ok, so it's idiotic to point out the fact that before the evil guns were invented, there were still massacres?

 

[QueEx]

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[QueEx]

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[thoughtone]

Re: Federal nullification efforts mounting in states

source: New York Times


Sheriffs Refuse to Enforce Laws on Gun Control</NYT_HEADLINE>

John Cooke is among the Colorado sheriffs who are resisting enforcement of new state gun laws.

GREELEY, Colo. — When Sheriff John Cooke of Weld County explains in speeches why he is not enforcing the state’s new gun laws, he holds up two 30-round magazines. One, he says, he had before July 1, when the law banning the possession, sale or transfer of the large-capacity magazines went into effect. The other, he “maybe” obtained afterward.

He shuffles the magazines, which look identical, and then challenges the audience to tell the difference.

“How is a deputy or an officer supposed to know which is which?” he asks.

Colorado’s package of gun laws, enacted this year after mass shootings in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn., has been hailed as a victory by advocates of gun control. But if Sheriff Cooke and a majority of the other county sheriffs in Colorado offer any indication, the new laws — which mandate background checks for private gun transfers and outlaw magazines over 15 rounds — may prove nearly irrelevant across much of the state’s rural regions.

Some sheriffs, like Sheriff Cooke, are refusing to enforce the laws, saying that they are too vague and violate Second Amendment rights. Many more say that enforcement will be “a very low priority,” as several sheriffs put it. All but seven of the 62 elected sheriffs in Colorado signed on in May to a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the statutes.

The resistance of sheriffs in Colorado is playing out in other states, raising questions about whether tougher rules passed since Newtown will have a muted effect in parts of the American heartland, where gun ownership is common and grass-roots opposition to tighter restrictions is high.

In New York State, where Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed one of the toughest gun law packages in the nation last January, two sheriffs have said publicly they would not enforce the laws — inaction that Mr. Cuomo said would set “a dangerous and frightening precedent.” The sheriffs’ refusal is unlikely to have much effect in the state: According to the state’s Division of Criminal Justice Services, since 2010 sheriffs have filed less than 2 percent of the two most common felony gun charges. The vast majority of charges are filed by the state or local police.

In Liberty County, Fla., a jury in October acquitted a sheriff who had been suspended and charged with misconduct after he released a man arrested by a deputy on charges of carrying a concealed firearm. The sheriff, who was immediately reinstated by the governor, said he was protecting the man’s Second Amendment rights.

And in California, a delegation of sheriffs met with Gov. Jerry Brown this fall to try to persuade him to veto gun bills passed by the Legislature, including measures banning semiautomatic rifles with detachable magazines and lead ammunition for hunting (Mr. Brown signed the ammunition bill but vetoed the bill outlawing the rifles).

“Our way of life means nothing to these politicians, and our interests are not being promoted in the legislative halls of Sacramento or Washington, D.C.,” said Jon E. Lopey, the sheriff of Siskiyou County, Calif., one of those who met with Governor Brown. He said enforcing gun laws was not a priority for him, and he added that residents of his rural region near the Oregon border are equally frustrated by regulations imposed by the federal Forest Service and the Environmental Protection Agency.

This year, the new gun laws in Colorado have become political flash points. Two state senators who supported the legislation were recalled in elections in September; a third resigned last month rather than face a recall. Efforts to repeal the statutes are already in the works.

Countering the elected sheriffs are some police chiefs, especially in urban areas, and state officials who say that the laws are not only enforceable but that they are already having an effect. Most gun stores have stopped selling the high-capacity magazines for personal use, although one sheriff acknowledged that some stores continued to sell them illegally. Some people who are selling or otherwise transferring guns privately are seeking background checks.

Eric Brown, a spokesman for Gov. John W. Hickenlooper of Colorado, said, “Particularly on background checks, the numbers show the law is working.” The Colorado Bureau of Investigation has run 3,445 checks on private sales since the law went into effect, he said, and has denied gun sales to 70 people.

A Federal District Court judge last month ruled against a claim in the sheriffs’ lawsuit that one part of the magazine law was unconstitutionally vague. The judge also ruled that while the sheriffs could sue as individuals, they had no standing to sue in their official capacity.

Still, the state’s top law enforcement officials acknowledged that sheriffs had wide discretion in enforcing state laws.

“We’re not in the position of telling sheriffs and chiefs what to do or not to do,” said Lance Clem, a spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Safety. “We have people calling us all the time, thinking they’ve got an issue with their sheriff, and we tell them we don’t have the authority to intervene.”

Sheriffs who refuse to enforce gun laws around the country are in the minority, though no statistics exist. In Colorado, though, sheriffs like Joe Pelle of Boulder County, who support the laws and have more liberal constituencies that back them, are outnumbered.

“A lot of sheriffs are claiming the Constitution, saying that they’re not going to enforce this because they personally believe it violates the Second Amendment,” Sheriff Pelle said. “But that stance in and of itself violates the Constitution.”

Even Sheriff W. Pete Palmer of Chaffee County, one of the seven sheriffs who declined to join the federal lawsuit because he felt duty-bound to carry out the laws, said he was unlikely to aggressively enforce them. He said enforcement poses “huge practical difficulties,” and besides, he has neither the resources nor the pressure from his constituents to make active enforcement a high priority. Violations of the laws are misdemeanors.

“All law enforcement agencies consider the community standards — what is it that our community wishes us to focus on — and I can tell you our community is not worried one whit about background checks or high-capacity magazines,” he said.

At their extreme, the views of sheriffs who refuse to enforce gun laws echo the stand of Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff and the author of “The County Sheriff: America’s Last Hope.” Mr. Mack has argued that county sheriffs are the ultimate arbiters of what is constitutional and what is not. The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, founded by Mr. Mack, is an organization of sheriffs and other officers who support his views.

“The Supreme Court does not run my office,” Mr. Mack said in an interview. “Just because they allow something doesn’t mean that a good constitutional sheriff is going to do it.” He said that 250 sheriffs from around the country attended the association’s recent convention.

Matthew J. Parlow, a law professor at Marquette University, said that some states, including New York, had laws that allowed the governor in some circumstances to investigate and remove public officials who engaged in egregious misconduct — laws that in theory might allow the removal of sheriffs who failed to enforce state statutes.

But, he said, many governors could be reluctant to use such powers. And in most cases, any penalty for a sheriff who chose not to enforce state law would have to come from voters.

Sheriff Cooke, for his part, said that he was entitled to use discretion in enforcement, especially when he believed the laws were wrong or unenforceable.

“In my oath it says I’ll uphold the U.S. Constitution and the Constitution of the State of Colorado,” he said, as he posed for campaign photos in his office — he is running for the State Senate in 2014. “It doesn’t say I have to uphold every law passed by the Legislature.”

 

[QueEx]

12 Year Old Student opens fire at
New Mexico school; 2 wounded


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[Art Vandelay]

When Martin Luther King Gave Up His Guns
Monday, 20 January 2014 12:50
By Mark Engler and Paul Engler, Waging Nonviolence | Op-Ed

Few are aware that Martin Luther King, Jr. once applied for a permit to carry a concealed handgun.

In his 2011 book Gunfight, UCLA law professor Adam Winkler notes that, after King's house was bombed in 1956, the clergyman applied in Alabama for a concealed carry permit. Local police, loathe to grant such permits to African-Americans, deemed him "unsuitable" and denied his application.

The lesson from this incident is not, as some NRA members have tried to suggest in recent years, that King should be remembered as a gun-toting Republican. (Among many other problems, this portrayal neglects to acknowledge how Republicans used conservative anger about Civil Rights advances to win over the Dixiecrat South to their side of the aisle). Rather, the fact that King would request license to wear a gun in 1956, just as he was being catapulted onto the national stage, illustrates the profundity of the transformation that he underwent over the course of his public career.

While this transformation involved a conversion to moral nonviolence and personal pacifism, that is not the whole story. King's evolution also involved a hesitant but ultimately forceful embrace of direct action — broad-scale, confrontational and unarmed. That stance had lasting consequences in the struggle for freedom in America.

The 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, the campaign that first established King's national reputation, was not planned in advance as a Gandhian-style campaign of nonviolent resistance. At the time, King would not have had a clear sense of the strategic principles behind such a campaign. Rather, the bus boycott came together quickly in the wake of Rosa Park's arrest in late 1955, taking inspiration from a similar action in Baton Rouge in 1953.
King, a newcomer to Montgomery, was unexpectedly thrust into the leadership of the movement, chosen in part because he was not identified with any of the established factions among the city's prominent blacks. Soon he was receiving phone calls on which unidentified voices warned, "Listen, ******, we've taken all we want from you. Before next week you'll be sorry you ever came to Montgomery." After such threats resulted in the bombing of King's home in February 1956, armed watchmen guarded against further assassination attempts.

This response reflected King's still-tentative embrace of the theory and practice of nonviolence. In his talks before mass meetings, King preached the Christian injunction to "love thy enemy." Having read Thoreau in college, he described the bus boycott as an "act of massive noncooperation" and regularly called for "passive resistance." But King did not use the term "nonviolence," and he admitted that he knew little about Gandhi or the Indian independence leader's campaigns. As King biographer Taylor Branch notes, out-of-state visitors who were knowledgeable about the principles of unarmed direct action — such as Rev. Glenn Smiley of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and Bayard Rustin of the War Resisters League — reported that King and other Montgomery activists were "at once gifted and unsophisticated in nonviolence."

Both Rustin and Smiley took notice of the firearms around the King household and argued for their removal. In a famous incident described by historian David Garrow, Rustin was visiting King's parsonage with reporter Bill Worthy when the journalist almost sat on a pistol. He and King stayed up late that night arguing about whether armed self-defense in the home could end up damaging the movement. It was not long before King had come around to the position advocated by groups like the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

In 1959, at the invitation of the Gandhi National Memorial Fund, King made a pilgrimage to India to study the principles of satyagraha, and he was moved by the experience. Ultimately, he never embraced the complete pacifism. Later, in the Black Power years, King made a distinction between people using guns to defend themselves in the home and the question of "whether it was tactically wise to use a gun while participating in an organized protest." But, for himself, King claimed nonviolence as a "way of life," and he maintained his resolve under conditions that would make others falter.

In September 1962, when King was addressing a convention, a 200-pound white man, the 24-year-old American Nazi Party member Roy James, jumped onto the stage and struck the clergyman in the face. King responded with a level of courage that made a lifelong impression on many of those in the audience. One of them, the storied educator and activist Septima Clark, described how King dropped his hands "like a newborn baby" and spoke calmly to his attacker. King made no effort to protect himself even as he was knocked backwards by further blows, and later even insisted that he would not press charges.

Believers in pacifism often contend that such principled nonviolence represents the high point in a person's moral evolution. They argue that those who merely use unarmed protest tactically — not because they accept it as an ethical imperative, but because they have decided it is the most effective way to propel a given campaign for social change — practice a lesser form of nonviolence. King, like Gandhi, argued that "nonviolence in the truest sense is not a strategy that one uses simply because it is expedient in the moment," but rather that it is something "men live by because of the sheer morality of its claim." But, arguably, moral nonviolence without strategic vision rings hollow. And, in holding up King as an icon of individual pacifism, we fail to see his true genius.

It is possible for someone to commit to nonviolence as a point of personal principle without ever participating in the kind of action that would make their convictions a matter of public consequence. But it is only when the tenets of unarmed direct action are strategically employed, made into effective weapons of political persuasion through campaigns of widespread disruption and collective sacrifice, that nonviolence gains its fullest power.

Martin Luther King did embrace strategic nonviolence in its most robust and radical form — and this produced the historic confrontations at Birmingham and Selma. But it is important to remember that these came years after his initial baptism into political life in Montgomery, and that they might easily not have happened at all.

Following the successful bus boycott, King sought out ways to spread the Montgomery model throughout the South. In early 1957, King met James Lawson, a savvy student of unarmed resistance who had spent several years in India. As Branch relates, King pleaded with the young graduate student to quit his studies: "We need you now," King said. "We don't have any Negro leadership in the South that understands nonviolence."

Despite this recognition, the idea of waging broadly participatory campaigns of direct action fell far outside of King's frame of reference, and in many ways he remained a reluctant convert to mass action. Founded in 1957, King's Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) was conceived as a coalition of ministers. It thought of itself, in the words of one historian, as the "political arm of the black church."
However, as Barbara Ransby writes, "the majority of black ministers in the 1950s still opted for a safer, less confrontational political path" and even King and his allies didn't stray far from the "respectable American mainstream."
Noting this, the militant Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth of Birmingham warned that if the organization did not become more aggressive, its leaders would "be hard put in the not too distant future to justify our existence."

The next major breakthroughs in civil rights activism would come not from the SCLC's hesitant ministers, but through the student lunch counter sit-ins that swept through the South starting in spring of 1960, and then through the 1961 Freedom Rides. In each case, when young activists implored King to join them, the elder clergyman — himself just in his early 30s — held back.

When King's SCLC did get directly involved in a major campaign of strategic nonviolence, the organization was drawn into an effort that was already underway — one in Albany, GA, starting in late 1961. Even then, the SCLC did not fully commit until after King and close colleague Ralph Abernathy were swept up in an unplanned arrest. Unfortunately, the effort in Albany was beset by rivalries between different civil rights groups, and it ended in failure. As Garrow notes, the New York Times ended up praising "the remarkable restraint of Albany's segregationists and the deft handling by the police of racial protests," while another national publication remarked that "not a single racial barrier fell."

Nevertheless, the sense of potential he experienced in Albany, combined with the inspiration of the Freedom Rides and student sit-ins, convinced King that the time had come for a campaign of mass action that, in the words of Andrew Young, could be "anticipated, planned and coordinated from beginning to end" using the principles of nonviolent conflict. King had chosen his time and place: Birmingham, 1963.

King's political genius was in putting the institutional weight of a major national civil rights organization behind an ambitious, escalating deployment of civil resistance tactics. In the case of Birmingham, this meant taking previously tried approaches — the economic pressure leveled against merchants during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the dramatic sit-ins of Nashville, the fill-the-jails arrest strategy of Albany — and combining them in a multi-staged assault that civil rights historian Aldon Morris would dub "a planned exercise in mass disruption."

In creating an engineered conflict that could capture the national spotlight, King took huge risks. It would have been far easier for an organization of the size and background of the SCLC to turn toward more mainstream lobbying and legal action — much as the NAACP had done. Instead, by following SNCC's student activists in embracing nonviolent confrontation, SCLC organizers and their local allies created a dramatic clash with segregationists that put the normally hidden injustices of racism on stark public display. King would later write that, in watching marchers defy Bull Connor's menacing police troops, he "felt there, for the first time, the pride and power of nonviolence."

Ultimately, King was a follower, not a leader, in cultivating a new tradition of strategic nonviolent action in the United States. Yet acknowledging this shouldn't diminish his significance. Because when he did commit himself to spearheading the type of broad-based nonviolent protest he had been talking about for years, it resulted in campaigns that profoundly altered the public sense of what measures were needed to uphold civil rights in the United States. The Birmingham model would prove widely influential. Victory in that city sent ripples throughout the country: in the two and a half months after the Birmingham campaign announced a settlement with store owners that commenced desegregation, more than 750 civil rights protests took place in 186 American cities, leading to almost 15,000 arrests.

It took years of deliberation and tremendous determination for Martin Luther King to take such a step. But when he finally did, the result was decisive: King went from being someone who had been repeatedly swept up in the saga of civil rights — a reluctant protagonist in the battle against American apartheid — to someone who shaped history.

 

[Greed]

Court tosses California's concealed weapons rules

Court tosses California's concealed weapons rules
Federal appeals courts strikes down California's concealed weapons permit rules
By Paul Elias, Associated Press | Associated Press
13 hrs ago

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A divided federal appeals court has struck down California's concealed weapons rules, saying they violate the Second Amendment right to bear arms.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Thursday that California is wrong to require applicants to show good cause to receive a permit to carry a concealed weapon. The court ruled that all law-abiding citizens are entitled to carry concealed weapons outside the home for self-defense purposes.

The divided three-judge panel disagreed with two other federal appeals courts that have upheld permit rules similar to California's.

The U.S. Supreme Court often takes cases when federal appeals courts issue conflicting rulings.

The Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that law-abiding citizens can keep handguns in the home for self-defense purposes, but didn't address whether that right extends outside the home.

http://news.yahoo.com/court-tosses-californias-concealed-weapons-200220826.html

 

[QueEx]

Re: Court tosses California's concealed weapons rules

Dallas 8-Year-Old Shot by White Neighbor Struggles to Recover

He is getting physically stronger,
but suffers the emotional consequences of the shooting.

Donald Maiden Jr.


​

No 8-year-old should live in fear for his life, with nightmares that keep him awake all night. But that is a daily occurrence for Donald Maiden Jr., known as D.J., who was playing tag outside his Dallas apartment complex when he was shot in the face by a neighbor last September.

There was seemingly no reason for the attack by 46-year-old Brian Cloninger, a white man, who told police <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">“he wanted to”</span> when asked why he fired on the black child.

The little boy, who spent weeks in the hospital hooked up to machines and breathing tubes, is now, thankfully, physically improved. After the shooting, he had a metal plate and wire mesh to hold his damaged jaw together.

“We’re doing much better,” his mother, Monique Locklin, told The Root. “A lot better. He’s doing well.”

D.J. still has a tracheotomy tube in his neck to help him breathe, and is due for a reconstructive surgery on March 10, but he is functioning as normally as anyone could expect an 8-year-old who was shot for seemingly no reason to function.

“He goes to school, he still plays outside,” Locklin said. “Light playing, but he still does everything pretty normally like he would before.”

His March surgery is also expected to be his last for a while, although more operations are in his future as he grows.

“As his face enhances he’ll have to keep on getting it fixed,” his mother said.

Physical well-being aside, however, the toll that the shooting has had on D.J.’s mental health has been severe, to say the least.

“He’s afraid that [Cloninger] is going to get out of jail [and come for him] … or that he’ll hurt somebody else,” Locklin said, saying that D.J. goes to therapy once a week. “He has nightmares almost every night. He won’t sleep alone, and he wakes up almost every night crying because he has nightmares.”

Even though he remembers the terrible incident, D.J. doesn’t really like to relive it much, his mother says. His family and siblings remain supportive, only bringing it up when he wants to talk about it.
​

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/nwOTo91wtBw" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

​

http://www.theroot.com/articles/cul..._struggles_to_recover.html?wpisrc=mostpopular

 

[muckraker10021]

Re: Court tosses California's concealed weapons rules

Dallas 8-Year-Old Shot by White Neighbor Struggles to Recover

He is getting physically stronger,
but suffers the emotional consequences of the shooting.

Donald Maiden Jr.


​

No 8-year-old should live in fear for his life, with nightmares that keep him awake all night. But that is a daily occurrence for Donald Maiden Jr., known as D.J., who was playing tag outside his Dallas apartment complex when he was shot in the face by a neighbor last September.

There was seemingly no reason for the attack by 46-year-old Brian Cloninger, a white man, who told police <SPAN style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ffff00">“he wanted to”</span> when asked why he fired on the black child.....
​

<img src="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/clarence-thomas-580.jpg" width="350">

Clarence Thomas would rule that race has nothing to do with the shooting of young Donald






<img src="http://24.media.tumblr.com/001be065a370427136a7784bd886a4f5/tumblr_mud42fIXg01rfgmbqo1_1280.jpg" width="700">

 

[Ruff Ryder]

3 different Detroit homeowners used guns to defend themselves against intruders this week

DETROIT, Mich. (WXYZ) - Three different homeowners in Detroit used guns to defend themselves against intruders this week.

Two suspects were shot and killed.

“I think it’s just a matter of the individual homeowners protecting themselves and finally catching up with the criminals in that enough is enough and they aren’t going to take it anymore,” said Detroit Police Deputy Chief Rodney Johnson.

The latest incident happened around 2:00 Saturday morning. Two men broke into a home on Toledo in southwest Detroit, armed with a tire iron. The intruders tried to knock out the homeowner, but the homeowner fired back with his gun. He shot them both and killed one of them, a 21-year-old man. The other man got away.

The second incident happened around 12:30 Saturday morning on Abington on Detroit’s west side. A woman had just pulled her car into the garage when a man with a gun appeared out of nowhere. She dropped her keys on the ground as a distraction and then reached for her own gun and shot and killed him.

“People are told, that when faced with a situation, whether a robbery or carjacking, just to drop your belongings right there. That’s what she did taking a few steps back to obtain her weapon which was a .38 caliber handgun. She was able to fire off several shots,” said Deputy Chief Johnson.

Saturday’s shootings come less than a week after a Detroit mom opened fire on three teens who broke into her house while she was home with her children. You saw the surveillance video of the break-in right here only on 7 Action News. Police caught all three suspects, two 14-year-old boys and a 15-year-old boy.

Deputy Chief Johnson said over the past three to four years the department has seen an increase in the number of homeowners applying for concealed pistol licenses.

http://www.wxyz.com/news/region/way...defend-themselves-against-intruders-this-week

 

[thoughtone]

source: NBC News



The U.S. Supreme Court declined Monday to consider whether the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms applies outside the home, taking a pass on a hot topic that has divided the lower courts.

The court declined to grant review of two laws that restrict handgun ownership by young adults — a federal law barring the sale of handguns to customers under 21 and a Texas law forbidding anyone under 21 to carry a handgun in public. Both laws were upheld by the lower courts.

In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to possess a gun at home for self-defense. Since then, the lower courts have split over the nature of gun rights beyond the home.

The cases the court acted on Monday involved challenges brought by the National Rifle Association and a group of Texas residents under 21. The federal statute allows the sale of rifles and shotguns to anyone aged 18 or older but sets the minimum age for buying a handgun at 21. The Texas provision excludes anyone aged 18, 19, or 20 from a state law allowing adults to carry a handgun in public for self-defense.

The state of Texas, arguing against the challenge, noted that three-quarters of the states have laws requiring a person to be at least 21 to get a license to carry a gun. The state's attorney general, Greg Abbott, was in the uncomfortable position of defending the law, putting him on the opposite side of the National Rifle Association in the case at a time when he is running for governor.

The Obama administration defended the federal law restricting handgun sales to minors. Congress acted after finding that young offenders were especially prone to misusing firearms, the government says. The federal law was meant to prevent minors from crossing state lines to buy guns that they could not get legally in the own states, it says.

 

[QueEx]

Gun Control's Next Chapter Is
All About Background Checks

Gun activists prep for another fight over background checks​

The Brady Law, the landmark Clinton-era legislation that instituted background checks for all licensed gun purchases, has its 20th birthday on Friday. And instead of cake and ice cream, the Brady Campaign is serving up a report on the law’s impact. The paper, which is subtitled, “the case for finishing the job to keep America safer,” is an argument to resume the push for universal background checks, which failed to clear the Senate by just six votes last year. It’s also a signal of how the gun control movement has regrouped from its latest defeat: By forgetting about banning weapons, at least for now, and throwing all its weight behind universal background checks.

The shift is a little subtle: Background checks have always been the primary focus for the Brady Campaign, an advocacy group. And last year, gun control activists told the White House they were willing to see other policies languish if it helped background checks pass. Still, after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Brady and many peer groups included restrictions on military-style weapons and large-ammunition clips among their priorities. This new report, in contrast, focuses exclusively on strengthening the existing background system—and that’s no accident, lobbyists and experts say. Many strategists think the advocates for gun violence legislation made a serious error last year, by trying to push both background checks and restrictions on weapons and ammunition. “The next time we’re going to try to push something, it should be one piece of legislation and one only,” says Jim Kessler, senior vice president at the think tank Third Way. “The reality is, you try and do two things, you get none of them done.”

And if it’s a choice between the two, background checks seem like the more logical route. For one thing, they are more popular than restrictions on weapons: 89 percent of Americans favor them, according to a Johns Hopkins University poll last year. Even among self-identified National Rifle Association members, support for stronger background checks reaches 75 percent. And while popular ideas aren’t always good ideas, the evidence suggests this is one instance where the public’s instincts are correct. According to a growing pool of evidence, stronger background checks have the most potential to reduce gun violence. A study from Johns Hopkins released this month found that after Missouri repealed a comprehensive background check policy, the number of guns that found their way into the hands of criminals roughly doubled, and gun deaths rose by 16 percent.

“The movement for strong gun laws has gotten smarter,” says Arkadi Gerney of the liberal think tank the Center for American Progress. And background checks are “what you want when you’re pushing for a policy—something that matters and something that’s popular.”

But that doesn’t mean the policy case will be easy for the Brady Campaign and its allies to make. The original Brady Law established the nation’s first universal background check system and, if you take the report at face value, it had a huge impact:
Gun violence fell by nearly 60 percent after the law’s passage.

But most experts think that decline is mostly about other factors, like economic trends and changes in the drug markets. The law has a huge, gaping loophole: It applies only to licensed gun dealers, not private transactions—including those at gun shows and online, which the report points out have taken over a huge part of the market since Brady passed. (It’s this loophole that organizations like Brady hope to close with new legislation.) As a result, an estimated 40 percent of gun sales are completed without a background check. That helps explain why the most oft-cited study on Brady, published in 2000 by the highly respected scholars Philip Cook of Duke University and Jens Ludwig of the University of Chicago, did not find conclusive evidence that it had reduced homicides. “I suspect Brady probably was helpful. How much, I don’t know,” says Daniel Webster, the lead author of the Missouri study.

The other, bigger obstacle is purely political. New gun laws aren’t going to pass Congress this year—they’re not even on the agenda. But if the folks at the Brady Campaign know anything, it’s that reform takes time. The current, loophole-plagued background check law languished for a decade while advocates fought with the National Rifle Association and its allies in Congress. The effort looked moribund more than once. But they kept chipping away at the political resistance, helping to elect a president who would sign it in 1992 and finally shepherding the bill through Congress in 1993. A similar campaign is underway now and Friday’s event is a part of it.
​

SOURCE

 

[QueEx]

Repeal of Missouri's Background Check Law
Associated with Increase in State's Murders​

Study to be published in the of Journal of Urban Health, finds
that the law's repeal was associated with an additional
to 63 murders per year in Missouri between 2008 and 2012​

February 17, 2014

Missouri's 2007 repeal of its permit-to-purchase (PTP) handgun law, which required all handgun purchasers to obtain a license verifying that they have passed a background check, contributed to a sixteen percent increase in Missouri's murder rate, according to a new study from researchers with the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research.

The study, to be published in a forthcoming issue of Journal of Urban Health, finds that the law's repeal was associated with an additional 55 to 63 murders per year in Missouri between 2008 and 2012.

State-level murder data for the time period 1999-2012 were collected and analyzed from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system. The analyses controlled for changes in policing, incarceration, burglaries, unemployment, poverty, and other state laws adopted during the study period that could affect violent crime.

The increase in murders with firearms in Missouri began in the first full year after the PTP handgun law was repealed when data from crime gun traces revealed simultaneous large increases in the number of guns diverted to criminals and in guns purchased in Missouri that were subsequently recovered by police in border states that retained their PTP laws.

"This study provides compelling confirmation that weaknesses in firearm laws lead to deaths from gun violence," said Daniel Webster, ScD, MPH, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research and the study's lead author. "There is strong evidence to support the idea that the repeal of Missouri's handgun purchaser licensing law contributed to dozens of additional murders in Missouri each year since the law was changed."

Webster and colleagues found that the spike in murders in Missouri following the PTP handgun law repeal only occurred for murders in Missouri committed with a firearm and was widespread across the state's counties. F**ollowing the change in Missouri's gun laws, none of the states bordering Missouri experienced significant increases in murder rates and the U.S. murder rate actually declined by over five percent. The researchers also analyzed annual data from death certificates through 2010 compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and determined that the repeal of Missouri's PTP law was associated with a twenty-three percent increase in firearm homicides rates.

For firearm sales by federally licensed firearm dealers, federal law requires prospective purchasers to pass a criminal background check and sellers to maintain records of the sale. But federal law and laws in most states exempt these regulations when the firearm seller is unlicensed. The researchers suggest that universal background checks and firearm purchaser licensing affect homicide rates by reducing the availability of guns to criminals and other prohibited groups.

"Because many perpetrators of homicide have backgrounds that would prohibit them from possessing firearms under federal law, they seek out private sellers to acquire their weapons," said study author Jon Vernick, JD, MPH, deputy director for the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research. "Requiring a background check on all gun sales is a commonsense approach to reducing gun violence that does not infringe upon the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding gun owners."

Only fifteen states require individuals purchasing handguns from unlicensed sellers to pass background checks, with ten of these states requiring all purchasers to acquire a permit-to-purchase license. A 2013 public opinion survey from Johns Hopkins found the majority of Americans (89 percent) and gun owners (84 percent) support requiring a background check system for all gun sales. The majority of Americans (77 percent) and gun owners (59 percent) also reported supporting requiring people to obtain a license from a local law-enforcement agency before buying a gun to verify their identity and ensure that they are not legally prohibited from having a gun.

Cassandra Kercher Crifasi is also an author of "Effect of Missouri's Repeal of Its Handgun Purchaser Licensing Law on Homicides." The research was supported by the Joyce Foundation.

Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research media contact: Alicia Samuels: alsamuel@jhsph.edu or 914 720 4635.

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health media contact: Tim Parsons at 410-955-7619 or tmparson@jhsph.edu.
​

SOURCE

 

[thoughtone]

 

[Greed]

Surge in luxury shooting ranges caters to new gun culture

Surge in luxury shooting ranges caters to new gun culture
‘We’re an entertainment complex, if you will,’ Lock & Load's manager says
By Jason Sickles, Yahoo | Yahoo News
Wed, Mar 12, 2014

FRISCO, Texas — It’s the lunch hour on a recent Wednesday, and pricey sedans outnumber pickups parked at the crowded parking lot of the indoor Frisco Gun Club.

Mercedes, BMW, Lexus — they're all here.

Inside the club, men sit in leather chairs and do business over a gourmet lunch.

A middle-aged woman browses a spacious shopping area and eyes a purse designed to conceal a handgun.

The club’s marketing manager talks up a future pizza-and-pistol family night promotion.

All the while, less than 100 feet away, more than a dozen shooters blast targets on ranges where a state-of-the-art ventilation system purifies the air.

Take note Elmer Fudd — this is definitely not your granddaddy's good ol’ boy retreat.

“It’s like a country club,” said Jason Tanaka, a 40-year-old mortgage executive who skipped lunch to put 100 rounds through his new semi-automatic pistol.

While the $12 million Frisco Gun Club bills itself as the “nation's premiere indoor shooting range,” it is certainly not alone. In gun-friendly locales from the Rocky Mountains to Miami and Vegas to Virginia, more than a dozen “guntry clubs” have gone into business in the past three years.

“They are popping up more often now than they did five years ago,” said Zach Snow, promotions manager with the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), which represents the industry’s manufacturers and dealers.

Frisco Gun Club, a posh 43,000-square-foot facility located in the heart of an affluent Dallas suburb, sold 2,400 memberships before opening its doors this past Thanksgiving.

“One of the differences from your typical gun range is when you walk in this building, is it feels a little more like walking into a high-end department store,” said Brandon Johnson, the club’s vice president of marketing.

It’s a stark contrast to legacy shooting ranges. Many of those are relegated to warehouse districts or are outdoors on the fringes of town.

Not so for these clubs. Lock & Load Miami is nestled among galleries and museums in the city’s Wynwood Arts District. The Centennial Gun Club is minutes from the Denver Tech Center and training facilities for the Denver Broncos and Colorado Avalanche. Strip Gun Club in Las Vegas is 59 steps from the Stratosphere Casino, Hotel & Tower.

The boom in luxury shooting ranges comes during a polarizing time in the country’s gun ownership debate. Last October, a Gallup poll found that the nation remains divided over passing stricter gun laws. But firearms sales spiked to an all-time high in 2013 as Congress and several states wrangled with imposing tighter restrictions on gun purchases in the wake of Sandy Hook and other mass shootings.

Jimmy Taylor, a sociology professor at Ohio University and author “American Gun Culture,” said the best estimates are that there are more than 200 million working firearms in circulation, with close to 40 percent of U.S. households reporting owning guns.

“It makes sense with that big of a market that it would happen,” Taylor said of the premiere ranges.

Nor is he surprised that people are craving a country club feel.

“By default societies specialize more, we differentiate more, we have a tendency to put things in some sort of rank order,” Taylor said.

Josh Sugarmann, executive director at the Violence Policy Center, disputes the 40 percent figure, saying other research shows household gun ownership being closer to 33 percent and continuing to decline.

“They are constantly trying to find new avenues to increase gun sales and to normalize gun ownership, not just to adults but to children,” said Sugarmann, adding that luxury ranges are still a risk for injury and lead contamination. “It's kind of like turning strip clubs into gentleman's clubs — it's still at its core the same concerns and the same dangers.”

Despite their opulence and VIP offerings, most of these new ranges are open to the public. Retail sales, service and memberships are how they make their money.

“What better way can you create a memorable corporate event, host a club meeting, or kick-start a bachelor party than with fully automatic weapons?” Shooters World in Tampa asks on its website.

Annual memberships vary from $200 to $800 based on benefits and any monthly dues. The most elite facilities, like Frisco and Centennial, also offer VIP packages with one-time initiation costs of $7,500 and $9,250, respectively, and monthly dues of $200.

Depending on the range, premium customers are likely to get access to private shooting lanes, concierge treatment, executive lounges, complimentary gun cleaning, cigar rooms and other pampering.

“We’re still growing and getting new members every week,” said Richard Abramson, Centennial’s general manager.

That’s not to say the new clubs are just for the wealthy. Part of the trend is being attributed to what some in the industry call “Gun Culture 2.0,” a new generation of nonhunting firearms owners that is more diverse, independent and socially active. A recent study by the NSSF found that new target shooters are increasingly younger, female and urban.

“We’ve seen a whole new market get into firearms ownership,” said NSSF’s Snow.

Demetra Caston, a 33-year-old mom, wife and graduate student who took up target shooting a year ago, recalled going to other ranges before Frisco Gun Club opened.

“They were real kind of dark and dingy, so to speak,” she said. “In all honesty, it was intimidating.”

Snow likens the customer service and layouts at the ritzier ranges to that of an Apple store.

“I wouldn’t say really glamour,” he said. “It’s just trying to put together a cleaner, more professional image than what has been the normal range, retail layout.”

Concrete floors and polished metal decor give Lock & Load Miami a nightclub feel.

“We’re in the middle of an entertainment area, we’re an entertainment complex, if you will,” said general manager Mike Pryor.

The range, which opened in September, offers memberships to shooters who pass background checks and complete safety orientations. Nonmembers can’t bring their own guns but may buy packages to shoot an assortment of fully automatic rifles.

Pryor said that 20 people, including two women from Singapore, were waiting for the range to open last Thursday so they could purchase one of the machine gun packages, which are priced from $82.50 for the “Cadet” to $545 for the “Automatic Gratification.” The shoots are supervised one-on-one by former military or law enforcement officers.

“We don’t want to just hand them a gun and just say ‘here,’” said Pryor, a retired Miami Beach police officer. “We make it an experience. We want them to get some real world-type training.”

From member polo shirts in Miami to filet mignon in Texas to scheduling shoots via an iPhone app in Denver, many are starting to ask, are guns the new golf?

“A lot of people who have joined here have given up their golf country club membership in lieu of doing this," said Johnson, whose Frisco club restaurant features an executive chef.

Frisco Gun Club doesn’t permit shooters younger than 8 but is planning a promotion where a family of four can get a pizza, drinks, a rental handgun and time on the range for about $90.

“We're going to compare it to, ‘Hey, you could go out to the movies with the family or you could go bowling with the family or you can come do this with the family,’ and the price is pretty competitive,” Johnson said.

The promotion is proof that the U.S. is too careless about guns, said Sugarmann with the Violence Policy Center.

“Only with guns can we have a conversation with a straight face about bringing 8-year-olds, 10-year-olds into a situation where you have lethal weaponry passing hands, being used to fire at targets, even full auto,” he said. “If we were talking about alcohol, smoking or any other product, people would say there's something wrong with that. But because it's guns, it is viewed as being different.”

Caston said she supports the family night concept, but doesn’t think her 9- and 7-year-old daughters are ready for the range. Instead, she plans on enrolling them in Frisco Gun Club’s “The Eddie Eagle” class, an NRA-sponsored program that teaches young children important steps to take if they find a gun.

“I want to get them a little more training before we get going,” Caston said. “But I think it's a great idea because of the way that the club is set up, it's easier to bring your children and family.”

http://news.yahoo.com/surge-in-luxury-shooting-clubs-caters-to-new-gun-culture-145240612.html

 

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If this ain't Nazi, then I don't know what is!

 

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Piers Morgan Ends CNN Run With Gun Control
Plea: 'I Want More of You to Stay Alive'​

The "Piers Morgan Live" host signed off by dismissing critics who have called his
positions anti-American and slamming the NRA: "More guns doesn't mean less crime."​

<iframe width='416' height='234' src='http://www.cnn.com/video/api/embed.html#/video/showbiz/2014/03/29/pmt-piers-morgan-final-thoughts.cnn' frameborder='0'></iframe>
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http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/piers-morgan-ends-cnn-run-692009