Navy Announcing USS Gabby Giffords… But No USS Holly Crabtree

Secnav Mabus, in addition to naming ships afterer labor leaders like Cesar Chavez, lying blue falcon scumbags like John Murtha, is naming a new Navy littoral combat ship after Democrat Gabby Giffords… a naming purely for political purposes.

The Navy’s newest ship will be the USS Gabrielle Giffords.

Navy Secretary Ray Mabus made the announcement at a Pentagon ceremony today, calling Giffords someone whose name is synonymous with courage.

Getting shot in the head by a madman and suffering through recovery is not synonymous with any kind of courage that would warrant naming a ship after a congressman from a landlocked state.  This is politics.  It’s doing favors for Democrat politicians and it’s been doing favors for the administration by keeping Giffords and her head wound in the spotlight.  If it weren’t for her head wound, she wouldn’t be important to the Democrats at all.

The contrast is very sharp when you note that then-HM1 Holly Crabtree was shot in the head by a sniper while on patrol – and the courage it takes to go on patrols in hostile territory, risking her own life just by being there – and then surviving a headshot – is the kind of courage that might well warrant naming a ship after her… a sailor wounded in combat.

Chief Crabtree just retired from the Navy after 14 years and that serious wound that she still hasn’t recovered from.

Of course, Secnav Mabus was more interested in scoring Democrat and anti-gun political points by keeping Giffords in the spotlight:

Mabus said the notion occurred to him that this would be a “fitting tribute” not only to Giffords but to Navy families because she was a Navy spouse.  Her husband, Mark Kelly, was until recently an astronaut and Navy pilot.

Really, it’s a fitting tribute because she married a guy who drove boats?

In the navy, pilots drive boats.  Aviators fly planes.  One could probably safely assume it’s a typo, but either way, it shows that the ship is being named for no reason other than politics.

Giffords is a political prop for gun control and undermining the Constitution, and has been used as willing a political tool since she was shot.  She was also used to blame Sarah Palin, too.  The left exists only for politics.

By contrast, again from the Crabtree story:

After being wounded, Crabtree was attached to James A Haley Veterans Affairs Hospital in Tampa, Fla. While there, besides receiving therapy, she “inspired and motivated several critically wounded soldiers and instilled a positive, can-do spirit.” For that, she received her fourth Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal on Friday.

Somewhere there’s a bitter combat arms guy who’d joke about the way NAMs are handed out like candy for making people feel good, but I’d say Crabtree is the exception, not the rule.  In 2005 the GySgt in my platoon got a NAM for getting some ice out into the field when it was hot.  HM1 Crabtree is out getting people to push through serious injuries – she’s probably earned hers.

Crabtree, 32, grudgingly accepted medical retirement.

“I can still move my hand. I can still walk a little bit. I’m still good. I can do something,” she said of wanting to continue her career. Finally, she gave in.

She’s a 14 year veteran and she’s only 32 years old.  She was 18 when she joined, and spent 14 years of her life in naval service.  Reread her statement again until it sinks in.  Crabtree is worthy of a ship.

“I can still move my hand. I can still walk a little bit. I’m still good. I can do something.“

 

Fair winds and following seas, Chief Crabtree.

NYT Says Fewer People Own Guns

Cuz, y’know, record sales for the last few months means it’s all the same people buying guns, despite all evidence to the contrary.

From the New York Times:

The share of American households with guns has declined over the past four decades, a national survey shows, with some of the most surprising drops in the South and the Western mountain states, where guns are deeply embedded in the culture.

The gun ownership rate has fallen across a broad cross section of households since the early 1970s, according to data from the General Social Survey, a public opinion survey conducted every two years that asks a sample of American adults if they have guns at home, among other questions.

There may be some statistics that would make this slightly plausible if it were to account for the increase in illegal aliens who can’t own guns, as well as the collapse of the nuclear family, which often means that with separated parents, there are two households instead of one, which could “reduce” ownership, even though if the same family were together, it would count as 1 rather than .5.

The rate has dropped in cities large and small, in suburbs and rural areas and in all regions of the country. It has fallen among households with children, and among those without. It has declined for households that say they are very happy, and for those that say they are not. It is down among churchgoers and those who never sit in pews.

Okay, NYT, I’ll call and raise you:

The rate has dropped down low below a box, the rate has dropped below my socks.
The rate has dropped like a falling fox, the rate has dropped just like a rock.

“We do not like those evil guns, we do not like them any one!
We do not like your P95 Ruger, we do not like your P08 Luger!
We do not like them in your house, we do not like them under your blouse!
We do not like those evil guns, we do not like them any one!

We do not like your AR-15, we don’t like black things that are mean!
We do not like your old shotgun, we do not like them any one!
We do not like them in your home, we do not like them when you roam!
We do not like your FN SCAR, we do not like your BAR!
We do not like those evil guns, we do not like them any one!

We do not like them when you carry, we think you act like Dirty Harry!
We do not like your Remington, we think you are just very dumb!
We do not like them in your hands, we do not like them on your lands!
We do not like that you resist, so we crush you with the State’s mighty fist!
We do not like your evil guns, and we will take them every one!
We do not like your little lives, you will comply or you will die.”

And they go on, basically with that in mind:

That decline, which has been studied by researchers for years but is relatively unknown among the general public, suggests that even as the conversation on guns remains contentious, a broad shift away from gun ownership is under way in a growing number of American homes. It also raises questions about the future politics of gun control. Will efforts to regulate guns eventually meet with less resistance if they are increasingly concentrated in fewer hands — or more resistance?

Why not look at this like other natural rights?  “Will efforts to regulate speech eventually meet with less resistance if they are increasingly concentrated in fewer hands, or more resistance?”  Because “efforts to regulate”, as in – infringe upon rights – are somehow a desirable thing to these creatures.

The very first comment at the story blows this whole story to pieces:

To repeat yet once again my query concerning such surveys, do the surveys take into account the numbers of Americans who lie about their ownership of firearms?

The difference between this issue and others, is especially when it comes to guns – whose business is it?  Years ago, it was always best to never say you owned guns because they’re prized by thieves.  Nowadays, it’s popular to not say so because the question is what is the government going to do with that data (whether fed, state, or local).

Many, many gun owners inherently distrust some elements of government, and there’s no reason why they would tell the truth to pollsters.  Other topics may be lied about at different rates, but gun ownership, by its very nature, is a different animal.

Consider the opposition alone to the Colorado bans.  Those numbers are not consistent with a precipitous drop in support for the Second Amendment and gun ownership.

Nor are historically unprecedented numbers of background checks done not just on current gun owners’ new purchases, but on new gun owners’ new purchases.

Colorado Poll: Lots Of Opposition To Gun Bans

From the Weekly Standard:

“Democratic legislators also have to be mindful that even members of their own partisan coalition are conflicted about this proposed legislation.  While only 8% of Democrats oppose all of the gun control measures we tested, 70% of Democratic voters oppose one or some combination of the proposals (either the comprehensive package, the background checks, the liability claim, or the high-capacity magazine ban).”

“These poll numbers prove that Governor Hickenlooper and the Democrats are listening to Bloomberg and Biden instead of Coloradans,” comments state senator Greg Brophy, responding to the poll, in an email to me.

As for Republicans, Autry writes, “Not surprisingly, Republican voters in the state overwhelmingly oppose the comprehensive package (62% say it’s the wrong approach and another 26% say it goes too far), oppose holding manufacturers and sellers legally liable (94% oppose), and oppose the high-capacity magazine ban (85% agree with opponents).  For the most part, the highly politically prized Independent voting bloc also opposes the key gun control measures we tested in this survey.  Fully 69% oppose passing the comprehensive legislation (33% oppose outright, 36% think it goes too far), 84% oppose holding manufacturers and sellers liable, and 55% oppose the high-capacity magazine ban when presented with both sides.  The one area of exception is the proposal to require gun buyers to pay the cost for a background check (51% of Republicans and 69% of Independent favor it).  But, on the whole, Independents are more inclined to agree with Republicans (and gun owners), than with Democrats (and anti-NRA allies).”

The fact of the matter is, Autry writes, most Coloradans don’t think the legislation will make them “safer.” “Importantly, Colorado voters do not believe these sweeping gun control measures will make them any safer.  Two out three Coloradans (65%) say these new gun control laws won’t reduce crime or make the state any safer, while just a third say they will (32%).”

Colorado is saying no, but the tyrants are pretty much deciding to crush the rights of citizens anyway.  They don’t care that the people are opposed, they are the anointed, they have a mandate, elections have consequences, and they’re going to get it the way their betters who rule them in government want to give it to them.

And they may well be gone if they do.

And there “very well could be political repercussions for supporting this legislation, as well.  Nearly half (48%) of voters say they would be less likely to vote for their State Senator in the next election if he or she supports these gun control bills (40% more likely).  There is strong intensity behind this as well – thirty-seven percent (37%) of voters overall say they would be much less likely to vote for him or her.”

Making the Sequester Painful

From Washington Times:

The White House announced Tuesday that it is canceling tours of the president’s home for the foreseeable future as the sequester spending cuts begin to bite and the administration makes good on its warnings of painful decisions.

Announcement of the decision — made in an email from the White House Visitors Office — came hours after The Washington Times reported on another administration email that seemed to show at least one agency has been instructed to make sure the cuts are as painful as President Obama promised they would be.

In the internal email, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service official Charles Brown said he asked if he could try to spread out the sequester cuts in his region to minimize the impact, and he said he was told not to do anything that would lessen the dire impacts Congress had been warned of.

While it’s a relatively small thing, it is an indicator of how the Obama administration has gone out of its way to try to make any attempts at fiscal austerity seem horrible.

In 1995, when there were government shutdown issues, the first things done were the most public – like closing down the Washington Monument and national parks.  The attempt was to make all these cuts look severe.

The problem is that the sequestration cuts are done against parts of government that are “discretionary”, which is almost the exact opposite of what one would expect.  “Mandatory” here means handouts that were carved into law by statute – even if they are parts of government that have no Constitutional basis.  “Discretionary” spending is appling to sections of government that are generally constitutionally mandated, rather than “mandated” by statute law.  This is how welfare handouts become sacred, but the Army and Navy could be completely disbanded.

From Article I, Section 8:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Among those duties, imposts, and general welfare something as APHIS might be of little import, but it’d also probably withstand at least a cursory examination for Constitutional scrutiny.

It’s worth noting that “general welfare” does not mean handouts.

Bob Woodward Asking The White House About Fast & Furious and Benghazi?

Nope.

Bob Woodward says the White House is warning “you’ll regret this” because he’s saying Obama’s sequester response is “madness”.

Drudge had it as his headline today.  From Business Insider:

Bob Woodward said this evening on CNN that a “very senior person” at the White House warned him in an email that he would “regret doing this,” the same day he has continued to slam President Barack Obama over the looming forced cuts known as the sequester.

Real Clear Politics has some video of an exchange with Wolf Blitzer where he discusses it as well.

This started because Woodward said Obama’s sequester strategy was “madness”.  HotAir has a good roundup of it and the reactions.

So why is this a story?  Because it’s a historical footnote for reporters.

Woodward wasn’t asking questions about Fast and Furious.  Woodward didn’t think there was anything worth asking about Benghazi.

In Fast and Furious, the Attorney General authorized smuggling guns to narcoterrorist cartels in Mexico with the express outcome of finding guns at crime scenes.  We have Congressional testimony of ATF agents who ran the operation discussing that.  Heck, CBS’s Sharyl Attkisson even managed to get the story moving a little bit.

The Justice Department hid it, hushed it up, and refused to turn over documents.  What they did turn over was a joke.

And Obama exerted executive privilege over things he claims he had no knowledge of (which isn’t how EP works), and it all went away because the media doesn’t ask questions.  If Woodward had wanted to, he could’ve run with it and taken down two administrations.  But he’s in the tank for Obama just like the rest of the complicit media, he’s just upset that he’s being threatened.

With Benghazi, we had questions of an admiral being relieved because he wanted to go and help our ambassador & embassy personnel.  There were questions of what the ambassador was doing in Benghazi anyway – and what about the MANPADS in Libya going to Syria.  Woodward blew it off.

This isn’t really a story.  It’s journalists looking at one of their heroes and saying “yeah, he’s taking a stand”.  No, he’s not.  He’s an irrelevant old man who 5 years into an administration that’s had plenty of scandals hushed up by the media, is just now realizing that they’re not the people he and the rest of the media have been carrying water for.  But he’s old, and just a curiosity today, and he’ll be forgotten just as quickly as Geraldine Ferraro was when she questioned misogynistic Democrat attacks on Palin during the 2008 elections.

Bloomberg vs The NRA and Illinois; A Comparison

From CSM/Yahoo:

Bloomberg vs. NRA: Big spending could swing Illinois race

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s ‘super PAC’ is spending $2.1 million to defeat a pro-gun candidate in the race to replace Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. It’s part of his broader attack on NRA power.

New York CityMayor Michael Bloomberg is sending a message to Democratic officials nationwide with upwardly mobile ambitions: Support the National Rifle Association at your peril.

Through the “super political-action committee” he launched shortly before the November election, Mayor Bloomberg has purchased $2.1 million in political attack ads in the special vote to replace Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who resigned in November. The primary target is Debbie Halvorson, a former member of Congress who once received an “A” rating from the NRA and opposes President Obama’s push for an assault-weapons ban.

Halvorson just lost tonight.  But what’s worth noting is that Bloomberg spent $2.1 million.

The NRA, according to OpenSecrets.org, has only spent $19.5 million  on candidates from 1989-2012, in all races.  They do note there are other methods of spending:

During the 2010 election cycle, the NRA spent more than $7.2 million on independent expenditures at the federal level — messages that advocate for or against political candidates.

That’s $7.2 million across an entire year, and across the entire country.  Bloomberg, a billionaire who knows what’s best for you – spent $2.1 million on one race with Democrats against Democrats.

Halverson’s stance ultimately doomed her when a big NYC billionaire who hates guns decided to destroy her.  She did see it coming, though.

“If you can tell me that banning another gun will go after the criminals, I’d be all for it. I’d be for anything that stopped the killing and gets guns out of the hands of criminals, but it won’t work. (Chicago’s) Cook County has had an assault weapons ban since 1993 and they have the highest murder rate in the country,” she told The Hill.

“That’s why I refuse to just say I’m for it, knowing in my heart it’s not going to work. It would have saved me a lot of grief, there wouldn’t be all this money going against me, but I’ve been an elected official too long and I know too much. I know that won’t work.”

Too late.

Halvorson accuses Bloomberg of trying to “purchase” the election. “We cannot allow Bloomberg to buy this district from New York,” she told reporters Monday.

She says she has not received an endorsement from the NRA. One of her top opponents in the Democratic primary will be Ms. Kelly, a former Illinois state representative who is running on a pledge to reduce gun violence by supporting assault-weapon and conceal-carry-permit bans and reducing the loophole for weaponry sold at gun shows. The winner of the Democratic primary on Feb. 26 is seen as being the favorite in the April 9 general election.

..

Bloomberg’s involvement could be decisive, says Professor Sabato. The $2.1 million Independence USA ad buy dwarfs the $50,000 Halvorson has spent on her race to date, according to data from the Federal Election Commission.

$2,100,000 to $50,000.

215 to 5.  43 to 1 spending ratio.

Kelly won:

A multimillion-dollar ad blitz by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to stop an NRA-backed House candidate in Illinois paid off Tuesday night, as local official Robin Kelly crushed more than a dozen Democratic candidates vying to replace disgraced former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.

Bloomberg and gun control proponents seized on the results as evidence of momentum in their push to enact President Barack Obama’s gun control package. The mayor will take that message to Washington Wednesday in meetings with Vice President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), according to Bloomberg’s public schedule.

Bloomberg’s visit coincides with a hearing the Senate Judiciary is slated to hold Wednesday on a proposal to ban assault weapons.

…

The outcome marked a major win for Bloomberg, who spent around $2.3 million attacking Halvorson for her pro-gun views and propping up Kelly. The ad blitz swamped the underfunded ex-congresswoman and prompted her to brand him as an out-of-town billionaire trying to buy a House seat.

Note that it marked a major win for Bloomberg… so there’s no “branding” him as an out-of-town billionaire buying a house seat – he IS an out-of-town billionaire buying a house seat.

And his group, Independence USA PAC, spent more than $14 million in races across the country.

His PAC’s name is delightfully Orwellian.  A billionaire dictator who tells people how much soda they can drink in a city he rules with an iron fist goes out and buys already-gerrymandered house seats from one Democrat to hand to another all in the name of disarming the US population calls himself in favor of “Independence”.

Colorado Governor Iffy On Gun Ban

Via Sipsey Street, from GunsSaveLives:

According to coloradopeakpolitics.com, the governor of Colorado, John Hickenlooper is wavering on a proposed magazine capacity limit that is making its way through the Colorado state legislature.

Since magazine giant Magpul, which is currently operating in CO, has announced they will pack up their operations, move across state lines and take hundreds (possibly thousands) of jobs with them and since there has been a huge national fallout over comments made by Democratic lawmaker Joe Salazar regarding women with guns and rape… the governor is apparently considering not supporting new gun control bills.

From ColoradoPeakPolitics:

At the start of the session legislative Democrats were confident to the point of cocky about their gun control legislation. Only a few weeks later, after a national controversy erupted over Rep. Joe Salazar’s (D-Thornton) remarks about rape and Magpul Industries threatened to leave the state over a proposed high capacity magazine ban, the issue has shifted, and fast.

And there is no Colorado politician better attuned to the shifting winds of the Colorado electorate than Governor John Hickenlooper.

Colorado Peak Politics notes that from CPR interviews, Hickenlooper is “weighing it”.  Which means he may be able to see that if he vetoes it, he won’t be facing harsh opposition from the general public the way he would if he passed it.  He can also see that his own party probably isn’t going to vote against him or primary him if he does take a “reasonable” route and shut down the anti-gun forces in the state.

For Hickenlooper, a veto is a win-win.  He gets to be seen as actually reasonable, and while his party will be losing seats, he probably won’t face much difficulty in retaining his.

As Milton Friedman was fond of saying, you just have to get the wrong people to do the right thing.

Obama’s Failing Ratings and the State of the Union 2013

Via Breitbart, from Gallup:

If it weren’t for Dick Cheney agreeing with Obama on drone strikes, he’d be all in negatives.

Of course, given that even MSN is calling bullshit on Obama’s State of the Union address, maybe it shouldn’t be all that surprising:

• The president claimed that “both parties have worked together to reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 trillion.” But that’s only an estimate of deficit reduction through fiscal year 2022, and it would be lower if the White House used a different starting point.

We haven’t reduced the deficit at all, and we’re still running trillion-dollar deficits.

The “estimate of deficit reduction” is like writing out a diet.  You come up with a plan that says you’re only going to eat 2000 calories a day, you’re going to run 3 miles a day, lift weights for an hour, and do another hour of cardio.  By the end of 2013, you should be ready to run in an iron man triathalon.  Of course, when the day after you write that plan, you eat 4000 calories, waddle 30 yards to the fridge and back in a day, lift only food to your mouth, and do another hour of sleeping to rest from all your eating… you won’t find yourself at the end of the year ready to run an iron man triathanlon.

• Obama touted the growth of 500,000 manufacturing jobs over the past three years, but there has been a net loss of 600,000 manufacturing jobs since he took office. The recent growth also has stalled since July 2012.

That job growth just keeps “unexpectedly” stalling, just like the rest of the economy keeps “unexpectedly” stalling.

To continue with the working out analogy, Obama’s growth of jobs is like adding a half hour of running to your daily workout in the evening… after you take out an hour of running from your daily workout in the morning.  You can say you’re running an extra half hour, because it is a different half hour, but you still have a loss.

• He claimed that “we have doubled the distance our cars will go on a gallon of gas.” Actual mileage is improving, but Obama’s “doubled” claim refers to a desired miles-per-gallon average for model year 2025.

The Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards that the government imposes are as fanciful as any other soviet pipe dream.  The party will dictate that it must be so, and when it cannot be produced, oh well – it’s the worker’s fault.  Obama declares that all cars must average 54.5 mpg by 2025.  That’s 12 years from now.  12 years ago, a 2001 Ford Taurus got 19 mpg combined.  Today, a 2013 Ford Taurus gets 23 mpg combined (and that’s ignoring that there was a massive Taurus redesign after some idiot wunderkind at Ford cancelled it).  The 2001 Toyota Camry 4-cylinder got 24 mpg combined.  The 2013 Toyota Camry 4-cylinder gets 28 mpg combined.

Ford and Toyota both make good cars.  The Taurus with a V6 over 12 years was able to be improved by 4 mpg.  The Camry with a 4-cylinder over 12 years was able to be improved by 4 mpg.  The new demands by government are that they go up to 54.5 mpg.  For the Taurus, that’s requiring an increase of 31.5 mpg – more than double.  For the Camry, that’s requiring an increase of 26.5 mpg – almost double.  And remember again, that’s average economy, so for every fun, desirable vehicle like the Ford Raptor, Toyota FJ, Jeep Wrangler, Ford Mustang, Dodge Challenger or any of the light trucks that are made that get in the teens to 20s for mpg, they’ll have to crank out some ridiculous number of vehicles that get above 55 mpg.

Keep in mind this is the Obama government that declared that we need to be running on biofuels that DO NOT EXIST.  They can make mandates, and when the mandates can’t be met, they impose fines, or seize control.  The objective is to fundamentally transform America, and it’s working.  Auto manufacturers will have to either stop making cars people want, or they’ll have to make the ones the government lets them.

And government-made cars suck.

• Obama said the Affordable Care Act “is helping to slow the growth of health care costs.” It may be helping, but the slower growth for health care spending began in 2009, before the law was enacted, and is due at least partly to the down economy.

Obamacare is a trillion-dollar tax hike.  Those taxes will be passed on to consumers.  We’ve already begun to see it, as businesses like Stryker Medical start cutting jobs; and they will be raising costs.  All those taxes have to come from somewhere.  Obamacare is also scheduled to cost every family about $20,000.

There is nothing there that will “slow the growth of health care costs” under Obama policies unless you have a very fanciful vision of the future… just like the 54.5 mpg cars, magic biofuels, increasing jobs, and recovering economy.

GUNS:The Republicans have already given in.

Reblogged from Doc Thompson Show:

A friend has a connection in the office of a Member of Congress (in a leadership position.)
He forwarded this email exchange that seems to indicate the Republicans will agree to SOME new laws that limit your 2nd Amendment rights. Could it be that, behind closed doors, they have ALREADY caved in?

Very interesting post over at the Doc Thompson show.  Veracity unknown, but would be unsurprising.  Happy new year.

Today’s Gun Control News Roundup

To start off, the First Amendment is under attack as well as the Second.  From Bunch Blog:

All of these video games, do they really need to be so violent? is the question that will come next. Studies show that video games lead to murder! ideologues will shout. Why are we teaching our kids to kill? Don’t believe me?

My point? Just this: Gamers should be extremely, extremely wary about the liberal impulse to “do something” in the wake of a tragedy. Guns aren’t going anywhere. Video games about war marketed to easily impressed teens and young adults (the demographic that tends to commit mass murder)? Well, they’re slightly less secure.

Keep in mind the people who wanted to ban music the most in the 1990s were Democrats led by Tipper Gore; and those who went after video games included then-Democrat Joe Lieberman (now an independent due to totally unrelated factors).

Quentin Tarantino’s new movie Django Unchained, which is a dose of the old ultra-violence, struck me as strange over the weekend.  Listening to CNN and FOX on XM radio, almost every commercial break from the Connecticut mass murder was an ad for a movie… about mass murder.  Is it justified in context of the film?  Haven’t seen it.  But it brings up some questions, which Tarantino has addressed by having the premier cancelled, but otherwise just saying:

Speaking in New York Quentin Tarantino said: “I just think you know there’s violence in the world, tragedies happen, blame the playmakers. It’s a western. Give me a break.”

The Oscar-nominated director of Inglourious Basterds and the Palme d’Or winning Pulp Fiction, said blame for violence should remain squarely with the perpetrators.

The only people responsible for crimes and violence are those who commit them.  Millions of people every day who are also immersed in popular culture don’t go out and commit murders.

Reason Magazine has a couple of good pieces today on how gun control doesn’t work – the first about how mass shootings aren’t really on the uptick:

those who study mass shootings say they are not becoming more common.

“There is no pattern, there is no increase,” says criminologist James Allen Fox of Boston’s Northeastern University, who has been studying the subject since the 1980s, spurred by a rash of mass shootings in post offices.

The random mass shootings that get the most media attention are the rarest, Fox says. Most people who die of bullet wounds knew the identity of their killer….

Grant Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has written a history of mass murders in America, said that while mass shootings rose between the 1960s and the 1990s, they actually dropped in the 2000s. And mass killings actually reached their peak in 1929, according to his data. He estimates that there were 32 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s and 26 in the first decade of the century.

Another Reason piece highlights the Magical Thinking of Gun Controllers, summed up easily in their last sentence:

The notion that restrictions like these can have a noticeable impact, let alone that they can “end” or “stop” occasional outbursts of senseless violence, is hard to credit unless you believe what Obama insists he does not: that evil can be legislated out of the world by acts of Congress.

And finally, from the Atlantic, a piece that notes that we’ve already had the debate on gun control.  And gun control lost to gun rights:

There isn’t anything wrong with gun-control advocates lamenting what, by their lights, is a public that’s reaching wrongheaded conclusions on the subject and is trending in the wrong direction.

But too many pieces I’ve read make a mockery of robust debate in a pluralistic society by ignoring the fact that current policy is largely (though not entirely) a reflection of the U.S. public disagreeing with gun reformers. The average American is far more likely than the average journalist or academic to identify with gun culture, to insist that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to bear arms, to exercise that right, and to support various state concealed-carry laws.

…

Opponents of gun control have been widely vilified in the past week. Very few attempts have been made to understand what motivates them — and given that they’re a subset of Americans with little representation in the national media, attempts at understanding would likely do a lot to inform the rest of the American public. For the most part, these people aren’t in fact motivated by selfishness, as so many critics have stated or implied in the last few days, and almost without exception, gun-control opponents are as horrified by the events in Newtown as anyone calling for a new assault-weapons ban or better background checks or a ban on ammunition.

The point isn’t whether they’re being treated fairly or not. It’s that a gun debate can only be productive in a country as pro-gun as this one when the folks on either side at least understand the deeply held disagreements at issue. So far, too many newly vocal reformers are operating under the conceit that if only America “finally” had a conversation about gun violence, everyone would immediately see the wisdom of the position reformers have advocated all along.

It’s an interesting piece in that it recognizes that journolists and reporters are widely in opposition to the actual citizenry.  It’s somewhat screwed up in that it assumes there’s a debate to have between the wrong (gun grabbers who ultimately support tyranny, whether knowing or unknowing) and right (citizens’ rights advocates).  There are a few restrictions (violent felons, mentally ill, etc.) that are important, but beyond those very, rare few who are incapable of being responsible citizens, shall not be infringed means what it says.

Many people need to understand how rights work:

A HUMAN RIGHT.