In June 2010 the Supreme Court struck down Chicago’s gun bans. Predictions about Chicago running red with blood in the streets (not sure what they thought was already happening) and turning into the wild wild west (that probably would have been better than what was currently happening in Chicago).
Chicago Mayor Daley predicted the following:
Overturning the gun ban was “a very frightening decision” and predicted more deaths along with Wild West-style shootouts and that people “are going to take a gun and they are going to end their lives in a family dispute.” . . .
Well, it didn’t happen. Time and time again (Virginia’s firearms in restaurants) we’ve seen more guns equals less crime. John Lott, author of “More Guns, Less Crime” analyzed the crime rates in Chicago before and after the gun ban was struck down.
See the rest of John Lott’s analysis of Chicago and DC after their gun bans were lifted:
Read the thoughts of Sgt. Brian Singer, stationed in Iraq, on gun-free zones. Seems like he understands that when you create a gun free zone you only dis-arm the law-abiding citizens and DO NOT dis-arm criminals. Sounds familiar . . .
“The tragic results of victim disarmament were made real with the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas. If this were a moral and proper world, as soon as the suspect, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, drew his weapon, every person in the building would have had their sights leveled on him.”
See full story here.
If you are interested in seeing civilians who have been forced into using their firearm for self defense, then you should check out the Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog by Clayton Cramer and David Burnett. They document cases where firearms have prevented a crime, or serious injury or death to themselves or others. It’s nice to see the stories where the good guys win–because we definitely don’t see it enough in the news on tv.
Many of you probably have already read about how 90% of the guns recovered in Mexico come from the U.S. Several people, including President Obama and his administration have used this as an excuse to increase the gun laws in the United States.
I have a couple of thoughts on the matter:
1. I have never heard Mexico start talking about how they should increase drug laws in Mexico becuase 90% of the drugs recovered in the U.S. come from Mexico. (Ok . . . so I don’t actually know the percentage but it’s got to be high–and they don’t care AT ALL about the drugs in the U.S.)
2. Let’s look a little more at drugs–they are illegal already but it obviously hasn’t made it difficult to get drugs. It’s pretty obvious that if people want them they can get them. It’s already illegal to transport guns into Mexico. They don’t care about the law–otherwise they would obey the laws we already have.
3. They don’t want the low powered semi-auto guns we have in the U.S. They want high powered fully automatic rifles, hand grenades, rocket launchers, and other military weapons which are either HIGHLY regulated and extremely expensive, or outright illegal and impossible to legally obtain.
4. Why don’t we let Mexico deal with people bringing stuff into their country that they don’t want. These guys buy guns from all over the place–Russia, China, South American, etc. because they can get fully automatic weapons and real military weapons on the black market. They even go to their very own government. (See article in the last issue of American Rifleman where the Mexican Police recovered body armor that was stolen from the Mexican Police–you can also read about how a large percentage of the Mexican military quit and left with their M16 that the Mexican military received from the U.S.–so we gave it to them and then they steal it from themselves)
5. The 90% statistic is bogus. A brief summary of where it comes from–when Mexico recovers firearms they analyze the gun themselves. If it looks like it’s from the States then they send it to the BATFE for tracing. Mexico has a pretty good idea (based on serial numbers) so really all the 90% number says is that Mexico is really good at guessing which guns come from the U.S. and which guns do not. In reality the number of guns is closer to 15-30% based on which report you look at.
I don’t like U.S. guns ending up in Mexico–but for a very different reason. That means that it was taken out of the hands of an American who could put it to good use in my country. Let’s worry putting back together our country before we start trying to control what happens in other countries. And believe me–we have plenty to fix in our own country.
Read more here and here.
The Attorney General Eric Holder just announced that Obama will seek to renew the Clinton assault weapon ban. Part of the reasoning was to help keep the automatic machine guns and grenades out of Mexico. What really doesn’t make sense is that grenades ARE illegal for citizens and fully automatic machine guns are extremely regulated and hard to come by. The few I’ve seen available for sale were $15,000 or more. How is this going to be reduced by banning semi-automatic firearms? The logic makes no sense to me. And if Mexico doesn’t want our guns, then tell them to keep their drugs out of America. New laws aren’t going to make criminals all of a sudden decide to obey the law. It’s illegal to transfer guns into Mexico already. It’s illegal to give them to criminals already. It’s illegal to use them for illegal purposes already. But none of this has stopped the criminals yet. So why would new laws change their minds. And don’t think that by taking them away from law abiding citizens that it will really be that hard for criminals to get them. Like I already mentioned, grenades are already illegal. Drugs are illegal. But that doesn’t stop determined criminals from getting them. Why don’t we focus our time and attention on CRIMINALS instead of taking away freedoms and liberties from law abiding citizens. Stop thrashing the constitution and leave our freedoms, our liberties, and our guns alone.
I just finished a History channel show on the bank robbery that happened in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, on February 28th, 1997. It was on a couple weeks ago on the History channel, but with a DVR you can watch stuff like this when you have some free time. So tonight was the night. Essentially it was a 45 minute shootout between 2 psychos and a bunch of cops. The documentary walked through the horrific event–something no one should ever have to go through.
One thing was I wish it would have focused more on the 2 gunmen before the incident–it did walk through a little about each of them, but there has to be a lot more to the story. Both had issues with the law before they robbed their first bank–from what I could tell the North Hollywood robbery was at least their 2nd bank robbery. Either way, it seems like there were signs that these 2 pyschos were headed for trouble.
One thing that I feel we should do to help reduce crime is to punish criminals harder. Almost all of the gun control in this country simply focuses on punishing law abiding citizens, not criminals. It won’t solve all of our problems, but there’s a whole bunch of laws in this country that are merely a slap on the wrist if you are caught breaking one of them. If we focused on key laws (violent offenses, robbery, homicide, etc.) and gave real sentences, then half of these criminals wouldn’t be walking the streets months after being convicted.
Either way, in this tragic event, it proves a lot about how criminals act. These men modified an AK47 to fire fully automatically. They hand made their own body amour. They were willing to kill even if people followed their instructions. They were vicious psychos who were determined to get through life with shortcuts at the expense of innocent people. Luckily, the two criminals were the only ones who were killed during the event, but there were 10 police officers and 7 civilians who were shot, some who still have health issues from the incident today.
I hope we can all learn from this event and find real ways of stopping these types of criminals before they do something like this. Or at least provide ways for people to defend themselves if they are ever caught in a situation like this.
You can find a brief clip on what happened here.
