Gun Culture = American Culture

Deutsch: Georgische Reiter in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, London (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is from Frank Miniter writing in Forbes read it all and then come back and we’ll talk some.

When Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley (D) signed sweeping gun-control legislation into law last week he finished a mistake that is anti-business, that weakens an individual right and that attacks an iconic image of the self-made American, someone who stands for what was once called the “American way.”

O’Malley’s support for gun-control is certainly founded in politics in his very blue state, but it’s also based on a misunderstanding of America. First, the legislation Governor O’Malley signed will—after October 1—ban 45 specific types of commonly owned semi-automatic firearms, mandate the reporting of lost or stolen firearms and ban the sale, manufacture, purchase or transfer of magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The NRA says it will go to court to argue that portions of the law are unconstitutional.

Beretta Holding, which manufactures firearms in Accokeek, Maryland, put out a press release last week that says, “The question now facing the Beretta Holding companies in Maryland is this: What effect will the passage of this law—and the efforts of Maryland government officials to support its passage—have on our willingness to remain in this State?” Beretta then hints at an answer to this question: “Prior to introduction of this legislation the three Beretta Holding companies located in Maryland were experiencing growth in revenues and jobs and had begun expansion plans in factory and other operations. The idea now of investing additional funds in Maryland and thus rewarding a Government that has insulted our customers and our products is offensive to us so we will take steps to evaluate such investments in other States.”[...]

To understand this mistake, consider the Beretta man. He has a shotgun that’s a work of art. It might be an over/under with a grainy walnut stock, blued metal and engravings of a bird dog and maybe a pheasant on its receiver. Or it might be a semi-automatic Benelli (a Beretta-owned company) with a carbon-fiber stock and inertia-driven action. In either case, the Beretta man stands with his back straight and the shotgun in the crook of his arm. He is wearing a shooting vest and shooting glasses. He has class. He is how James Bond would look if he went skeet shooting. He’s sophisticated, but hardly a snob. He has what the Spanish call duende, a characteristic James Michener said is almost indefinable, as it means something with taste, refinement, beauty, perfection and elegance all in just the right proportion and with no showiness at all. He is what the Japanese mean when they use the word shibui, which is something a Samurai tried to embody, but only could manage in fleeting moments when life and art meet before again separating with a bad gesture or misstep.

Of course, he isn’t any more real than James Bond. But what archetype is? He’s an American icon men want to be. He’s an ideal never reached but, if you do everything right, might be you for just a manly moment when you shoot a perfect round and thereby master yourself. In that moment a Spaniard might proclaim, “Gracia.” This is another word that deals not with things but with the essence of things and so is fleeting in an empirical age that trusts science to answer everything for us while disdaining the effervescent quality of philosophy. Though now misunderstood by op-ed writers at The New York Times, even the fashion set is aware of the Beretta man. Beretta, after all, has stores in Milan, Paris, London and New York. Oh, there’s one in Dallas, too.

Of course, there is also a Beretta woman. Her lines of clothing are just as iconic. Though she doesn’t follow the modern protocol for what a woman should look like to be sexy, Beretta’s attire on a lady with an over/under shotgun can make the Beretta man forget himself more than any Kardashian ever could.

Beretta was founded in 1526, a year before Machiavelli died. Beretta is still family owned. Beretta saw Michelangelo, Casanova and Mussolini go. They actually have a castle, the Beretta Castle. They set a standard and hold onto it.

During a tour of its Maryland plant last winter Matteo Recanatini, web & social media manager for Beretta in the U.S., said to me, “The Beretta family approves every clothing design, every tweak to every firearm. They’re conscious that the Beretta image is iconic, an ideal. Everything has to perfectly fit that image and to function flawlessly.”

Matteo, an Italian, was acknowledging there is a different way of looking at guns and American gun culture than some blue-state politicians suggest. This image is what President Barack Obama tried to represent when the White House leaked a photo of him “shooting skeet” with a shotgun held too horizontal for skeet shooting and with a choke missing from the bottom barrel (it takes two for skeet)—clear signs the shot was a stunt. Instead of being the Beretta man, Obama became a laughable parody of something he doesn’t understand, but at least on some level he knows such an archetype exists.

What he doesn’t seem to grasp is that, to people who want to be a Beretta man, or a Winchester man, or a Colt man … guns aren’t a negative thing; they’re a manly a thing a real man knows how to use safely and well. And therein lies the political miscalculation of anti-gun-freedom politicians.

And that’s all true and very real but, there is more to it as well. The profile of the old Colt Single Action Army, or the Winchester lever action are iconic of the American cowboy and settler (and even Indian) all over the world. These were world-class weapons, heck they were the class of the world, anybody wanting the best arms for their people bought American, they still do. Nobody uses an AK if they can get an M-16. And in fact the Peacemaker and the Winchester were as good or better than what the Army was using at the time.

But they are icons of the America I remember, men who were real men, who did what needed doing (with a fair amount of b*tching) but never a whine. And you know what, what they had they earned, from the Stetson hat that cost a half a months pay, to the woman that they were loyal to (and was just as loyal to them). They got what they earned, good or bad, and they made of America a legend, that from Grand Duke Alexei of Russia hunting with Buffalo Bill to Kaiser Wilhelm dreaming of being a cowboy after being forced to abdicate after World War I, the movies showed it of course, with men like the Duke, but it goes back to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in the 19th century. Before that it was the legend of men like Davy Crockett, Travis and company at the Alamo, and before that the men with Kentucky rifles who told the most powerful empire in the world to go pound sand. And made it stick. And it showed the world what it was to be that special thing, an American.

But guns are special, once they became reliable, they replaced the knife in America, even the legendary Bowie knife and we never looked back. There’s a couple of things about them. Cause there is something else that appeals, at least to me, and I’ll bet a host of others. It’s the elegance of fine engineering, when you handle that Benelli Shotgun, Winchester Rifle, Colt or Beretta handgun, you are handling a finely designed, and manufactured item. The fine fit of a gun is like few things mass-produced in the world, it fits and it works, without slop, every time. Almost every gun I’ve shot over the years would put a bullet within a 1/60th of a degree of where I aimed it. And I’ve fired rifles that would do much better, good enough to win multi-state marksmanship championships. I know they did because my uncle won, beating another one of my uncles to win it.

There’s nothing in a car like it, it would be like buying a Ferrari for the price of a Ford. That’s how good a standard American gun is. And if you can find anything manufactured more beautiful than blue steel mated to American walnut, well, I haven’t seen it. American guns are just plain working works of art, which is why traditionally one of the state presents given to foreign leaders by American presidents are American guns. Mostly specially engraved Colt revolvers and Winchester rifles.

They symbolize what we are better than anything else could, beautiful, mass-produced works of art designed for and by a free people.

Are there any more American manufacturing legends than Colonel Colt, Henry Winchester, Dr. Gatling, or John Moses Browning. Not that I know of except maybe Eli Whitney who pioneered interchangeable parts on the Springfield musket of 1795 and perfected it by the model of 1815.

Bob Owens wrote about this as well at Another journalist gets it: the gun culture is America’s soul « Bob Owens.

Even more than the eagle; guns, especially civilian arms, are the icon of the free American

No wonder they want to take them away from us.

Related articles

• Fed Up, Beretta Promises They Will Leave Maryland (thetruthaboutguns.com)
• Bye, Bye Beretta (powerlineblog.com)

Another Bad Week For King Barack I

American Black Vulture Coragyps atratus, one of the species covered under the treaty. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

Well, last week was pretty interesting, wasn’t it? What with Benghazi, the IRS and DOJ v AP, it was not a stellar week for the administration, when the MSM starts talking about Watergate, a Democratic president might want to think rather carefully about the road forward.

Or maybe it’s too late for that, already. Now that the big three are out there, people are starting to talk about other problems, and we all know that “Bad Good things come in threes” or is it “The third time’s the charm”.

Here’s the next three scandals coming up via Marita Noon

[...]

EPA Favors Friendlies

We see favoritism in the EPAs treatment of friendly groups vs. a “concerted campaign to make life more difficult for those deemed unfriendly.” A few days ago, the Washington Examiner reported on the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s (CEI) review of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to see how equally the agency applies its fee waiver policy. The results are shocking.

Chris Horner, Senior Fellow at CEI, told me: “The IRS and EPA revelations are near-identical uses of the state to enable allies and disadvantage opponents. Granting or denying tax-exempt status can make or break a group. The same is true with FOIA fee waivers being tossed like Mardi Gras beads at greens, and denied to opponents of a bigger regulatory state. Fees for FOIA document productions can run into the six-figures.” [...]

Wind farms get a pass

We see the same “startling disparity in treatment” in the way the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act is applied. Under both acts, the death of a single bird—without a permit—is illegal. On May 14, the AP reported on an investigation that showed that nearly 600,000 birds are killed each year by wind farms, including an average of about one golden eagle a month in Converse County, WY—which the AP calls: “one of the deadliest places in the country of its kind.” California’s Altamont Pass wind farms “kill more than 60 per year”—making it the “industry’s deadliest location.”

Yet, “so far, the companies operating industrial-sized turbines here and elsewhere that are killing eagles and other protected birds have yet to be fined or prosecuted—even though every death is a criminal violation. The Obama administration has charged oil companies for drowning birds in their waste pits, and power companies for electrocuting birds on power lines. But the administration has never fined or prosecuted a wind-energy company, even those that flout the law repeatedly.” [...]

Propping up green energy

We see similar favoritism across the bigger energy spectrum. Despite President Obama’s frequent touting of increased domestic oil and gas production, “federal government policies are suppressing development,” says Kathleen Sgamma, Vice-President of Government and Public Affairs for the Western Energy Alliance (WEA). “Unfortunately, the federal government is standing in the way of increasing production of valuable energy resources that could spur further job creation, economic growth, and energy security.” To support her comments, the WEA press release offers the following numbers: “From FY2008 to FY2011 the Bureau of Land Management offered 81% less acreage, which has resulted in a 44% drop in leasing revenue, down from $356 million to $201 million. Nationwide, royalty and leasing revenue have declined 12% from $4.2 billion to $3.7 billion.” Meanwhile production and revenue on private lands increased.

Additionally, despite numerous reports regarding the positive economic impacts and environmental safety of the Keystone pipeline it has been continuously delayed—now for more than 1700 days. On Thursday, the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee passed a bill that, according to theWSJ, “effectively pushes through approval of the 875-mile pipeline by eliminating the need for Mr. Obama to issue a special permit for it.” Transportation committee chair Rep. Bill Shuster said: “After more than four years of bureaucratic delays, this bill will finally allow construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. This project has been studied more than any other project of its kind.”

While federal policies are suppressing traditional energy that is effective, efficient and economical, they are propping up projects that have been repeatedly found to be failures—but that benefit Democratic donors.

Read more on each of these at No Better for Obama Next Week, Either – Marita Noon – Townhall Finance Conservative Columnists and Financial Commentary.

As you can imagine, these scandals are not the big headline makers like messing with the AP. I would argue though, in a country that has the worst employment situation in the last 40+ years, they are at least as important.

The skewing of information publicly has obvious impact on the decision-making process, especially for the public-there’s no reason we should have to commission our own research when it’s already be done. But getting it out of the government costing more in fees than the research is worth is just stupid, especially when the cronies can get it for free.

It’s always amazing how the environmental lobby shuts up when one of its pet projects impacts another, isn’t it? Either the eagles are endangered or they’re not. If the are, the windmills owners and operators need to be prosecuted, like anybody else would be. Or they’re not, in which case they need to be removed from the endangered species act. When these stories come up, it always amazes me how twisted these laws have become since they were proposed by hunters (yes, they were) to make sure there would always be game. And further the energy generated by windmills is of very marginal utility anyway, it can’t be used (almost ever) for base power because the wind is just too undependable.

I don’t have much to add to this, “Unfortunately, the federal government is standing in the way of increasing production of valuable energy resources that could spur further job creation, economic growth, and energy security.” except that the last time I gassed up, I paid $4.09 a gallon, and America only works well with cheap energy.

Still another bad week coming for Obama’s anti-American agenda

 

Related articles

• Benghazi, IRS, The AP And Now… the EPA?! One Scandal Follows Another In Exposing Obama’s Culture Of Discrimination (personalliberty.com)
• Uh oh: Obama’s EPA mistreated conservative groups, too? (theblaze.com)
• Wind farms gets pass on eagle deaths (fuelfix.com)
• Corrupt: Obama’s EPA Waived Fee Requests For Friendly Groups, Denied Conservative Groups (thedaleygator.wordpress.com)
• Environmentalists are killing the US economy (ConservativeActionAlerts.com)
• Begala: I Love To Mock Tea Party’s Fear of BIG GOVERNMENT, But This Time They’re Right (townhall.com)

 

FUBAR or Turbulent Priests

[Carl over at The Hump Day Report is doing an incredible job of keeping up with this mess(link below the fold) much of this is based on his work.]

Well, this is getting very strange as we watch the administration’s wheels come off, it was only a couple of days ago, I was trying to fit in a video of Dennis Kucinich, the very liberal (but honest) Ohio former congressman, talking badly about Obama-now I see little point, in another day or so, i can probably quote Dirty Harry (Reid, that is).

What the most important?

I think in real terms Benghazi, simply because breaking faith with Americans thereby causing their  deaths when you could have arguably done something and then running off for a fundraiser, says really bad things about you.

The one that will give this staying power is probably the AP phone logs because it will help keep it in the press.

The one that will work with the population is the IRS. Is their anybody, anybody, who isn’t afraid of special attention from the IRS? that’ll even get the attention of low information voters.

I see that the acting commissioner of the IRS got fired today. Big whoop. In a few week he was going to time out. And I suspect that it’s going to be very difficult to get anybody confirmed by the Senate for a while, let alone an IRS Commissioner. I doubt St. Matthew could be confirmed right now.

Bookworm did the work on the title comparison. here’s bit of it. Link here.

 I’m willing to bet you never thought of Obama in connection with Henry II (1133-1189).  Henry was the lusty, rowdy, all-conquering (at least initially) 12th century English king who married Eleanor of Aquitaine, the richest, most beautiful woman in Europe; ruled large sections of France; fathered sons who went off on crusades and set put a signature to the first “rights” document ever written; and generally set the stage for England’s prominent role on the world stage for so many centuries.

Obama is the exact opposite — not lusty, not rowdy, terrified of conquest, married to a woman whose primary claim to beauty is her arms, etc.  And yet, there’s a thread that binds them.  I thought of it when I read about the defense Obama-ites are offering when it comes to the really horrible scandal about the IRS targeting conservative groups and Jewish groups, essentially disabling them during Obama’s first term and, especially, in the lead-up to the election.

According to Obama’s defenders, even if one concedes that what the IRS did was a bad thing, Obama shouldn’t be touched by the scandal.  It was not Barack’s fault.  Leave Barack alone!!  The IRS’s version of events is that  “low level” employees committed these tyrannical acts.  The New York Times goes so far as to blame the whole thing on the GOP (and certainly wins the George Orwell “1984″ Reporting Award for doing so).  Message:  this is not Obama’s fault.  Barack Obama himself has gone on record as being surprised and dismayed.

I’m with her on this one. We’re never going to find a directive to the IRS to harass the TEA Party specifically, and conservatives in general signed by Obama. I don’t think he’s Mensa qualified but he ain’t that stupid, and if he was Valerie Jarrett isn’t. But “Who will free me from this turbulent priest always works” in this type of situation with people who have no moral sense, which describes about 98% of this administration.

The way we need to present this is part of Bookworm’s triple play. The Fr. Martin Niemöller part, where she talks about the famous poem, You know:

“First they came for the communists but I wasn’t a communist…”

Yeah, that poem. Make it: First they came for the TEA Party, but I wasn’t a TEA partier, then they came for the….and so on.

What were doing is showing how it undermines the rule of law, and then of course, we highlight again that the IRS is scheduled to be in charge of Obamacare.

If we do it right-it’s a twofer, we help show how Obama is undermining American principle, and we increase (Still further !!) the dislike of Obamacare, and the Libruls.

The third part is how we got Al Capone (Chicago again) on a mostly unrelated charge (income tax evasion in his case) it’s a reminder that a lot of things are illegal, even if you’re the President or the Attorney General.

Does anybody believe without a piece of paper that Holder recused himself (but can’t remember when) from the AP mess? Yeah, me either. Keep digging.

There’s a lot of reputable people saying that the intimidation and political favors went far beyond the IRS by the way. Most mentioned are The Department of Agriculture, EPA, FCC, SEC, and, of course, others. Some may not be true, but I would nearly bet some are, from what I’ve seen being done.

Benghazi seems to be simmering for the moment but nobody who cares about our people has forgotten the dishonor rendered, so it will return.

Here’s the link to the article in The Hump Day Report So Far, So Bad.

Speaker Boehner is not especially amused.

Update: before I can even get this scheduled

HDR is reporting that the Department of Justice may have found some more hot water, this needs more checking, I think, but here:

Oh  My… Breaking: Holder Justice Department Also Tapped House of Representatives Cloak Room

Posted by Jim Hoft on Wednesday, May 15, 2013, 9:13 PM
Congressman Devin Nunes (R-CA) went on the Hugh Hewitt Show tonight and dropped this bombshell. The Holder-Obama Justice Department tapped the House of Representatives Cloak Room.

They tapped the cloak room, too.

Via the Hugh Hewitt website, via The Green Room

FUBAR, I think

Related articles

• Breaking: Holder Justice Department Also Tapped House of Representatives Cloak Room (thegatewaypundit.com)
• Would You Believe The Administration Got Phone Records of The House Of Representatives? (hotair.com)
• Wow! What Leadership…Obama Fires IRS Commissioner 2 Weeks Before He Is Set To Leave Post (floppingaces.net)
• An Even Bigger Scandal: Why Are IRS Audits Being Used To Punish Obama’s Political Enemies? (sgtreport.com)

Bookworm Room » The President’s speech to Planned Parenthood reminds us how dishonest the abortion debate is on the Left

I wanted to talk a bit about Obama‘s speech to Planned Parenthood but, it sounded a bit too much like a broken record. I mean you all know my (strongly held) feelings on abortion, not to mention my opinion of this President. But still, sometimes silence is taken for acquiescence, and I certainly don’t. This showed up yesterday from The Bookworm Room. I don’t agree with her on abortion, although it’s more a matter of degree, for me the life of the mother is the only possible exception but, her opinion is far better than where we are, and in truth acceptable to me in law (as opposed to morality).

That’s all very well, and she doesn’t need me to publicize her blog. I’m running this because while we come out at slightly different conclusions, we started in similar places. She does a really exceptional job of explaining why the changes in society, make the availability of abortions of far less importance than they were in the 1950s. It is an a fascinating article.

And one point she makes with which I heartily concur: “How is it preferable to end up in Gosnell’s House of Horrors, rather than the apocryphal back alley” looks like the same thing to me. Here’s Bookworm…

Lately, abortion has been in the news.  It never gets far out of the news, but it intruded with extra force these past two weeks for two reasons.  The first was the story about the media’s decision to ignore the Kermit Gosnell trial because it didn’t fit into the abortion narrative.  The narrative is that abortion should be “safe, rare, and legal.”  The Gosnell reality was that women died in his filthy clinic, that living babies got murdered (with the psychopathic Gosnell collecting hands and feet as trophies), and that the abortions were illegal under any standards, since they were so late term as to constitute murder under Pennsylvania law.  Because Gosnell interrupted the narrative (“we have achieved safe, rare, and legal, and now we must fight zealously to keep it”), what may be the most sensational mass murder trial in American history went unreported.

The other “abortion in the news” moment was Obama’s slobbering love letter to Planned Parenthood, when he spoke at their big hoo-ha.  If you doubt that it was a love letter, you need only listen to the very last few seconds of his speech:

As long as we’ve got to fight to make sure women have access to quality, affordable health care, and as long as we’ve got to fight to protect a woman’s right to make her own choices about her own health, I want you to know that you’ve also got a president who’s going to be right there with you, fighting every step of the way.  Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you.

Yuck.  I’ve been slimed.

That was Obama’s emotional shtick.  In light of the Gosnell affair, it was a grossly misleading emotional shtick because it’s clear that, when women’s “health care” (i.e., abortion) is not delivered into a quality way, neither Obama nor abortion’s cheerleaders will be there for those women.

But there was something else Obama said that was equally dishonest, and that was his insistence that those who oppose abortion on demand want to return the world to the 1950s:

So the fact is, after decades of progress, there are still those who want to turn back the clock to policies more suited to the 1950s than the 21st century.  And they’ve been involved in an orchestrated and historic effort to roll back basic rights when it comes to women’s health.

There’s a very subtle dishonesty at work here.  What Obama fails to acknowledge is that the social dynamics of our world are so entirely different from those in the 1950s that, even if abortion was outlawed entirely, significant economic and social pressures that women faced in the 50s are virtually nonexistent now.  In the 1950s, women had abortions to escape social stigma (“she’s a slut”) and economic collapse (minimal safety net).  The social stigma was an especially powerful force.  Women were branded and disowned.

I wrote about this false comparison to the 1950s once before, and think it’s worthwhile to reprint that post in its entirety here, simply because the Gosnell trial and Obama Planned Parenthood speech make it very relevant to today’s debate (or avoidance of debate).  So, from January 11, 2010, The need for an honest, 21st century debate aboutabortion:

I dreamed last night about the first ultrasound I had when I was pregnant with my daughter.  I was sixteen weeks pregnant, and had been throwing up non-stop for 15 1/2 of those sixteen weeks.  I was not happy.  I resented the parasite within me.  And then I saw the sonogram image and discovered that the parasite had a little round head, two arms and two legs, and an incredible spinal cord that looked like the most exquisite string of pearls.  That image did not instantly reconcile me to the next 26 weeks of non-stop vomiting, but it made me aware that “the fetus” is not simply an aggregation of cells, or a thing indistinguishable from a dog or a chicken fetus.  It’s a baby.

Continue reading Bookworm Room » The President’s speech to Planned Parenthood reminds us how dishonest the abortion debate is on the Left.

Related articles

• A Culture of Death is their choice (legalinsurrection.com)
• Gosnell Abortion Case: ‘Baby Screamed During Live-Birth Abortion’ (pjmedia.com)
• Video: Delaware Planned Parenthood clinic closed after whistleblowers go public about conditions (hotair.com)
• Foreign Press Providing The Gosnell Coverage We Can’t Get Here (pjmedia.com)

 

Massacres, Gun Control Studies and Social Change

Enza Ferreri

This is something I’ve wanted to read since-well forever. Enza Ferreri an Italian blogger working from London has taken an objective look at gun control, mental health and the studies done on the intersection of these controversies. It comes out where the anecdotal evidence told me it would, with the exception that deprivation of right for mental health problems appears to fit the same category. That is it should be very rarely done preemptively, in other words we who believe in gun rights are nearly as wrong on that as the people who want to disarm us are on gun rights. I guess that figures, we tend to argue that instinctively and emotionally, and it looks to me, from her references like we are wrong. This is not a simple article, you will have to pay attention which means it is not going to make good sound bites (darn it) but we are supposed to be about truth and logic, so study up, so you know the answers. Enza Ferreri writing on Enza Ferreri from 14 February 2013.

I have closely followed the gun control debate in the US from the outside and, as a European, I am trying to make sense of it because I know that at stake is not just the gun legislation but also the American Constitution, with what it represents as the most historically important declaration of human rights and liberties to be safeguarded against the power of the state; the thorny issues of broken families and of how to treat the mentally ill; and even the always controversal question of race and gang violence.

I have never seen a gun in my life except on TV and in movies. I grew up in a very gun-averse environment in Northern Italy. Almost everyone, including people on the political centre-right like my family, believed that ordinary citizens should not have guns and that America needed to have tighter gun control laws.

This is more or less what I thought too until I began realizing how anti-freedom and despotic our Western governments actually are, something I had not realized before. That, for a start, made me take a better look at the meaning of the Second Amendment.

Here is a classic emotion versus reason conflict. Many of us have an instinctive repulsion against weapons, so we think the less the better, but on closer inspection things may be different. 

When something traumatic like the Newtown massacre happens, the normal human reaction is to find means of control so that we feel reassured that it won’t happen again. In some ways this need for control is not dissimilar to the rituals and compulsions performed by an OCD sufferer, which don’t have to be based on reality and reason as long as they have the power to assuage the anxiety.

I think that something like this on a collective scale is happening in America now.

The idea that less control on guns leads to more guns and more guns lead to more murders, multiple or not, is not so much simple as simplistic. Simple is what addresses the problem, simplistic is what avoids it.

The reason why I am saying this is that, despite the immediate intuitive nature (along with wishful thinking) of the thesis that more gun control reduces violent crime, there is absolutely no evidence to support it.

And not for lack of trying to find it.

One of the 23 “executive actions” initiated by President Obama is a Presidential Memorandum directing the Department of Health through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other scientific agencies to “conduct or sponsor research into the causes of gun violence and the ways to prevent it”. 

Something similar had already been done by one of Obama’s predecessors at the White House, Jimmy Carter. Wanting to build the case for new comprehensive federal gun-control legislation, in 1978 the Carter administration commissioned a large-scale scientific study which, they presumed, would conclude that gun-control laws reduce crime.

Carter gave a substantial research grant to University of Massachusetts professor of sociology James D. Wright and his colleagues Peter Rossi and Kathleen Daly, all highly regarded sociologists. Professor Wright was on record as strongly in favour of much stricter gun controls. This was the most comprehensive study of gun control that had ever been undertaken, which resulted in a massive three-volume work,Under the Gun. Read more: http://enzaferreri.blogspot.com/2013/02/massacres-gun-control-studies-social.html#ixzz2QsevZZF4 Follow us: @EnzaFerreri on Twitter | enza.ferreri on Facebook

There’s little for me to add, except that I’d recommend spending some time on her blog, It’s excellent.

Related articles

• Senate rejects Manchin-Toomey gun control amendment (wvgazette.com)
• Who Killed Gun Control? (cato.org)
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Attention to Orders

English: Roman Catholic Chaplain Emil J. Kapaun, United States Army (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

President Obama awarded Chaplain (Captain) Emil J. Kapaun, U.S. Army, the Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry at the White House. Chaplain Kapaun is receiving the Medal of Honor posthumously for his extraordinary heroism while serving with the 3d Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division during combat operations against an armed enemy at Unsan, Korea and as a prisoner of war from November 1-2, 1950. April 11, 2013.

 

The President of the United States of America, authorized by Act of Congress, March 3, 1863, has awarded in the name of Congress the Medal of Honor to Chaplain (Captain) Emil J. Kapaun, United States Army.

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty:

Chaplain Emil J. Kapaun distinguished himself by acts of gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty while serving with the 3d Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division during combat operations against an armed enemy at Unsan, Korea, from November 1-2, 1950. On November 1, as Chinese Communist Forces viciously attacked friendly elements, Chaplain Kapaun calmly walked through withering enemy fire in order to provide comfort and medical aid to his comrades and rescue friendly wounded from no-man’s land. Though the Americans successfully repelled the assault, they found themselves surrounded by the enemy. Facing annihilation, the able-bodied men were ordered to evacuate. However, Chaplain Kapaun, fully aware of his certain capture, elected to stay behind with the wounded. After the enemy succeeded in breaking through the defense in the early morning hours of November 2, Chaplain Kapaun continually made rounds, as hand-to-hand combat ensued. As Chinese Communist Forces approached the American position, Chaplain Kapaun noticed an injured Chinese officer amongst the wounded and convinced him to negotiate the safe surrender of the American Forces. Shortly after his capture, Chaplain Kapaun, with complete disregard for his personal safety and unwavering resolve, bravely pushed aside an enemy soldier preparing to execute Sergeant First Class Herbert A. Miller. Not only did Chaplain Kapaun’s gallantry save the life of Sergeant Miller, but also his unparalleled courage and leadership inspired all those present, including those who might have otherwise fled in panic, to remain and fight the enemy until captured. Chaplain Kapaun’s extraordinary heroism and selflessness, above and beyond the call of duty, are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, the 3d Battalion, 8th Cavalry Regiment, the 1st Cavalry Division, and the United States Army.

In addition he was the holder of:

Legion of Merit

Purple Heart

Bronze Star Medal with “V” device for valor

Combat Infantryman’s Badge

Korean Service Medal

National Defense Medal

United Nations Service Medal

Korean Presidential Unit Citation

Republic of Korea Service Medal

World War II Victory Medal

It is far beyond my poor power to add anything to this except to add that it is my understanding that his church is in the process of considering him for sainthood. Thank you Father Kapaun for your service and your example to us all

 

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