Unintended Consequences of UK Gun Laws

LIVERPOOL was today named and shamed as one of Britain's gun capitals.

A new report put the city behind only Manchester for the ease with which criminals can obtain illegal firearms...

We have a real-life laboratory producing real-life results. Anyone who ignores them and advocates continued propagation of the delusion is either ignorant or evil.

Do the Right Thing

The school board for an elementary district has chosen to have a student home schooled instead of expelling him in response to a possession of a gun incident.

The board at Troy Elementary School District made that decision Wednesday night after administrators recommended an expulsion. On Nov. 15, the boy found a pellet gun and turned it over to an official at Troy Middle School...

Am I the only one who thinks they have actually done him a favor? And any guesses on what he'll do if he ever finds another gun?

Gun-Grabber to be Sentenced Next Week

If only the story lived up to the promise of its headline...

Clyde Confident Gun Ban Will Stand Despite Vote

Which no doubt pleases Bonnie, what with the reduced professional risks and all...

The Stéphane Solution

The tragic shooting at Dawson College should convince the Conservative government to acknowledge the necessity for effective gun control in Canada, said Stéphane Dion, Leader of the Liberal Official Opposition, today.

Ok, Stéphane, here's a test.

Kimveer Gill has just pulled a gun and is shooting your family.


Just what the hell are you prepared to do about it--besides shriek, wet yourself, run away or hide?

We're the Only Ones Exclusively Judgmental Enough

A senior district judge charged with carrying a concealed weapon without a permit has been held for trial...

Presutti's attorney, Michael Witherel, told Court of Common Pleas Judge Lawrence O'Toole on Thursday that his client needed the gun to protect himself from his father-in-law. He argued that district judges are allowed to carry guns because they are "law enforcement officers."

In other words, he's allowed to protect himself and we're not because he's an "Only One" and we're not.

Yeah, that sounds like the kind of Republic the Founders had in mind...

About that Australian "Gun Death" Study...

I can't help but note the graph shows a steep declining trend for better than 15 years before the '96 "buyback." I'm no statistician, but several questions come immediately to mind:

• If removing a fixed number of guns from the population resulted in a directly attributable decrease in deaths, can we also demonstrate a commensurate level in continued deaths for the guns remaining in the population?
• Which part of the population participated in surrendering weapons (i.e., "law-abiding"?) Are the death reductions exclusive to that segment?
• Has there been a commensurate decrease in criminal activity?
• Has immigration policy introduced a new and statistically significant population growth demographic for which gun ownership is nontraditional?

This is just off the top of my head--there are plenty of other questions that pop up, such as how they factor in higher suicide rates in totally disarmed cultures like Japan, why a temporary absence of a statistical rarity, mass shootings, is perceived as a cure against all future mass shootings, what the criteria is to define a mass shooting (more than 1? 2?...), and, to get theoretical (but it's justified based on longer-term historic "trends") what would the effects of a disarmed population be should the country either devolve into a Stalinist-style tyranny or be invaded?

I'd like to see someone who really knows his way around crunching the numbers and asking the right questions, like John Lott take a crack at this.

This Day in History: December 15

On this day in 1791, Virginia becomes the last state to ratify the Bill of Rights, making the first ten amendments to the Constitution law and completing the revolutionary reforms begun by the Declaration of Independence. Before the Massachusetts ratifying convention would accept the Constitution, which they finally did in February 1788, the document’s Federalist supporters had to promise to create a Bill of Rights to be amended to the Constitution immediately upon the creation of a new government under the document.

If the Bill of Rights is law, that clearly makes those who violate it lawbreakers.

More: Bill of Rights Day