Electronic Lycanthroplasty

In retrospect, ordering my new XD-9 subcompact a few days before the SHOT Show was probably a stupid idea since everybody in the industry disappears to Vegas for a week. But it finally left back-order hell and arrived at the shop yesterday. After bringing it home and putting 100 rounds of WWB through it, I must say it was well worth the wait.

Right out of the box, the tiny little thing put ten rounds in a roughly four inch circle from the seven yard line. Normally, a group that big isn’t a good thing, but then this was the very first mag. Not knowing just how 6 o’clock the sights would be, I started way too low, worked my way up, then back down to the right before finally grazing the elusive X. Thus making the backwards 4 pattern pictured above; which probably couldn’t be repeated if I tried.

The groups tightened up a bit after getting used to the sight picture though, and it kinda surprised me how nice it shoots given the size. Probably should have saved one of the better targets, but the first time is always special, and that pattern was just so odd. Perhaps it was trying to tell me I should have got a .40 or something?

On top of shooting well, the fit and finish are also excellent. All the controls are nice and tight (and just begging to be broken in), and there’s no play whatsoever between the slide and the rails like you occasionally find on some other plastic space guns. So, yea, unless it turns out to be haunted and starts making Ouija board flavored groups again, I think this is my new favorite pistol.

Now I just need to find a holster, as the one that came with it really sucks..

It appears that the legislature over in Arizona is debating a law to get rid of the disarmed victim zone nonsense in their schools. And as you can imagine, there are people shrieking about the “carnage” it may cause and such. Just like there were dire predictions of “streets running red with blood” before each State went shall-issue. As one would expect, there are also people running around in various internet discussions chanting ye old ‘you’re more likely to be shot than defend yourself’ mantra, so I decided to play with some numbers..

To start with, I decided to go with one of the lowest estimates for defensive gun uses (DGUs) I could find, just to be fair or something. Via the law enforcement brief in DC v. Heller, we find that the DOJ’s National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data suggests there were 74,695 DGUs in 2005. It’s not often that a specific year cited, so this makes comparisons easier, even if it’s not totally scientific.

Next up, according to the CDC, there were 30,694 “firearm deaths” of all types in the year 2005. This includes suicides, homicides, legal intervention, self-defense and accidents. Without controlling for the circumstances, this still leaves us with ~44,001 more DGUs than deaths. So, yea, let’s continue on and try to make their argument for them..

In the same year, the CDC reports a total of 69,825 nonfatal gunshot injuries. Again including all variations of intent. This brings us to a total of 100,519 injuries and deaths resulting from gunshots. If you ignore the circumstances, this leaves us with ~25,824 more injuries plus deaths than DGUs.

But if you take police shootings and self-defense out of the “risk” pool, the numbers change a bit..

The CDC reported 1,034 nonfatal injuries (with a caution that it’s an unstable number because of sample size, but, again, this isn’t scientific) and 330 fatalities due to legal interventions via firearm. The FBI reported an additional 143 justifiable homicides by private citizens with firearms. This leaves us with 99,003 injuries or deaths which are not a result of legal intervention or self-defense, or a difference of ~24,308.

What we don’t know, however, is how many of the remaining injuries are inflicted during the course of a clean shoot. Our friends in law enforcement cite a study by Dr. Gary Kleck finding that “76% of defensive uses do not involve firing the weapon.” Let’s go ahead and round the number of people who don’t shoot up to 80%, then assume only a third of the remaining 20%, or ~4,979, hit what they were aiming at. The 143 justifiable homicides mentioned above would mean that was less than a 3% mortality rating for defensive shots that hit. Seeing as defenders aren’t the ones trying to do the killing here, 4,979 should be a reasonable (albeit quite low) estimate.

Using these rough numbers, we are left with ~19,329 more suicides/accidents/murder/assaults/etc.. than legal intervention/self-defense. If only 26% of the low estimate of 74,695 DGU’s in 2005 prevented the would-be victim from being shot, then it effectively halved what the difference would have been had they not defended themselves. Likewise, if just 35% prevented shooting on either side (i.e., scared off an attacker), it reduced the difference between DGUs and all potential injuries by half. Therein lies the major flaw of using direct “body count” comparisons, as that completely ignores the number of injuries prevented.

Furthermore, if you were to remove suicides (17,002) and intentional self-harm (3,082) because that was the desired effect of the “victim,” and not some outside force beyond their control, you end up with ~755 more DGUs than accidental and criminal deaths/injuries. Seeing as Japan has a suicide rate twice that of the US while having virtually no legal firearms, it’s borderline insanity to think Americans couldn’t do so by other means.

Or if one were to plug in the DGU numbers from any other study, the benefits become readily apparent even if you include self-defense, legal intervention, and suicide as a negative effect. Pretty much every other study on the subject has produced significantly higher estimates than the NCVS, for reasons explained in the law enforcement amicus on page 15:

A criticism of the NCVS figure is that it is too low because the NCVS never directly asks about DGUs, but instead asks open-ended questions about how the victim responded. Because the NCVS first asks if the respondent has been a victim of a crime, the NCVS results exclude people who answer “no” because, thanks to successful armed self-defense, they do not consider themselves “victims.” Further, the NCVS only asks about some crimes, and not the full scope of crimes from which a DGU might ensue. See, e.g., GARY KLECK, TARGETING GUNS: FIREARMS AND THEIR
CONTROL 152-54 (1997).

Dr. Kleck’s study places the number of DGUs at 2,549,862 per year. The National Opinion Research Center feels the NCVS estimates are too low while Kleck’s numbers are to high, and “estimates the actual annual DGU figure to be somewhere in the
range of 256,500 to 1,210,000” (page 17 in the brief). Another study by the DOJ agreed the NCVS numbers (then 108,000) were too low while Kleck’s were high, and estimated there were 1,500,000 DGUs per year.

If we give the NCVS data the benefit of the doubt, throw out all the larger numbers from a dozen other studies, and average the 2005 estimate with the next smallest number (256,500 from NORC), that still leaves us with ~165,597 DGUs. Which would be ~65,078 greater than the number of all firearm related injuries and deaths in 2005.

As you’ve probably heard by now, there’s been another shooting in a disarmed victims zone. And, like clockwork, the media is giving the loon the attention he desperately wanted by splashing his name all over the place. In an equally predictable manner, the nanny fascists have descended like vultures to push their pet agendas..

On one side, The Brady Bunch are shrieking about how an “assault weapon” ban, limiting magazine capacity to ten rounds, and requiring background checks at gun shows would have prevented this. Never mind the fact the shooter didn’t use anything which was ever covered by any type of “assault weapon” ban. Ignore the fact the shooter’s primary weapon was a shotgun which, at most, would have held maybe eight rounds. Most of all, be sure to look over the details like how Illinois already requires background checks at gun shows, and that the shooter didn’t buy guns at a gun show anyway. We can’t let little things like facts get in the way of a little PSH, now, can we?

On the other side, my old pal Jack Thompson is already searching out TV cameras so he can blame it all on video games. Despite there being no information whatsoever about whether the shooter even played a single video game, Thompson “knows” it! Not only does he apparently have the psychic power to know that (before the shooter’s name was even released), he claims to have predicted the exact scenario in his book. He could at least use this magical power to tell me the winning lottery numbers in advance..

Amidst all this hand-wringing and finger-pointing, the only thing people don’t seem to be blaming is the shooter himself. It’s almost as if these people think the shooter is another innocent victim here, personal responsibility be damned.

Today was the deadline for amicus briefs supporting Heller in the DC gun ban case. SCOTUSBlog has them all online right here for your viewing pleasure.

In between hanging up on non-stop robo-calls from Presidential candidates telling me to go vote for them tomorrow, I’ve been reading these all day. There’s so many great arguments in them, I’m not really sure where to start (or stop..) quoting. As such, everyone should just go read them all.

Considering the extensive legal and historical smackdown delivered by these, and the weight of 31 States, over half of Congress, and the Vice President on top, I’m beginning to feel confident that we’ll win this 7-2 or better. DC’s position just downright absurd in the face of all the evidence. If the Court somehow rules in DC’s favor, they might as well just throw the entire Constitution out of the window along side their credibility..

It’s kinda been a few weeks since my last post. Not that it really matters since only like three people read anything here. But, yea, aside from a bunch of anti-gun bills being shot down in the VA legislature after the VCDL and other gun owners showed up in large numbers, there’s really been a lot of nothing going on.

For the most part, I’m really kind of burned out from trying to keep up with the election nonsense, and don’t really have much to say. As of now, it looks like we’ll be seeing Hillobama versus McCain for the Republicrat face-off in November. Despite Obama’s “change” rhetoric, his agenda is filled with the same old big government, socialist garbage as Hillary!â„¢, so it’s somewhat hard to say which is worse. McCain is a rather uninspiring candidate who will say whatever it takes to get elected (and pass laws limiting political speech to stay in power..), then randomly tosses constituents and bits of the Constitution under the bus depending on which way the political wind is blowing.

If the primaries do end up giving us such insipid choices, I guess they won’t mind if I “throw my vote away” and vote Libertarian..

Via Arms and the Law, I see that amici for DC are online now. After reading the rather confusing brief from the U.S. Department of Justice, my next stop was the one by the Violence Policy Center. Given that they have a long history of spreading misinformation (including the invention of the term “assault weapon” in order to intentionally mislead the public), I was prepared to find plenty of doublespeak..

..until I got to the first(!) paragraph and saw this:

If the Court were to hold that private individuals unaffiliated with a militia have a Second Amendment right to keep handguns for use in their homes, the Court should also hold that such a right is subject to reasonable restrictions, and that the
District of Columbia’s handgun ban is an eminently reasonable restriction.

Wait, what? A total ban on handguns is a “reasonable restriction” on the right to own them?! So then would a total ban on books or even vocal cords would be a “reasonable restriction” on the right to free speech?

I’m, well, speechless. Seriously. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

Then a couple of paragraphs down, we find this gem:

The reasonableness of the handgun ban has become even more obvious since 1976. Since 1976, handguns have evolved to become even deadlier. Today’s handguns are increasingly designed to maximize lethality and mimic military-style weapons. Replacing the revolvers of thirty years ago, modern high-capacity semiautomatic pistols have the alarming ability– demonstrated all too often in mass shootings and the tragic deaths of innocent people –to kill more efficiently and more
effectively than their handgun predecessors. Affirming the court of appeals’ judgment would open the District’s doors to these modern semiautomatic pistols and other deadly handguns. Such a result would have catastrophic consequences.

“Modern semiautomatic pistols?” “The revolvers of thirty years ago?!” But, err, these “modern” semiautomatic pistols have been around for over one hundred years! By the 1930s, the Mauser C96, which was designed in 1896, had forty round mags available for it. Is that one of those “modern high-capacity semiautomatic pistols” which didn’t exist before “the revolvers of thirty years ago?”

If you believe that, I’ve got a patent on a new invention to sell you. I call it the wheel..

And on that note, my brain just exploded, so I think I’ll call it a night.

The Northern Virginia Daily is reporting that Delegate Todd Gilbert has introduced legislation which would prevent public colleges from banning gun on campus. And just as they have before every other CCW law has passed, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Ownership is predicting the hallways will run red with blood and stuff.

Of their more absurd claims, Ahab and SayUncle smack down the idea that Cho would have gotten a permit before killing thirty two people (as if the lack of permit stopped him), and Sebastian takes them to task for the idea that all college students are drunken murder suspects in waiting. They pretty much have that covered, so instead of adding a “x2,” I’ll point and laugh at this:

College students often drink heavily and sometimes use illegal drugs and engage in other risky behavior, Siebel said. A number of college students also attempt suicide.

“If you introduce guns into that setting, you’re going to wind up with more dead college students,” he said. Nor will requiring permits to carry on campus keep alcohol and guns separated.

Um, guys, heavy drinking and drug use generally take place off campus. You know, the places where people are already allowed to carry. So unless universities have started offering Beer Bong 101 courses, or have chemistry labs for cooking crack, guns won’t be “introduced” into settings filled with alcohol or whatever. The very nature of a classroom setting would, by default, “keep alcohol and guns separated.”

It seems Delegate Gilbert figured this out too, and asked the following question in the NVDaily article:

“If they’re gun owners already, if they’re carrying concealed already, and if they’re drinking already — which I assume, according to the Brady Campaign that all our students are drunken idiots — then where are the instances right now of drunken students shooting up their apartments, or going out into the parking lot and getting into gunfights with people?”

Excellent question sir. But of course they won’t be able to answer it because it has never happened..

Slate has a rather interesting article today on the chorus of politicians crying out for bipartisanship so that the government can do, umm, well, they don’t really say. The article, however, lists a number of things that have gone wrong when government actually manages to agree on something.

When we devote ourselves to working together in the name of national unity rather than obsessing on our differences, injustice loves to strike. Writing slavery into the Constitution was perhaps the greatest triumph of nonpartisan compromise in U.S. history. The denial of suffrage to non-property owners and women ranks up there, as do prohibition, the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, and the so-called war on drugs, declared by President Richard Nixon in the early 1970s and waged bipartisanly by every president—Republican and Democrat—since.

From there they go on to to mention more current travesties such as the so-called Patriot Act, earmarks, and such. As well as discussing how the public and reporters love getting “drunk” off such fantastic “unity” speeches. It’s well worth a read if you haven’t done so already.

All in all, the urge to “do something” is probably the thing which annoys me most about modern politics. Especially when statists try to define progress as the process itself, with little regard given to the end result. For instance, in debates about Presidential candidates, one often hears claims that politician A is better than politician B because they wrote or sponsored more bills. What you seldom hear is any mention that 90% of said bills were useless things like naming post offices, or non-binding resolutions supporting an existing holiday. Even rarer is what percentage of said bills were actually bad, like, say, the Patriot Act.

But, hey, who cares just as long as it looks like they’re “doing something,” right?

Why is it that every time libertarianism comes up in a conversation, some statist buffoon inevitably asks ‘b-b-but what if the government stopped doing X or made Y legal?!!1!’ as if it’s some sort of amazing gotcha question? How hard is it to understand that we really don’t want the Federal government doing, well, much of anything really? Are most people really so helpless without a government bureaucrat to hold their hand that they simply can’t imagine anybody being able to do things on their own? Let alone the thought that some people might actually *gasp* want to make their own decisions and stuff.

Seriously. How do these people manage to make it through a day by themselves without walking in front of a bus or something?

As for the roads and education straw men that they always bring up as a smoke screen, do we really need the Feds to do that? Without even getting into privatization, public education is a disaster already in large part due to Federal interference. And roads, well, like 99% of them are actually built by State and local government agencies anyway. Why on earth are we paying the Feds to waste a large portion of the money in a bureaucratic (and pork-laden) maze before they hand it right back to the States which could have just done it all to begin with? It’s like they think DC is populated with fairies and elves.

But, yea, just think, these people will be voting in Presidential primaries starting tomorrow. What a depressing way to start the new year…

This is just plain tragic. Long story short: Rather tasteless Myspace prank gets out of hand. Group of guys get together and form a lynch mob to go after the kid they think posted it. This group shows up at the kid’s house, shouting racial epithets and threatening to kill him. The kid’s father shoots one of them in the face amidst the confusion while trying to defend his son.

And now the father has been convicted of manslaughter and possession of an unlicensed handgun.

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

Oh, and wait, it gets even more insane. Al Sharpton is up in arms about it too:

Angered by the ruling, the Rev. Al Sharpton vowed to take a stand against the “dangerous signal” sent bythe White verdict.

“Are we sending a signal that if you’re black in this country and you defend your home, that’s different than if you’re white?” he asked.

Sharpton contrasted White with Bernhard Goetz, who was celebrated as a “subway vigilante” after shooting four black youths who he thought were trying to rob him in 1984.

“Here’s someone who came to someone’s house to do harm and he defended himself,” Sharpton said of White. “Why is Goetz a society hero and John White is a demon?”

Umm, Al, you sanctimonious asshat, this exactly what you wanted! This is the end result of the very same anti-self-defense laws you’ve been trying to push on everybody– black or white –for years! You’ve been supporting racist gun laws for this long, and you’re only upset about it now?! Shouldn’t this verdict please you?

Grrr. I think my brain just exploded..