A revisionist take that Michael Bellesiles would appreciate . . . Sorry, NRA: The U.S. was actually founded on gun control
Madison’s intent could not be more obvious: his Second Amendment refers only to state militias. If not, why include that exemption for what we now call “conscientious objectors?”
When Madison’s amendment was rewritten by a joint committee from the House and Senate in 1791, the “religious” exemption was lopped off as too cumbersome in language and too complex to enforce. Thus, the Amendment as it now stands.
But Madison’s original intent remains and is there hiding in plain sight for any Supreme Court Justice who takes the pains to look for it. The gun crowd and their apparatchiks ignore, as well, the very reason the Second Amendment got into the Constitution in the first place: to calm the anti-Federalists’ fears of the establishment of a standing army. The Second Amendment is, in fact, Madison’s (and the Federalists’) response to those who felt threatened that the strong central government, as proposed in the new Constitution, might disarm the state militias. And to miss that connection is to . . . well, miss everything.
A federally licensed dealer sold a firearm to someone who completed the required paperwork and passed the mandated background check, so . . . Retail chain sued for selling guns to Texas church shooter
Relatives of three people killed in the November shooting rampage inside a Texas church are suing a sporting goods chain that sold two firearms to the gunman.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday seeks $25 million in damages. It alleges that Texas-based Academy Sports & Outdoors was negligent in selling an AR-556 rifle to Devin Patrick Kelley. The weapon was used in the Nov. 5 attack.
Figures don’t lie, but liars definitely figure . . . The Science of Selling Gun Control: Picking the Right Data
In a Science Magazine article titled, “Firearms and accidental deaths: Evidence from the aftermath of the Sandy Hook school shooting,” economists Phillip B. Levine and Robin McKnight claim to find a causal link between the spike in gun sales after the Sandy Hook shooting and the number of fatal firearms accidents in the “Post-Sandy Hook Window” running from December 2012 to April 2013.
The real issue with this research is found, as usual, in the methods. Levine and McKnight use an eight-year overall period – 2008 through 2015 – for their analysis. Within these eight years, they build a five-month average to which the post-Sandy Hook period is compared, and ultimately found that the post-Sandy Hook surge in gun sales is linked to 57 additional fatal firearms accidents in the same period.
This overall period includes the year with the lowest number of fatal firearms accidents on record (2015), which continued the long-existing downward trend, but excludes all years before 2008 when fatal accidents were considerably higher. This serves to water down the average, making the number of fatal accidents in the post-Sandy Hook period seem shockingly large.
He’s going there . . . When I Set Up My Classroom Now I Only Think About Which Bookshelf Can Stop a Bullet
I’m going there.
When I started teaching setting up the room was so much fun. What set-up would benefit learning? Where would the bookshelf and the reading table go? How can I make my room their room where they felt at home and happy to learn.
That wonder and fun has been robbed from my profession.
Ask a teacher where the heavy bookshelf goes and it is almost the same answer everywhere. By the door. Where does the reading table go? By the door. Anything big and heavy that would stop a bullet goes by the door. Do you get what I am saying?
Somehow the left always boils it down to the gun, though . . . Why Inequality Predicts Homicide Rates Better Than Any Other Variable
Inequality predicts homicide rates “better than any other variable”, says Martin Daly, professor emeritus of psychology and neuroscience at McMaster University in Ontario and author of Killing the Competition: Economic Inequality and Homicide.
This includes factors like rates of gun ownership (which also rise when inequality does) and cultural traits like placing more emphasis on “honor” (this, too, turns out to be linked with inequality). “About 60 [academic] papers show that a very common result of greater inequality is more violence, usually measured by homicide rates,” says Richard Wilkinson, author of The Spirit Level and co-founder of the Equality Trust.
According to the FBI, just over half of murders in which the precipitating circumstances were known were set off by what is called the “other argument” – not a robbery, a love triangle, drugs, domestic violence or money, but simply the sense that someone had been dissed.
The roots of hoplophobia . . . Why People Are Anti-Gun
Some people assume that antigunners are driven by police state desires or emotional reactions to the latest tragedy. Often, it goes much further back. You probably know that astronaut Mark Kelly is married to Gabby Giffords who was a member of Congress until a psychotic named Loughner shot her among many others. You probably also know both are active gun banners now. I am reading his twin brother Scott Kelley’s Endurance: A Year in Space, a Lifetime of Discovery which I am much enjoying.
Scott describes growing up in New Jersey, the son of a police officer:
Sometimes my father’s cop friends would come over to our house for parties, and when they got drunk they would pull their guns out. Once, my father wanted to show off his new gun to his partner, so they decided to use a wooden sculpture I had just made in school as a target. I had brought it home and showed it proudly to my parents, and I was heartbroken that my dad would blast holes in my artwork. [pp.35-36]
Any guesses how far back his brother’s feelings about guns go?
This won’t last long . . . Local case pokes loophole in domestic violence gun prohibition
North Carolina may be the only state in the nation where a misdemeanor domestic violence conviction doesn’t trigger a lifetime federal ban on owning a gun.
The reason: A local case that went before the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2015, brought by a man now sitting in prison for sex crimes. His attorneys convinced the court there was enough difference between North Carolina’s definition of assault and the one in federal law to throw out a federal gun charge.
SLOW MOTION UZI