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In light of the killing spree that resulted in seven dead, including the shooter, expect the usual cry: “More gun control.”
California has among the nation’s most stringent gun laws, including the closure of the so-called gun show loophole. Still, there will be demands that California lawmakers “do something.” California State Sen. Leland Yee, an ardent anti-gun pol, certainly did something. He got caught on tape talking with an undercover FBI agent tape about illegally trafficking firearms!
But we digress.
My first book, “The Ten Things You Can’t Say In America,” includes a chapter called “Gun Control Advocates -- Good Guys With Blood On Their Hands:
Here’s my explosive “interview” with the now CNN-departed Piers Morgan over guns:
President Obama ordered the
CDC to study how often guns are used in self-defense. Last June, the CDC
quietly released its report: Guns are used for self-defense at least as often
as they are used improperly. The CDC even cited a study by Florida criminologist
Gary Kleck, who argues that Americans use firearms for self defense -- every
year -- about 2.5 million times.
Finally, I wrote this piece
about the frequency of self-defense with a firearm:
Here’s an excerpt:
Criminologist Gary Kleck estimates that 2.5 million
Americans use guns to defend themselves each year. Out of that number, 400,000
believe that but for their firearms, they would have been dead.
Professor Emeritus James Q. Wilson, the UCLA public
policy expert, says: "We know from Census Bureau surveys that something
beyond 100,000 uses of guns for self-defense occur every year. We know from
smaller surveys of a commercial nature that the number may be as high as 2 1/2
or 3 million. We don't know what the right number is, but whatever the right
number is, it's not a trivial number."
Former Manhattan Assistant District Attorney David P.
Koppel studied gun control for the Cato Institute. Citing a 1979-1985 study by
the National Crime Victimization Survey, Koppel found: "When a robbery
victim does not defend himself, the robber succeeds 88 percent of the time, and
the victim is injured 25 percent of the time. When a victim resists with a gun,
the robbery success rate falls to 30 percent, and the victim injury rate falls
to 17 percent. No other response to a robbery -- from drawing a knife to
shouting for help to fleeing -- produces such low rates of victim injury and
robbery success."
More gun laws will simply
restrict the law-abiding, thus shifting power to the bad actors who ignore
laws. We call them bad actors for a reason.
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Larry you are right as usual. This is not about gun control. This was a disturbed individual- and it will likely come out he was on anti-depressants, which most mass killers are as well- and likely contributes to their disassociative and violent behavior.
ReplyDeleteIt seems clear he should have been committed, but due to the changes in mental health laws (in the 80s) it would've been nearly impossible for him to be committed- please use your pulpit to bring attention to this part of the discussion that is almost always overlooked.