How Many Gun Owners Are There?

America has an abundance of many things, wheat, water, timber, and many other coveted natural resources but America is also 'rich' in one other thing, firearms.  America has more firearms than any other nation in the world, both in absolute number and a per capita basis. According to a 2007 report from the Small
Arms survey, there 82 to 95 firearms per 100 people in the United States; or a total of around 270 million to 295 million firearms. No question, there are a lot of firearms in America, but what isn't clear is how many Americans own them.

There isn't any national registry that allows tracks ownership levels, for the record I would be opposed to such a registry, and there probably won't be any time soon due to massive opposition by 2nd amendment right organizations such as the NRA, GOA and the SAF as well as many other libertarian and small government advocacy groups. Recently, in the last few years, firearm ownership has become a hot topic for proponents of strong government policies.  Left leaning individuals like Michael Bloomberg have spent millions of dollars pushing for gun restriction, as well as donating money to political candidates campaigning against public fiuges who have stood up for 2nd amendment rights. The most recent example being Sheriff Clark's reelection campaign. If your not familiar with Sheriff Clark, he made waves a few years back when he made videos advocating that citizens in his county arm themselves to protect themselves from criminals. This kind of statement isn't exactly unusual with Sheriffs, many of whom preside over pro-gun rural counties but Sheriff Clark was an unusual case. Unlike many of the Sheriffs who announced their support for the 2nd Amendment in the past, Sheriff Clark presides over a decidedly urban/suburban Milwaukee County with almost a population of just under a million. In Sheriff's Clark's recent re-election, actually a primary but the county is heavily democrat so the primary is in fact the actual election for all purposes, Bloomberg donated $ 150,000 to his opponents; Bloomberg was unsuccessful.

Individuals like Bloomberg have had some success in advancing their cause. In response to the Sandy Hook mass shooting Connecticut and New York passed new legislation that restricted magazine capacities, certain firearms and/or required registration as well. Those have been some high profile victoriess for gun control proponents, however, there have been some major victories for supporters of 2nd amendment rights as well; with the most recent being the ruling in Florida that doctors cannot compel a patient to answer whether or not they own firearms.  The battle over firearms ebbs and flows between the two groups but, in general, the bulk of the victories have been going to 2nd amendment supporters. Some of the most noteworthy victories were overturning outright gun bans in Chicago and Washington D.C, and the Supreme Court ruling that the 2nd amendment protected individual right versus the group right favored by many left leaning politicians.

Since that devastating blow towards the left wing interpretation of the second amendment. a theme has consistently been brought up by various groups and media sources. That theme is that the NRA, and other firearm rights groups are spending massive amounts of funds to influence legislators to appease the whims of an increasingly smaller minority of Americans. Over the years periodicals such as the The New York Times, CNN, and many others, have put out articles stating that gun ownership in America is declining. The question being, is this true?

Fire arm ownership levels have been polled for many years now tracking firearm ownership levels in the country. The stats most often used by those stating that firearm ownership has declined use data from the General Social Survey which show a marked decline of firearm ownership from 1973 to now; however, Gallup has also done their own surveys on firearm ownership and according to that poll firearm ownership levels have generally been steady.

This presents a unique an incomplete picture and makes any claims about declining ownership uncertain at best.  As you can see in the image above each poll not only shows differing level of ownership but the general trend of that ownership as well. If you look only at the GSS or Pew Research you would determine that only around 35% of American households have firearms and that there is a general downward trend. If you looked at only the Gallup or the ABC/Washington post poll then firearm ownership is around 45% and has been holding steady.  Two different worldviews can be drawn from these polls. The question is why, as it is unusual that polls taken over long periods of time diverge as greatly as they are.

According to some, such as criminologist Gary Kleck, it depends on how the survey is conducted.  One possible culprit is wording' however, the Director of Pew Research stated that after their doing their own research they found that the variations in how the question were worded didn't have much of an affect.  The issue could be who is answering the question, with men far more likely to admit to having a firearm in the house than women. One other issue is the noted reluctance by many firearm owners to answer pollsters honestly.

In 1987 Arthur Kellerman, a doctor who has done research on firearms and firearm related incidents, sent a survey asking if their was a firearm in the household to addresses that were listed in the firearm permit registries. His purpose, to see if those permit holders would respond truthfully. Of the 35 responses he received, 31 answered truthfully which would indicate that around 88% of gun owners would answer questionnaires honestly; however, what surprised him was that there were also 20 households that did not respond. When he went to investigate he found empty lots.  In other words those permit holders had knowingly lifted a false address in order to keep their real home residence a secret from the authorities. If this polls is indeed accurate, then that means that 36% of those polled intentionally tried to hide the fact that they are gun owners. This sort of phenomena has repeated with the recent 'assault weapons' registration in Connecticut. Only around 11% of all estimated assault weapons holders registered their weapon by the deadline set forth in the law.

There is also the peculiar instance of my home state of Washington. Currently we have two competing firearm initiatives on the ballot I-594 and 591. I-594 would require a back ground check for all firearm sales and transfers in Washington State. Currently private sales do not require a back ground check.  I-591 would prohibit background checks on firearm sales unless a national standard was adopted; which would effectively cancel out I-594 if passed.  The Elway Poll has been tracking support for each initiative. As of now both I-591 and I-594 look like they will pass but that isn't the surprising part.  The surprising part is this:

If you look at the bottom of the Elway Poll they asked respondents whether or not they owned firearms.  49% of respondents said they did not while 35% said they did with 15% not giving an answer either way.  This question to ask is why would a person refuse to answer the poll.  There aren't many good reason why a person who did not have a firearm would refuse to answer, at least not in my mind.  The poll isn't government funded, nor is personal information kept, which takes the possibility that non-gun owners do not want the fact that they do not own firearms to get out.  On the other end, taking into account that difficulty some pollsters have had getting accurate counts from past polls from actual firearm owners, there is the real likelihood that a portion of those who refused to answer either way are actually gun owners.  

I don't have any way to determine how much of that 15%, however, taken into account the results of Kellermans own test some interesting numbers come up.  Using the results from Kellerman's test I am going to examine the Elway poll numbers.  Kellerman's study showed that 88% of firearm owners who answered the survey answered truthfully while 12% did not.  In the Elway poll, 17.5 respondents indicated that they owned firearms.  Adding in the additional 12% who would lie, that raises the numbers from 17.5 to 19.8. If Kellerman's results holds true, this means that 39% of poll respondents own firearms while 44% do not. This is a change of around 5 percentage points from the base numbers from the Elway Poll.  

Now, accounting for the fact that 36% of houses in the Kellerman poll were fake addresses, this means that we should expect a no response for 18 individuals polled.  The actual numbers who failed to answer either way was only 7.5, just under half the number expected. What this means is that, either the number of failed responses for Kellerman were abnormally high, or there are more individual who responded no than we anticipated.  I am going to assume that Keller's numbers are typical, which means that those who refused to answer can be counted as gun owners.  This could raise the number of gun owners to from 19.8 to 27.3 out of the 50 registered voters, or 54% of all registered voters. The trick is to now figure out how many gun owners there actually are.

As of 2014 of Washington's roughly 6.897 million residents there are 5.3 million who are over the age of 18.  This isn't the number of individual eligible to vote, that itself is a moving metric for a variety of reasons, however, according to voter registration information 76% of those eligible to vote register.  This means that the eligible voting population in Washington State is 5,023,539 or 72% of the states population, the rest are either under 18, non voting felons or alien residents of some sort who do not have voting rights.  This gives us some sort of clue as to how many firearm owners in Washington State.

We have no information whether non-registers eligible voters would have firearm ownership levels mirroring registered voters, but for the sake of simplicity I will assume that this is the case.  There is also no information how about legal residents, who are not eligible to vote, but are eligible to own firearms, I will refrain from guesstimating that number entirely. So, for the purposes of this exercise, I am going to assume firearm ownership based on the aforementioned eligible voting population of Washington State.

If we take the poll at face value, and ignore that a percentage of firearm owners will conceal the fact that they own firearms, that means that our of the 5,000,000 or so eligible voters, there are 1,758,238 if we take those that answer 35% at face value.  This is most certainly not accurate and represents a number that is too low given that we now some percentage of firearm owners will lie to pollsters.  If 12% of all registered gun owners lie then, backing the number out, we come to the number of gun owners at 1,997,998 of registered gun owners; or as we noted earlier 39.7% of the eligible voter population.  If we take the next step and assign the percentage of voters who had 'no response' as gun owners, then the number of gun owners skyrocket to 2,712,711 of all registered voters. This is 54% of all eligible voters, 51% of the state's population that is over the age of 18 and 39% of the entire state population*.

If those numbers hold true for Washington and if they can be extrapolated throughout the rest of the country,  then based off the current census estimate of 316,000,000 Americans, then there are 123,400,000 Americans who own firearms, or 39% of the entire population.  Keep in mind though, Washington State ranks 36th out of 50th for firearm ownership in the country. This is from an pretty old survey, as far as surveys go, and the reported firearm ownership levels for Washington State rose by 2 percentage points from 2001 to now but I digress.  The point being that if Washington, which ranks as one of the lesser owning gun states, has more far more firearm owner than expected, then the same most likely holds true for the rest of the country.

Before I close out there is one other item I want to note.  The numbers I have guesstimated are for firearm ownership stated on the number of individuals who own firearms, whereas most polls ask if there is a firearm in you household. This is an interesting conundrum given that the number of individuals in a household vary from 1 to perhaps a dozen in the extreme instances.  The average household size per the last US census is 2.61 individuals per household.  There are over 115,000,000 households per the last census, which based on the surveys means that anywhere from approximately 39,100,000 to 51,750,000 households have firearms or 102,051,000 to 135,000,000.  It should also be noted that multiplying the household factor by the number of households under counts the population by around 16,000,000. 

My number is right within these ranges, however, the biggest omission is eschewing those under 18 in my calculations. Those who are under 18 but live in gun owning households would add to the total number of Americas owning firearms. This is something that is very important point to remember. It is often stated that demographics is destiny, and it has been noted that, among white Americans, conservatives are out breeding liberals and that a persons politics often aligns with their parents politics.  Gun ownership is often portrayed as a predominately white conservative thing, which is not entirely true as there are minority and non-conservative gun owners though it is true enough that groups like the NRA have noticed and sought to redress, and if that holds true with gun ownership then there is a likelihood that gun ownership could rise.

*This is one method of calculating the number of firearm owners in Washington State. When I assume that 36% of respondents lie about firearm ownership, the percentage of firearm owners rises to 69% for those over the age of 18 in Washington State, or 3,669,135.

A Rare Good Law

Usually when a legislative body passes laws it is safe to assume that little real good will come from it. But there are cases when a law is passed and I actually think something good will come from it.  In this instance I am referring to a law that has passed with a seal of approval from a committee of Florida state senators.  This proposed law is the meant to reconcile an issue that anybody who has a concealed carry permit, or has taken a gun safety class, should know.  This issue is that the brandishing of a weapon, or firing off a warning shot, in the hopes of deterring someone who clearly intends you harm could land you in trouble.

After AWB Fails The Media Tells Us What We Already Knew About Firearms

Now that the AWB has been taken off of the table, and there is no point for the media to try and use people's emotions to push forward a law that would do nothing to stop firearm violence, guess what the media reports.  A DOJ  report that says gun violence has fallen dramatically over the last two decades, and that less than 2% of convicted inmates reports buying a firearm from a gun show; the majority acquired their firearms through friends and families. 

This comes as no surprise to me or any other 'right wing' gun nut.  We've been saying this for some time now.  I can imagine a lot of 2nd amendment lovers would find this report funny considering that it was only released after the AWB was well and truly defeated. Whether the media or the DOJ was avoiding releasing this bit of information until after the AWB failed, or it's just a coincidence that the report was released after it's failure, I cannot rightly say. But I do know one thing, the preponderance of data showing that the proliferation of firearms in this nation is not the reason for gun violence will be ignored, once again, in short order.

When The Sheep Dogs Are Wolves

Some of the sheep will choose to become sheep dogs and purge their pack the malcontents. This news article is a little old but I still wanted to share it.  Mexico is a good example of what could happen to parts of the country if we let the rot that is socialism to fester.  Corruption is a large problem in Mexico.  According to the 2012 Corruptions Perception Index Mexico ranked 105.  Contrast this with the United States and Canada , which ranked in the top 20 nations for least corrupt, Mexico score puts them in the same ball park, and in fact they lose too, China and India.  This corruption has effectively paralyzed the police force as an honest crime fighting institution.  Honest cops are murdered and the police are little different from the drug cartels in certain parts of Mexico.

That is why it warms my heart, and further illustrates the reason for the 2nd Amendment, when towns people take their public well being into their own hands. I realize that there are some issues with vigilante groups and their kind of justice but this only resulted because the local government absolutely failed it's duty to the constituents it was supposed to serve. The rise of vigilantes in the rural towns of Mexico is not ideal by a  long shot but it is, by far, a much better alternative than being powerless against thugs.

Asking Law Makers to Read Their Laws

Is apparently too great of an expection. You know you've made a big screw up when you get a liberal trial lawyer concerned enough to bring an issue to the Times concerning a law proposed by democratic law makers to the Times.  What I am writing about is that individuals have read the proposed assault weapons ban in Washington state, and what they found, was disturbingly Orwellian.
Kudos to the lawyer, I doubt we'd see eye to eye on much, for bringing an issue of civil rights to the Times attention. And Kudos to the Times for bothering to report it. I haven't hid my disdain for the quality of reporting of most media establishments today, more often they fail to do their homework or fail to even report on real issues, but today the Times has done it's job. Now on to the law itself.

What has gotten everyone, even liberal pro-gun control advocates, a little nervous is a little clause in the bill that would give county sheriffs the ability to enter into the house of someone who owns an assault weapon and inspect the premises to make sure that the weapon was locked up.  All without a warrant of course, or any notification whatsoever. Like I said, you really have to screw up to get a reporter, who is pro-gun control, to call a piece of legislation Orwellian.

It also turns out that some of the law makers who sponsored the bill are now expressing concern.

One, Sen. Adam Kline, D-Seattle, a lawyer who typically is hyper-attuned to civil-liberties issues, said he did not know the bill authorized police searches because he had not read it closely before signing on.
 

You think? Your job as a law maker is to pas laws, which also assumes that you actually read the damn thing, especially when its only 8 pages! How hard would it have been to take the time out of your day to read the bill? This should not only dissuade statist of the notion that you just need to get the right men in charge, because what does it matter how smart, skilled, or principled the person is if they don't read the bill?! Tyranny is coming to America, not because our law makers are necessarily corrupt or evil, though the jury is still out in my opinion, but because they are lazy.

If a lawmaker, or future lawmaker, ever reads this blog, please, I beg of you, follow this one simple maxim. Vote against a law as a matter of principal until you have read it, and are fully aware of the consequences of said law. How many times has a law maker come out and expressed regret for passing a law that had terrible unforeseen consequences, because they failed to vet the bill? The Patriot Act anyone?

The Washington State Assault weapon's bill is now D.O.A, especially after this article, because even the sponsor has admitted that such a provision is against the constitution.  Right now they are blaming some unnamed staffer for the insertion of such a clause; color me unconvinced. If it were me, and some staffer inserted this into the bill, I would publicly out and fire them. Not only would it be a shrewd political move but someone who inserts stuff like this into law, and there is no argument whatsoever that this provision is somehow permissible under the constitution, has no business being in a position were they can influence policy.

A person once said that totalitarianism would once be clothed in the flag and carrying a cross. I think it is far more likely to end up due to the sloth of our legislators and ignorance of our populace. The velvet glove is something I fear far more than the iron fist.

Gun Control Advocates

Some of them are misguided individuals with the best of intentions, others are simply using this as an opportunity for increased power, still others, they are just thugs, even if they hold elected office.

Nathan Haddad Update

Looks like Nathan's fund reached the desired 10,000 and then some. It now stands at a little over 30,000 and it looks like the family is trying to raise 100,000 for the Veteran.  I hope that they are not only able to get to their goal, but that this somehow becomes national news and illustrate how unjust this law really is.

You Are More Likely....

to get strangled, kicked, or beaten to death than you are to get killed by a "Assault" Rifle according to the FBI UCR.  Given that there were only 323 positively identified rifle homicides in America last year, out of the near 14,000 that have occurred according the FBI, it seems that if we want to decrease the homicide rate, and we should, going after assault rifles seems to be a pretty stupid way to do it.

And according to Slate, there are 2.4 million legally acquired assault rifles in the hands of Americans. Meaning that any given legally assault rifle has a 1.3%* chance of ever being used to commit a homicide. Now factor in that there are some, in my opinion most, gun homicides done with guns that were illegally acquired, that ratio would have to go down. The facts are clear. Legal gun ownership posses no risk to the American public.


*Addendum Slate estimates a total of 3.75 million Assault Riffles in America. That would drop the chance of being murdered by one even lower using the UCR. About .08%, that is less than 1%. Once again, America certainly does have a murder problem, but trying to make the case that banning legal owner ship of "Assault" Rifles wouldn't make an impact, especially when we consider how many of those 323 were committed with legally versus illegally owned rifles.

When Patriots Speak

The self serving rhetoric of statist is shown for the power grab that it is.

Pierce Morgan Statistical Cherry Picking

Piers Morgan keeps citing his, "Only 35 people are killed by firearms a year in Great Britain." It is a great example of cherry picking a statistic, since he is only focusing on one section of violent crime, and conveniently ignoring the fact that knives are the preferred murder weapon of choice, and he is skewing the statistics, using all gun homicide deaths rather than just deaths by rifles, to try and make assault rifles out as the problem.  Sprinkle in some emotional rhetoric about not wanting to see children killed, as if we gun right supporters don't want that, and you got a compelling argument for those who are ignorant of guns and the actual statistics.

I am going to do the same, twisting the statistics, however, unlike Mr. Morgan, I am telling you up front what I am doing. I will take the number of deaths recorded in the FBI's UCR that can knowingly be attributed to rifles and coming up with a per population statistic. I will then be comparing it to the firearm homicide rate of Great Britain. Now I tried to get the data from their equivalent to the FBI, but their data services are terrible compared to ours. I am sure I could find a specific breakdown of homicides with firearms, but it isn't as easy to find, and for my purposes I don't need it. Unfortunately I will use wikipedia to find the homicide statistic I need.

This says that in 2009 Great Britain had a firearm homicide rate of .07 per 100,000 people. There will be some mix and match here as I will be using data from the FBI UCR of 2011.  Rifle homicides in 2011 were 323 and divide that by the population estimate and multiply that by 100,000 and you get .10.  So yes, our rifle homicide rate is higher than Britain's gun homicide rate but not that much higher, and it is lower than France, which had a firearm homicide rate of .22 per 100,000.

Now of course there will be individuals crying foul that I am only looking at rifle homicides. But that is the point. The vast majority of gun homicides in America are committed with a hand gun, and Piers Morgan isn't arguing for a hand gun ban, yet, but he is (mis)using that data to forward his case to ban assault rifles. If you looked at assault rifles alone you realize that it isn't the issue that Pierce Morgan makes it out to be.

The State Doesn't Care About You

An article from PolicyMic quotes a rather chilling statement by the CIA nominee John Brennan.

Since letting citizens participate freely in the political process can be messy and may lead instability, according to Brennan, “too much freedom is possible and in the end, even detrimental to the cause of democracy.” Even “[then-Egyptian President Anwar] Sadat’s undemocratic methods, therefore, may aim at the ultimate preservation of democracy rather than its demise.” If after all this you are still wondering where he stands on human rights violations, he answers,“Can human rights violations in Egypt be justified from a democratic perspective?”

His answer, “If the preservation of political order and stability is [the] justification for various human rights violations.” He does qualify this in saying that it may have been simply to preserve Sadat’s rule, but he leaves it open to the reader to interpret. Even so, this makes human rights simply a matter of interpretation and relativism that can lead to gross abuse of power.
 

 Chilling, but not unexpected, and the best summation of the principals of geopolitics that there is. The paramount goal of the state is self preservation, it doesn't matter whether it is a democracy, republic, monarchy, socialist, or otherwise. The state must preserve itself, and secondary to that, must seek as advantageous position in the world as possible given their resources. This is why wars are fought with other nations, because whether it is for influence, resources, or space for it's people it is in order to try and satisfy one of those two imperatives, whether it actually does so is another matter entirely.

Every nation, on every continent, of every type of person, operates like this. There are no exceptions, a nations pacifism isn't rooted in the moral goodness of a nation, no, it is because it either does not need at this point in time, or physically cannot, act capriciously to satisfy it's two imperatives via warfare.  I think France serves as a great example, for all of the crocodile tears France shed about our actions in Iraq, it has no compunction using military force in Mali, or weighing on America to do it's heavy lifting in Libya.

The reason why I harp on this is that we need to focus on the core items that direct a nations foreign policy.  Simply saying we do things for freedom, oil, human rights abuses, corporations, or our allies misses the mark. Those things are related, but they are not a prime mover in and of itself and until we realise that, then we cannot hope to affect real policy change, we are just pissing in the wind.

The US acts the way it does today because it seeks to maintain it's position as hegemon of the world order. Why does it do this? Because in a very distant sense, it protects the United States, specifically it removes the ability of other nations to significantly affect the US. By significant, I mean use foreign military forces to apply pressure the way we apply pressure to China. What do you think those joint exercises in the South China sea are? A reminder to China that we could enforce an embargo and cut of their supply of foreign materials they desperately need, which, in turn, is why China is trying to develop anti-carrier weaponry.

This doesn't mean that every action the US in regards to foreign policy actually fulfills this goal, on the contrary, in some instances the course of action taken harms their position. But foreign policy is driven by men, and men's judgement, meaning that they can make errors. Overestimate threats, misappropriate resources or commit terrible policy blunders. For those who want to change US policy away from militarism then you must stop 'crying no blood for oil', those slogans are for the masses, not the policy makers. Instead, you must articulate how a different course of action better suits America's prime imperative.

The US has the most powerful navy in the world and if our nations goal is to keep it's place on top of the world, then it doesn't need to interact in every two bit bush league war that comes along. The US can afford to play with a softer hand.

But ultimately, this doesn't really matter all that much to you or me. Nations play the geopolitical game which is measured in decades, or even centuries, and unless your the one being bombed or fighting in a war, it doesn't affect you all that much.  However, that core sentiment that I outlined, that does affect you.  If the state decides that it gains more security and stability by putting it's boot on your neck, then it will do so. And you've just seen that essentially articulated by a member of the policy class.

His quote is probably the best thing that I could ever hope to find to illustrate why we need the 2nd amendment in the United States.

New York Staters Challenge Govenor

Read this news article via Vox Day.  Looks like a lot of New Yorkers are planning to ignore the recently passed gun registration law, not a big surprise really, hundreds of thousands of assault rifles disappeared after California passed their restrictive laws, and Canada recently ended their long gun registry due to cost over runs and non-compliance.  While I do not expect gun owners to start shooting at agents, I also don't expect the state agencies to spend any real time trying to enforce the ban. It's too expensive, too unpopular, too time consuming and there are simply bigger fish to fry.

Now, I am not normally a fan of protests, I think they are a waste of time. I live in Seattle and every day I walk by one protest or another, war protests (far smaller now that Bush is out of office), police brutality protests, environmental protests, impeachment protests (both Bush and Obama), any protest you can think of, and none of them have ever accomplished anything, ever. You can look overseas and see the futility of most protests as well.

The media made a big ballyhoo about the Arab spring, specifically the Egyptian protests. Yet now we see that the protests accomplished little, and many private geopolitical intelligence analysts said as much. You might say that the protests resulted in the over through of Murabarak's government, but that isn't exactly the case. The military simply deposed one of their own, Murabarak was a park of the Egyptian military, and put a new guy in charge. The conflict between the government and the protesters was really a conflict between the Egyptian police and the protesters, the military wasn't involved. But the military has been pushing back on protestors now, much harder than the police could.

Then we have the Green revolution in Iran, we saw how that ended. A regime that has no compunction in using near indiscriminate violence against it's citizenry cannot be unseated, or significantly alter their policy, via protest.  Outside of Tripoli, the only 'succesful' revolution has been Libya, and quite possibly Syria.  Non-violent protest doesn't usually work.  Individuals will point to the civil rights movement and their achievements, but that just solidifies my point.

The reason why the civil rights protests of the 1960's worked wasn't because they were protests. It was the governments reaction to them that changed public opinion. The American people saw individuals peaceably protesting fundamental violations of their civil rights. Seeing children, women, and the elderly have dogs set upon them, beaten, and sprayed with fire hoses was deeply unsettling to the American public. And that is why the civil rights protest meant something, there was something to loose. Mr. King wasn't a fool, far from it he was a very shrewd man, he knew that the southern state governments were going to react disproportionately hostile to their peaceful marches.  He knew there was no quicker, and arguably more moral, way to achieve their justly demanded rights than to go up against the segregation machine and get worked over.

Real protests, that have any hope of ever accomplishing something, must require that the protester put themselves on the line, that they stand to suffer for their opinion, though this is only the case in a nation that isn't run by a bunch of thugs like Iran, Bahrain, or Syria. That is the reason why no one cared about what happened to OWS. They weren't protesting for a fundamental human right, and even though the police often did not acquit themselves very poorly, the OWS protesters often tried to use intimidation, via force of numbers, to shut government office down.

But back to the topic at hand. The protest by gun owners in New York is more of a challenge than anything else. Either the New York state government starts knocking on people's doors and taking people in for failing to comply or they expose their laws for the toothless decrees that they are. Either way it is a no win situation for the Governor, assuming that New York staters don't meekly acquiesce to his law. If they do peacefully resist, well after taking in so many uncle Neds and Grandpa Bills, the public's opinion would start to turn. If they don't go try to vigorously enforce their law, well it kind of exposes the myth that more gun laws will prevent the problem. Kind of hard to argue we need more gun laws if the government can't enforce the ones already on the books.

The Warm And Fuzzies

My girl friend gets the warm fuzzies after she watches a sweet kid movie. I get the warm fuzzies when I hear about citizens exercising their rights to defend their and their neighbor's property.

Pierce Morgan Admits Assault Rifle Ban Won't Solve Gun Crime

But wants them banned anyways. But go figure right?  I think this article from a British paper called The Telegraph describes how he comes off perfectly and is pretty decent, even though like many others, misinterpretes the true meaning of the word regulate as it meant in the 18th century, explanation of why Americans as a people are so big on firearms.

Founding Fathers: James Madison Supports the 2nd Amendment

And another founding father who would utterly disagree that claims that the 2nd amendment is not about fighting tyranny. James Madison, 4th president of the United States, also known as the father of of the constitution. That is right ladies and gentleman, he is the man who wrote the thing, and if anyone should have insight into exactly what the 2nd amendment means, it would be this gentleman. 

"Americans have the right and advantage of being armed - unlike the citizens of other countries whose governments are afraid to trust the people with arms." (James Madison, The Federalist Papers #46 at 243-244)

Seems pretty clear to me. Kind of hard to claim that the founders didn't intend the American people to own weapons to fight government tyranny when the man who wrote the thing says otherwise in plain English.

 

Founding Fathers And the 2nd Amendment: Alexander Hamilton

Alexander Hamilton is probably the least liked of the founding fathers among the libertarian/conservative austrians among us. He was America's first secretary of the treasury and largely responsible for America's first attempt at a national bank, the reason why so many men loath him. I do not share those feelings for Hamilton, even though I do not like the idea of the national bank. Hamilton, for all his faults, fought for liberty; how many statist in office can say the same today?  And when it comes to the 2nd I have no disagreement with him.

"...but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude, that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people, while there is a large body of citizens, little if at all inferior to them in discipline and use of arms, who stand ready to defend their rights..." (Alexander Hamilton speaking of standing armies in Federalist 29.)

 

Founding Fathers 2nd Amendment Rights: Not Just A Good Beer...

But a wise man as well:

"The Constitution shall never be construed....to prevent the people of the United States who are peaceable citizens from keeping their own arms" (Samuel Adams, Debates and Proceedings in the Convention of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 86-87)

Founding Father 2nd Amendment Opinion: Tench Cox

One of the arguments prohibitionists, and even those who wouldn't be inclined to prohibitionist if they were more informed, often ask why would an average man need to own an assault rifle? Sometimes they might even say that the 2nd amendment doesn't protect the assault rifles from confiscation because the founders would have had no idea about the weapons we would have today.  The logic is foolish, and dangerous, considering that it could be extended to our other liberties expressly protected in the constitution, and it is somewhat insulting to our founders, they lived in an age of rapid scientific discovery. They saw the discovery of electricity and the beginnings of the industrial age. I find it doubtful that the founders didn't anticipate new weaponry being invented and accessible to the people.

Even then it didn't matter. As the founders were concerned about liberty, and they new that if the discrepancy between the people and the state ever became to large that tyranny would result.  One man, someone who you probably haven't heard of, made their views on the matter abundantly clear. He was a member of the continental congress, the group that drafted the constitution:

"Congress have no power to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of the soldier, are the birthright of an American... The unlimited power of the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state government, but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people" (Tench Coxe, Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788)

Tench Coxe makes it abundantly clear that Americans are have to have the weaponry available to the soldiers in the military of the United States available to them. The ability to own, carry and use an assault rifle, and whatever future weapon is invented, is our birthright. It is how we secure our freedoms, and can honestly call ourselves a free man. Because a man disarmed is not truly a free men but a man whose liberties simply privileges extended by his betters.

2nd Amendment Activists Akin to Hitler? True Danger of Fienstein Bill

I was browsing through google analytics and looking at some of the websites that have sent me traffic flow when I noticed a website called policymic. I had never been there before so I decided to check it out, and was greeted with an opinion article saying how US gun rights advocates had more in common with Hitler than they believed.

Naturally the headliner was incendiary to try an round up some more hits from angry individuals incensed at the utter ludicrousness of the statement.  I read the article, honestly it wasn't a bad article considering the topic and intentionally incendiary headline, there was some interesting bit of historical information that I had previously not been awar of, but as some of the commenter's posted below, I think the author missed a major point. (The same online journal also has an article defending the 2nd amendment)

When individuals mention Hitler as an example of gun control it isn't necessarily to try and compare those passing gun restriction, or outright prohibition, to a totalitarian despot; though I know some individuals who would say exactly that, it is to illustrate the potential danger suchs laws entail. The point we are trying to make is the dangerous to ever allow a government entity decide who warrants carrying a weapon and who doesn't. While I am not very sympathetic towards convicted felons, there lies a very real danger of individuals being denied their rights simply because they happen to be at odds with whoever is in charge. Remember, some of the earliest gun control laws in America were laws preventing newly freed blacks from owning firearms. Like it or not, the US, like any other nation, has had a history of oppresive behavior towards select groups in society.

Case and point, the no fly lists. There are people who have been put on the no fly lists who have never had a criminal record, but are suspected of being terrorists. They have little to no recourse, and no one, from the general public, knows what reasons someone lands on said list. It isn't too hard to conceive a list were military styled rifles can be refused to those the government deems 'potentially dangerous'.  In fact I think that is what it will happen, and that is the real danger of the Fienstein bill. There is no way, as it is currently written, it will pass. The real danger lies in the little traps that they lay in what ever 'compromise' is made with so called 'republicans'. Our rights may be contingent on whether or not some local official deems us worthy of exercising them.

This is my true fear. Individuals were still able to own firearms in Nazi Germany, but only those the fuher and his cronies deemed good little national socialists. Undesirables like the jews, which the author throws in as if it was just an after thought, gypsies, and political dissidents were denied their rights. While there is no guarantee that things would have been much different if the Jews were armed,  but if the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was any indication, it would have been far more difficult for the National Socialists. Let us not ignore that Hitler avoided invading Switzlerland, despite the little nation being entirely ensconsed by the his new reich, because the Swiss were armed to the teeth.

We must never forget. Democratic nations can turn totalitarian. And being a democracy doesn't preclude a nation from acting oppresively to others. We either stand as free men, or kneel as slaves.

The Lesson Continually Never Learned

Chicago has reached a grim milestone this year with only 12 less murders than the entire year of 2008; which was a record I believe.  Now many will mention that Chicago has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, yet it has had no affect on crime. This is true though more liberal, looser, gun control laws allowing more citizens to own firearms wouldn't make a difference.

This isn't to say that I am not for more liberal gun control laws, I very much am, but you have to recognize the root cause for Chicago's problems.  The inability for citizens to own firearms legally for their protection isn't the root cause for Chicago's problem, though it certainly doesn't help, it is corruption, economic stagnation, and ineffectual enforcement.  The simple truth is that Chicago has high crime because Chicago is rotting from the inside. It's institutions, its ethics, the police, and civil ethics have all degrading tremendously.

 The lack of focus on the root causes of crime is were gun control efforts get it wrong, and were gun rights advocates should start their arguments from.  My opinion, after reading many studies on gun violence, is that looser firearm laws won't necessarily have any impact towards decreasing crime, gun violence, or violence in general. More firearms in the hands of law abiding citizens won't necessarily reduce crime, but that is irrelevant. The fact is that it is societal decay this is the cause of violence and crime in America. It is also a fact that firearms in the hands of law abiding citizens absolutely does not increase crime, and that it gives would be victims of crime a fighting chance.  The argument for firearms, comes down to two simple arguments.

The first argument is do you want citizens to be able to defend themselves or not? It is that simple, doesn't matter if we are talking about crimminals, corrupt government, or foreign invaders, it is all a matter of defense. Those who argue for complete firearm prohibition do not want people to defend themselves; they want the government to do it. Now many will call my comments unfair, that they are not arguing for people not to defend their lives and property from aggressors. Here is the simple truth, telling someone that they cannot be equally armed to their would be aggressors might as well be arguing for them to not be armed at all. If an assailant was coming after you with a firearm would you want your fists, a bat, a knife, pepper spray, a taser, or a gun? I think we know the answer. Let me reiterate, in principle, asking an individual to be less armed than the person assaulting them is akin to asking them to not be armed at all. Or to use a more graphic example, to ask those being raped to not resist the person raping them.

You will have some individuals that do not argue for complete prohibition, but do not want individuals to be armed with 'miltiary style' weapons.  They will give you all sorts of reasons why Americans shouldn't have, or don't need, them (assault weapons) but that simply leads me to my next argument. Argument number two is this, do you or do you not believe in liberty? American society was founded on the concept that someone should be able to do something unless there is absolute proof that what they do will harm others, and even then there must be compelling evidence that restricting that action or item would provide a demonstrable good to society.  If you cannot provide definitive proof that certain actions do harm to others, and if you cannot demonstrably prove that laws against such actions will do any good, then you cannot in good conscious advocate laws restricting someones liberty and still consider yourself a lover of liberty.  You cannot  equivocate this, it is a simple truth, any excuses you make will ring hollow. Is the act of owning an assault rifle harmful to society? And would preventing that act actually benefit society?

So let us examine assault rifles. Now I could go on and argue how there is no definitive proof that legal assault rifle ownership is detrimental to society, but that is a futile argument to make to gun control proponents. So let us assume, for the sake of the argument, that assault rifle crime is a problem and that limiting legal weapons is a realistic option to stifle that social ill. Senator Fienstein claims based off a study on her website, which I will not link, that from 1994 to 2004 crimes committed with assault rifles fell by around 6% and that this is evidence that the ban was effective in reducing gun crime. Ipso facto the assault weapons ban is a boon to society and a morally justifiable limitation of a person liberty.

This claim is weak, and frankly, absurd considering the myriad of items that would factor into crime with assault weapons. There is no way any person can say in all seriousness that we can construct a model that would accurately show us the effect that legal assault rifles would have on assault rifle crime, it is an impossibility. There is no such thing as Hari Sheldon's psychohistory and there never will be. All we can do is infer, and the greater the shift in movement the more likely our inference will be correct.  Given that this is the case, a 6% drop in ten years means absolutely nothing because a whole host of other items, prison sentences, convictions, economic growth, so on and so forth, could have played into that rather small drop. Remember a 6% drop is about a six tenths of a percentage point each year, absolutely minuscule. If there were say 30% drop in assault rifle crime, then her claims would have some credibility, but there wasn't, so her claim doesn't.

Given that we cannot definitely say that assault rifle crimes will be impacted by an assault rifle ban, then you cannot argue for additional restrictions for them and call yourself a lover of liberty. But wait, someone might, this is about stopping gang bangers from killing each other with AKs, this is about preventing horrible atrocities like the one in Connecticut or Colorado. OK fine, let us examine this.

First off, as terrible as these acts are, they are anomalies, and history is replete with events like this.  Here is something for you to ponder. What is the difference between a mass killer, who kills a bunch of people at once, and a serial killer, who kills a bunch of people over time? The only difference I can think of is that one type of killer emphasises the statement that his actions makes, while the other just may like killing individuals, psychologically there probably isn't a big difference between them. And are serial killers somehow less terrible than mass killers? The answer is no of course.

Now, the claim that banning assault rifles would prevent these atrocities is rather weak. First off, even if we assume that it would have a measurable effect on mass killings, there is no promise that the mass killer won't simply opt to go the route of the serial killer. Secondly, while someone might be able to make an argument that this last shooting would be prevented by an assault weapons ban. The idea that it would prevent other mass shootings, or mass violence in general, is completely unfounded. Colombine happened in the middle of an assault rifle ban. The Oklahoma city bombing was done without an assault rifle. Gun free Japan experienced a mass killing via Sarine gas. And the worst mass killing at an American school was done with dynamite. You will never entirely prevent these events from happening, it is an impossibility. Evil exits, and as sad as it is, we must accept that.

So we come to the conclusion, and that conclusion, assuming that you are being intellectually honest, is given that an assault weapons ban does not have any measurable affect on assault rifle crime as far as we know. And given that we cannot prevent mass killings. Then the only reason why someone continues to argue for an assault weapons ban on legally acquired assault rifles is because it would make them feel better.  Feeling better is not a good reason for policy, and it is not an acceptable reason for restrictions of individual liverty for those that love, and understand, liberty. There are people who would feel better about America if there was no interracial or gay marriage, or if gays couldn't adopt, or if we taxed the rich at 100%, if we completely outlawed religion, or if we forcibly deported anyone who wasn't a white protestant from England, Scandinavia, or Germany; yet we don't enact laws based on those individuals feelings, because we as a society recognize them for the absurdity that it would be to do so.

Someone who wants to say that they love freedom and liberty, or even that they respect peoples fundamental rights, cannot in good conscious argue for an assault weapons ban. Even if you do not like assault rifles, can't understand why someone would want them, or dislike guns in general, the fact is, you cannot support this ban simply because of your feelings about guns and how nasty and icky they are. You need to look at the issue rationally. And someone, who actually uses rational and not emotive reasoning, will be forced to draw the conclusion that this ban serves no good purpose.