Alphecca

Weekly Check on the Bias

The "dog-days of Summer" are here and the news gets a little slow. None-the-less, Welcome to the August 16th edition of the Weekly Check on the Bias of media regarding guns and the Second Amendment.

This week wraps-up the series of photos taken by Robert Langham, most for the Texas State Rifle Association Calendar. Actually though, here's one of the artist/photographer himself:

And here are two more pictures, each preceded by his commentary. Note that the first is not for the calendar but was simply a quick snap at an event he coached:

We'd like you to sign up your teenager for a sport. This is both a team sport and an individual sport. In this activity your teen will learn and be required to move from place to place on a 600 yard sporting field with a fairly complex set of sports equipment. They will be required to master that equipment in every way. They will learn to displace from yardline to yardline under time limits with all their gear while listening to and following rigorous instructions from the referees. This sport will require them to develop concentration, organization, and discipline to a high degree. This is a timed sport. They will be under constant mentoring, coaching, and scrutiny of adults who themselves will be ranked according to their expertise in this sport. They will learn not only their sport but the rules and scoring of their sport. They will receive constant feedback in real time on their every turn at this sport, and exactly evaluate and score others. They will even learn to evaluate weather conditions which might affect their performance. While doing this they will also be responsible for feeding, watering, and sunblocking themselves during these all day events. At the end of the day winners will be declared, based on their performance.

All sports equipment alluded to will be provided for free. Your teenager will be paid to go to the weeklong National Matches in August. This sport has never had a fatality and even the smallest of chance of minor injury is rare. Be assured that they are safer doing this sport than in a public school classroom.

Now, who wants to sign their teenager up for Junior NRA Highpower rifle?

Here is Katie Wilkins shooting at the Texas Highpower Championship at Waco.

Now THIS is excessive. I pulled this photo out of thin air. Two .22 pistols, a Dan Wesson I paid too much for and a Ruger Mk I that my dad gave me in the 60s. They are on a chair next to my reloading bench. Accessory tray miraculously floating in from one side and a shot up target. I used one silver card, bent, catching the late sunlight coming in. Custom light balance, Coolpix handheld. I hated it but I used a Leatherman tool (he's on the "do-not-resuscitate" list after backing Kerry), and some various bits and pieces. The tin lid that all the cleaning stuff is in is a 30 round .50 cal can top from 1945. That's what they gave us one day to shoot at Ft Hood shooting Barretts.

Photo set up and shoot time, less than 10 mins.

With Congress on Summer break and not all that much happening in the news, gun-wise, things are calm on the Second Amendment front. One story I mentioned on Sunday deserves another since it shows the real difference between how the large liberal newspapers view firearms ownership and how smaller ones located away from the leftist coasts write. From the Durango Herald:

...Durango's fondness for guns today is a legacy of that Wild West. Guns are inextricably bound to La Plata County's culture, past as well as present.

Just ask Megan Westervelt, a recent graduate of Durango High School: "Our whole history is guns. We're here where we are because of guns."

Today, you'll find at least one gun in about 75 percent of all homes in the county, Sheriff Duke Schirard says.

Schirard handily won office in 1994 in an election decided partly over concealed weapons. Shortly after he took over, the sheriff issued the highest percentage of concealed-weapons permits in the state. Now, he tallies 675 permits countywide.

"We're just Second Amendment kind of people around here," Schirard says.

Guns figured in 58 percent of Colorado's murders in 2003, as well as in the town's one homicide this year: April's fatal shooting of Lori "Star" Sutherland.

But thousands of guns are employed for hunting elk, shooting skeet, blasting prairie dogs and warding off coyotes.

"Farmers and ranchers still view guns as just another tool they use," says state Sen. Jim Isgar, D-Hesperus.

Westerners grow up with firearms, trading BB guns for rifles as they reach adulthood. Fathers pass to sons, and now mothers pass to daughters, the art of shooting. Over time, firearms become family heirlooms.

Incidentally, if the coastal-elites think of Durango as some "hick Western town" they would be astoundingly wrong. With a population of almost 15 thousand, the average home price there (I looked it up) is $176,000. In any event, County Sheriff Duke Schirard sounds like my kind of cop; one who believes that an armed populace only helps support local law enforcement.

The next story in today's hit parade is about pistol-packing gays. It comes from the Miami Herald:

''I love this one, because the bullets just fly out and you don't have to reload,'' he said, ejecting a clip from a nickel-plated .45-caliber semiautomatic Smith & Wesson.

"And if some redneck decides he's going to harass or harm me, he'll be thinking twice about it pretty quickly.''

Raised in rural Pennsylvania, Jackson is an avid hunter who keeps a gun on his boat, in his car, and on his Harley-Davidson motorcycle. But he's allowed his membership to the National Rifle Association to lapse since he heard about the Pink Pistols.

In fact, Jackson wants to start a local chapter of the nationwide organization of gay gun owners who believe that packing heat reduces their chances of becoming hate-crime victims.

The Pink Pistols have more than 7,000 members in the United States and British Columbia, many of whom feel alienated from conservative gun rights organizations like the NRA.

[...]

''A lot of gay people want to feel protected, but when I first tell them about the Pistols, they laugh hysterically for five minutes,'' Jackson said. 'When I ask them, `Why haven't you considered getting a gun?' they just say, 'Well, because I'm gay!' ''

''It's a ridiculous stereotype,'' he said. ``That we're too queeny or that guns scare us. I don't have to be straight to have good aim.''

I have long maintained that minorities who feel or are threatened should be the first ones supporting the Second Amendment and (since they usually vote for liberals) demanding that the Democratic Party drop all this "common sense" gun-control nonsense.

One sour note: He dropped his NRA membership. I think that is wrong. Look, I link to both the NRA and the Pink Pistols and a lot of other Pro-2A groups and support them all. Obviously, as a commentator on the Cam Edwards show, I'm not exactly objective BUT, the fact is that there would be no Pink Pistols if it weren't for the National Rifle Association because it is the NRA, as the "600 pound gorilla" lobbying organization that has spent about 134 years fighting for all of our gun rights. If they didn't exist, we would all have been disarmed a long time ago. All organizations supporting our gun rights deserve OUR support.

Turning South of the border, apparently because Mexico makes it tough to own guns, only the criminals have guns... From the Brownsville Herald (TX):

Mexico’s strict gun control laws are contributing to an illegal gun market and easier access to weapons, according to U.S. law enforcement officials that are close observers of a recent upswing in border violence.

Since January, more than 600 people have been killed in an ongoing war between rival drug cartels using high-powered handguns and assault rifles fighting for control of drug smuggling routes on the Texas-Mexico border.

Federal gun seizures show that a majority of weapons used in violent crimes in Mexico were smuggled into the country from the United States or bought through other sources in a lucrative black market.

Mexican law requires its citizens to apply for a permit from the Secretary of National Defense (SEDENA) before they can buy a handgun or rifle for hunting or self-defense.

[...]

At the same time, Mexican law also prohibits gun owners from carrying their weapons in public...

[...]

Ignacio Corona, a Mexican and Latin American Cultures professor at Ohio State University, said those and other gun laws put Mexico’s honest citizens at a disadvantage.

“All the weapons are in the hands of the bad guys,” he said.
But at the same time, Corona said it is difficult to predict how changes in Mexico’s gun laws would change the situation.

“If it was more lax,” he said, “perhaps it would be worse because there is no education in the culture on how to use the guns properly.”

Well now. Since the American and Mexican border patrols can't seem to keep objects the size of -- oh, let's say "humans" -- from crossing over, how could they possibly keep smaller things such as guns from entering Mexico. And by the way, since the flood of people is only in one direction, North, it would seem it is Mexicans themselves who are supplying the illegal marketplace with firearms as they return to their country. We can already surmise that most of those guns were stolen.

I suspect that changes in Mexico's gun laws wouldn't change much at all since it is (as it is everywhere else in the world) the "bad guys" as Corona puts it that are causing all the mayhem. Still, it would be nice if the law-abiding were able to protect themselves.

The tone of this article seems to suggest that it is lax gun laws in the US that cause gun problems in Mexico. NO, it is criminals in Mexico that cause crime in Mexico. Still, that argument seems to be de rigueur these days as Canada wants to blame the US, too:

While the country's violent crime rate is dropping, the number of gang-related killings in the past decade has jumped threefold.

Two more men were killed in Toronto over the weekend and two teenagers were left wounded. So far this year, 34 people have been shot to death in Canada's largest city.

Both Toronto police and Mayor David Miller blame the flow of illegal firearms from the United States. But statistics obtained by The Globe and Mail suggest federal border guards are seizing fewer firearms than in previous years.

The Canada Border Services Agency says it has intercepted only 318 guns so far this year.

So let's see, gang violence is escalating in Toronto and the police chief and the mayor there blame the US. Notice that they aren't blaming the street gangs! Yet, the Canadian border patrol says it's intercepting fewer guns coming from the US. In one of the more inane arguments offered:

The president of the Coalition for Gun Control, Wendy Cukier, says the numbers need to be taken with a grain of salt.

"What's down is the number of guns seized. You have to be careful because that's a small percentage of the guns coming into the country," she explained to CTV.

Cukier, who is also a professor of justice studies at Ryerson University, suggests that border officials may be so preoccupied with other priorities such as nabbing terror suspects crossing the border, they're missing the gun smugglers.

First of all, I think it's again safe to say that any flow of terrorists isn't coming FROM the US into Canada but FROM Canada into the US. So, if the Canadian border patrol is looking for terrorists, their efforts are probably wasted. Regardless, if they open someone's car trunk and see guns, I doubt very much they'll say, "Well, he isn't Islamic" and let him pass without requiring some explanation for the guns. At least Cukier has the sense to admit that almost half of the guns recovered from crime scenes have been traced to Canadian citizens.

What both Mexico and Canada should be focusing on is the mutants, the drug-cartels and the street gangs and ridding themselves of both. THAT will reduce the market for stolen illegal firearms and the criminal misuse of them.

The US rightly doesn't blame Canada for all the marijuana coming from there but instead works to prevent it. As US Ambassador to Canada David Wilkins puts it:

Ontario should be looking closer at its own security when it complains about illegal weapons being smuggled from the United States, the new American ambassador said Thursday.

"That is a shared responsibility," David Wilkins said after a private meeting with Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty. "I've heard more than one Canadian official say it's mostly Canadians bringing the guns across. Not hundreds of thousands at a time, but three or four at a time."

Exactly. Much as the Mexican and Canadian governments would appreciate it if the US banned gun ownership, the problems in their own countries are (as usual) about enforcement of existing laws. Incidentally, even as Canada continues to enact draconian gun control measures and harrass the law-abiding gun owners with the 2-billion dollar over-budget firearm registry, gun clubs are experiencing growth. From the Brandon Sun (CA):

Curt Amey and his club have increased interest and increased membership, so they’re celebrating by firing their guns in the air.

Amey, along with many others, has watched the Brandon Gun Club enjoy a resurgence this year and a major boom in its enrollment. Amey, the club’s president, says membership has increased from 27 members a year ago to 111 this summer.

“We took it a new direction of making it more fun,” Amey said of the club, located just a few minutes south of Brandon. “We went out and rallied up some people knocking door-to-door that like to hunt and like to shoot but have never come out to the club before. We changed the direction of the club from people who just want to shoot trap to being able to shoot just about anything you want.”

That type of initiative would help any struggling gun club.

This might be called the "spanning the globe" edition of the Weekly Report. In another story I first reported on last Friday, some folks in Russia admire US gun laws:

Successful use of long-stemmed guns is depressingly rare. Burglars have already broken in while you're still fiddling with the key to the case to get hold of your favorite gun. It is not allowed to carry such guns, or have them assembled and uncovered in a car. As for a "rubber bullet" pistol, an attempt to use it for self-defense often only infuriates the attacker.

As a result, the public in Russia is increasingly leaning towards a more liberal law on weapons. For the last half a year the State Duma has been discussing the possibility of giving the people real firearms, as is done in the United States, for one.

American statistics are the main argument of Russian firearms advocates. According to the U.S. Justice Department, 34% of all criminals were wounded or detained by armed civilians, while 40% have altogether given up an idea of an attack for fear of reciprocal fire. In those states that allow citizens to carry concealed arms, the level of murders is lower by 33 %, and of robberies by 37%.

Advocates of legalizing firearms in Russia often refer to the experience of neighboring Latvia: After the relevant law was adopted, street crime dropped by 80%, and the Latvian police force has been cut.

As the editorial points out, Russia makes it very difficult to obtain a license to buy and own a firearm and then requires it to be kept under lock & key. No word yet from England and Australia, where guns have been all but prohibited and crime has skyrocketed.

San Francisco take note!

As always, your comments are welcome and I'll be on Cam's later today. Thanks for stopping by!

Posted by Jeff Soyer at August 16, 2005 11:40 AM