Don's Tuesday column

             THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   4/09/2013

Laughable yet deadly anti-gun propaganda

Undermining my Sunday morning emotional tranquility prior to column writing, I tuned in to the Chris Matthews Show. I was rewarded when his panel of liberals, leftists and loons obsessed over the politics of gun control; wished the language was still about “control” instead of “safety;” and displayed angst over the demise of so-called “assault weapons” bans, magazine limits, universal background checks and falling public support for President Obama’s preferred legislation.

Choice thoughts, blurted out by Time’s liberal Joe Klein, would have earned laughs at an NRA meeting: First, he bemoaned the polling results showing that 50 percent of those who oppose any new laws or background checks believe the government wants to seize guns through a database resulting from the new, universal check system. Then, admitting that there was a likelihood of  “watered down” background checks, he said any new system would be used by the NRA, “the next time some kid goes nuts and shoots up a school,” to say “we tried your way and it didn’t stop the shooting.” Regarding the Newtown massacre, it is indisputable and painfully obvious that nothing but the killer’s mom locking her guns up, armed and trained personnel at the school, or mental health professionals having committed him for treatment, would have stopped him.

On the first count, let’s review recent events in Cypress, where the government simply seized sizable portions of savings held in banks to boost the government’s bottom line in return for a EU bailout deal. Cypress’ citizens are effectively disarmed, being allowed minimal access to handguns and allowed, after registration and approval, to own 1 shotgun, with two chambers (side-by-side or over-under) and no semi-automatic feature or pump-action method for reloading.

With citizens so armed, (rather, disarmed), there are lots of things—money, land, second homes, extra vehicles, assets—that might fall under the apparent default governmental attitude: “What’s ours is ours and what’s yours is negotiable.” I cite people deprived of the free use and control of their property via insane EPA “wetlands” regulations. I cite California’s Congressional leftist, Maxine Waters, having to check her tongue in a hearing with oil company executives as she was in the midst of telling them that she was all about socializing their ass(ets). I cite the plans, floated by some Democrats in Congress and the administration, to “exchange” the retirement accounts of Americans for governmental annuities, guaranteeing the previous owner of the account a “reasonable” rate of remuneration. A lot of the things you think you own are only yours to the extent that either the law, or your and your fellow citizens’ ability and willingness to defend them, will allow.

Thomas Sowell’s piece asked, “Do Gun-Control Laws Control Guns?” (1/22, NationalReview.com); the answer is a resounding “NO!” He states the obvious: “If, as gun-control advocates claim, gun-control laws really do control guns and save lives,” there should be no more problem repealing the Second Amendment than there was repealing the Eighteenth Amendment that created Prohibition.” Mr. Sowell taught pistol shooting in the Marine Corps and knows that you may need many rounds of ammunition to account for missed targets, multiple assailants or poor visibility. A law-abiding citizen should have no limits to their magazine size for sporting or self-defense purposes. Criminals mostly use handguns illegally obtained.

“Most factual studies show no reduction in gun crimes, including murder, under gun-control laws [but rather] show higher rates … under such laws.” Gun crimes abound under the nation’s strictest laws in Chicago and Washington, DC. (Sowell) further writes: “When it was legal to buy a shotgun in London in the middle of the 20^th century, there were very few armed robberies. But, after British gun-control zealots managed over the years to disarm virtually the entire law-abiding population, armed robberies became literally a hundred times more common. And murder rates rose.”

In “New Study Finds Firearms Laws Do Nothing to Prevent Homicides” (Powerlineblog.com, 3/13), we find that the study by Dr. Eric Fleegler of Boston, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, attempted to prove just the opposite. He ranked the 50 states by quantity of gun laws, their effectiveness (per Brady anti-gun campaign) and the gun homicide and suicide rates, from 2007-2010. CNN and the Chicago Tribune, however, headlined that “strict gun laws” led to “lower gun mortality” and “fewer shooting deaths.” Dr. Fleegler, unsurprisingly an “anti-gun activist who (called for) stricter gun control measures,” may have produced a technically solid study but that will be for statistical experts to decide.

What any lay person or reader of this column can quickly grasp is that, by including suicides in his study, Dr. Fleegler was not producing a balanced analysis of the relationship of gun laws to gun murders. Suicide is self-inflicted, requires no gun, and reflects nothing on safety from assailants. He included the anomalously high-homicide state of Louisiana (10 per 100,000) in the 10 least-regulated states, but left out the even-higher-homicide District of Columbia (12.45 per 100,000), with the most draconian gun laws. Including the District in the data, the 10 most gun-regulated have a homicide rated of 4.0 per 100,000, while the 10 least gun-regulated are lower, at 3.5 per 100,000. Fewer guns laws arguably correspond to lower homicide rates, proven by an anti-gun-motivated study. John Lott’s book demonstrated the truth: “More Guns, Less Crime.