Statistics Prove Assault Rifle Ban Bogus

The Washington Post has a story today about how emotions play out in the Senate committee hearing on gun control legislation.  It’s clear from the article the Diane Feinstein is very emotional about the issue and resents any rational argument to the contrary.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/03/14/assault-weapons-ban-passed-after-heated-senate-hearing/

However, calm down and ask yourself some questions:  Are there any statistics collected federally or by states on the change in the use of semi automatic rifles in crimes before and after "assault weapon" bans? Are semi automatic rifles used in most murders? Are they even used in more murders than knives or blunt instruments? Given that Connecticut had and has an "assault weapon" ban, was this effective in stopping the mass shooting at the grade school? Are liberals aware how easy it is to make a spring loaded magazine with more than the legislated 10 round capacity for any mildly handy person with a few tools? Is emotion the only thing that counts for liberals?  Some of the answers can be found in the FBI statistics in the link below:

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2011/crime-in-the-u.s.-2011/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-8

    In the chart, it shows 356 murders committed with rifles of all kinds, not just “assault rifles” or even just semi automatic rifles, in 2011.  Does that seem like a lot to you?  I have heard on the news that in Chicago we are over 500 murders per year just in the city alone. Here in Chicago, some of the strictest gun laws in the country do not seem to be stopping the violence. To put the number of rifle murders in perspective, there were 12,664 murders in the US in 2011 according to the FBI. So the number of rifle murders in 2011 is 2.5 percent of the total. There were 1,694 murders committed with edged weapons, like knives. There were 496 committed with blunt weapons like clubs, hammers and baseball bats. Should we require a background check to buy Swiss army knives as long as we are going to be letting them on airplanes?

    Here is a link to the number of murders by weapon for 2000-2004.

http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_04/offenses_reported/violent_crime/murder.html#table2_9

This is relevant because the federal assault weapon ban was in effect from 1994 to 2004.  Taking 2003, the last full year of the ban, the number of murders using rifles was 392.  The total number of murders was 14,465, giving 2.7% of murders that year committed by rifles.  Basically the same rate as 2011.  In other words, this whole stunt is a feel good emotional exercise which will infringe on Constitutional rights without any beneficial effects.

    By the way, since liberals like to bring up Hitler when discussing conservatives, I will mention him.  Hitler was a big gun control supporter.  Once in power, he passed the 1938 German Weapons Act.  Jews were not allowed to own guns under the act.  The act was designed to preclude Jewish armed resistance. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Germany

    But there is some benefit to be had from this fiasco.  Remember that the Democrats in the Senate are going to force multiple votes on gun control.  This should cost about 7 Democratic Senators their jobs whether they vote for it or not.  If they vote for it, they lose to their Republican challenger.  If they don't, they get a primary from their left, eating up all their campaign cash.  In the words from Animal House, "This is gonna be great!" 

We Need to Cut Amtrak

Typical liberal response to any budget cut threat is: "You can't possibly cut (fill in the blank).  It’s way too important.  Besides it's not very much money by itself."  As Everett Dirksen once said, a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money.  We are borrowing 35 to 40 cents on the dollar of Federal spending.  The right answer is, we have to cut EVERYTHING WE CAN.  This includes the sacred cow of Amtrak.  The Amtrak subsidy budget is 1.45 billion dollars.  The romance of passenger trains is not worth it.  

http://www.planning.org/features/2012/federalbudget.htm

Grand Bargain?

There is no grand bargain worth having that Obama would ever offer.  Closed door grand bargain negotiations are a mechanism to shift the blame for failure to Republicans.  The House should continue to pass bills and let the Senate Democrats choke on them.  In immigration as well as budgets, the key is to pass bills in the House that seem reasonable and let Harry Reid explain why they don't pass the Senate.  For example, a guest worker program is a natural for Republicans.  However, once such a bill gets to the Senate it will die because the SEIU and the union farm workers don't want a guest worker program to pass.  The Senate would be unlikely to even consider the bill.  How would Senate failure to pass a guest worker bill play with Hispanic voters?  An expansion of H1B visas is another Republican natural that the Democrat's organized labor allies hate.  How would the Senate failure to pass a House expanded H1B visas bill look to Asian voters? 

Corporate Dystopia Unlikely

Kevin Williamson has a great column today about science fiction dystopias that are run by corporations.  As he observes, this is a very unlikely outcome. 

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/342621/hey-where-s-my-corporate-dystopia-kevin-d-williamson?pg=2

Fact is that corporations have only been oppressive when they get government help, particularly state guaranteed monopoly power.  The classic examples of this are the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, both of whom became de facto colonial governments with their home county governments’ assistance. 

  

Thankfully, there are a lot of competing science fiction visions that take a much more libertarian bent.  For example, "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson and the LaNague/KYFHO series of stories by F. Paul Wilson are both anti government and fun to boot.  Try them as an antidote to corporate villains.