In the last couple of years the US has averaged around 40,000 deaths by firearm. Most of those are suicides which doesn’t make them any less meaningful. Somewhere around 30 people per year are killed in mass shootings.

These small numbers drive the gun control narrative. The idea is that if we could only remove guns from existence there would be no more people killed with guns. Q.E.D.

The problem with this viewpoint is that it is again a utopian vision. You are never going to remove firearms from the general populous much less the criminal population. You are never going to remove the knowledge of how to make firearms from the population.

Technology is so much better today it is much easier to make a firearm from scratch than ever before in history. Even crappy steel of today is so much better than the steels used with the first firearms. Removing guns from the population is wishful thinking, it isn’t going to happen.

The arguments of “Self defense is a right” also doesn’t work with the gun grabbers. They are true believers in the deity of government. They believe that only the government should have the right of violence. Only the government has the right to arrest, judge and punish a person.

This is why you will hear people screaming that the man shot dead by a bleeding beaten and raped woman should have had a trial. That it isn’t right for his victim, at the moment of the crime, shooting her rapist dead dead dead. The rapist hasn’t been convicted by a jury of his peers so he is only an alleged rapist. She took the law into her own hands and executed him without a fair trail.

Yes, there are times when mistakes are made. We are not talking about that. They aren’t talking about that. They aren’t talking about her shooting the wrong man. Of her shooting somebody that wasn’t involved. They are explicitly saying that a woman shooting the rapist with his cock in her body is her taking the law into her own hands. He should have been given a fair trial, not executed in cold blood.

As part of this hatred of people using force to defend themselves, there is also a huge industry in hiding the successful use of force or threat of force to defend yourself.

Lower-end estimates include that by David Hemenway, a professor of Health Policy at the Harvard School of Public Health, which estimated approximately 55,000–80,000 such uses each year

A May 2014 Harvard Injury Control Research Center survey about firearms and suicide completed by 150 firearms researchers found that only 8% of firearm researchers agreed that ‘In the United States, guns are used in self-defense far more often than they are used in crime’.[

Note that in the second quote they aren’t actually telling you the number of DGU per year, they are only telling you the opinion of 150 researchers. How those researchers were chosen will have an impact on that percentage. With a large number of “researchers” employed by gun control advocates, of course the number of “researchers” that believe that DGU out number criminal use of guns per year is going to be skewed.

Some of the issues with measuring DGU include:

• Nobody killed or wounded so no official record of the event
• Neither party reported the incident
• Memories of DGU will seem more recent than they are so “in the past year” might get response going back multiple years.
• People lying in surveys
• Survey questions being unclear
• Survey answers being discarded because researches can’t get outside confirmation

Regardless, nobody knows the real number and when the CDC published their number it was so high that they were told not to repeat the study.

A new report, published 2022-05-13 concludes that there were approximately 1.67 million DGU in 20221.

This report summarizes the findings of a national survey of firearms ownership and use conducted between February 17th and March 23rd, 2021 by the professional survey firm Centiment. This survey, which is part of a larger book project, aims to provide the most comprehensive assessment of firearms ownership and use patterns in America to date. This online survey was administered to a representative sample of approximately fifty-four thousand U.S. residents aged 18 and over, and it identified 16,708 gun owners who were, in turn, asked in-depth questions about their ownership and their use of firearms, including defensive uses of firearms.

Consistent with other recent survey research, the survey finds an overall rate of adult firearm ownership of 31.9%, suggesting that in excess of 81.4 million Americans aged 18 and over own firearms. The survey further finds that approximately a third of gun owners (31.1%) have used a firearm to defend themselves or their property, often on more than one occasion, and it estimates that guns are used defensively by firearms owners in approximately 1.67 million incidents per year. Handguns are the most common firearm employed for self-defense (used in 65.9% of defensive incidents), and in most defensive incidents (81.9%) no shot was fired. Approximately a quarter (25.2%) of defensive incidents occurred within the gun owner’s home, and approximately half (53.9%) occurred outside their home, but on their property. About one out of ten (9.1%) defensive gun uses occurred in public, and about one out of thirty (3.2%) occurred at work.
2021 National Firearms Survey: Updated Analysis Including Types of Firearms Owned

“The violent left exists only because most people on the right don’t want to serve time.”

Larry Correia.

We went from “Equal Justice for All” to “The application of Justice according to political inclination” which soon will lead to “What’s good for the goose…”

With the aid of a fellow Auschwitz survivor and a handwritten letter, an elderly man with dementia goes in search of the person he believes to be responsible for the death of his family in the death camp to kill him himself.

My wife and I watched this film today with no great expectations. We are both into watching historical movies and this one caught her eye. The acting is ok. I am not one to judge acting. Christopher Plummer does a good job of portraying an elderly man with dementia and Martin Landau does a good job portraying his friend.

But that’s not why it is worth talking about this particular movie.

Everybody in Hollywood just knows that you can walk into any store that is selling firearms and for a few dollars just walk out with a gun, ready to kill. Or if not that, then they go to a “gun show” and buy a gun from somebody at the show and walk away with a gun, ready to kill. Everybody just knows it is easy to buy a gun.

We know that it is not that easy. While most people really do believe it is more difficult to buy cold medicine than to buy a gun the reality of making a gun purchase is almost never shown.

This show didn’t show the protagonist filling out a 4473. “Here fill out this form, I can’t help you. If you make a mistake I’ll shred it and you can start over.” is never explained to the public. Nor the 10 minutes of writing followed by 30 minutes to a few days of waiting before the “instant” background check comes back with a proceed. It isn’t shown in this movie because it is BORING.

Instead they told the story. The FFL asks for the old man’s drivers license and then walks to a computer and starts entering information from the DL. The old man asks what is happening and the FFL then explains that a background check is going to be done and what they are checking for.

He explained it naturally. It was made clear that nobody, not even a harmless looking old man, just hands over money and walks out the door.

The FFL then sold the gun and didn’t proceed until he said the background check had been completed.

The only thing they got wrong in that scene was that I don’t know a single FFL that would have completed that transfer given that the old man was showing signs of dementia in just the few interactions.

Finally, they did a good job of having good people in the movie. I’m so tired of movies filled with nasty characters. In this story the old man was treated with respect and kindness through out. There was no evil corporation doing evil things, there were no evil thugs doing evil things. The son is portrayed as loving and carrying. More concerned about his father being missing than anything.

And it wasn’t that nasty “Dad is just making work for me” it was a loving son taking care of his father.

There are some small things that happen that aren’t all that realistic in terms of firearms and firearm laws but even those are plausible.

Oh, the other scene that got the wife, old man has purchased some clothes at a Walmart type store. As he is leaving the security alarm goes off. Security guy comes out to check. He is polite and well spoken. He explains he has to do this, gets the receipt verifies that they just left a tag on something and then goes to check the other bag the old man is carrying.

He opens that bag and finds the Glock. We all know that bad things are about to happen.

“Is that a Glock?”

“yes”

Long pause, you can see the security guard about to react.

“It just reminds me of my first gun.” Puts the gun back in the bag. “You have a great day.”

And beware of the new enemies seeking to bring down more of our country.

So I could carry it in this holster.

The American Federation of Teachers and its head, Randi Weingarten, is at it again.

A nonprofit organization called First Book, which said it has partnered with Disney, the American Federation of Teachers and other entities, provides free and heavily discounted books to low-income schools. Some of those listed in its marketplace contain sex imagery or have been challenged by parents for promoting gender ideology.
— Nonprofit partnered with AFT provides books with sex imagery, drag queens and gender ideology to K-12 teachers

They are also attacking Project Veritas’ Secret Curriculum series.

Once again, the conservative activist group Project Veritas is targeting public education with out-of-context and deceptively edited videos.

The group is trying to churn up the culture wars in schools, announcing that they have videos about public education’s “secret” curriculum. They want to smear teachers and school staff, trying to paint them as nefarious and public schools as places of indoctrination.
Project Veritas YouTube page with full letter

A few days ago Randi was out there talking about how the teachers unions were the ones working to keep the kids in the schools.

There comes a point when you have to look at somebody and know that they are just scum. Ranid has made the cut.

JUST IN: The International Organization for Standardization, an organization that sets standards for business transactions has voted to create a special code for gun stores to use when processing credit and debit card transactions via Visa, $V, and Mastercard, $MA.

— unusual_whales (@unusual_whales) September 9, 2022

This is clearly intended to track your purchases at gun stores.

Why do that unless they intend to use that information, probably against you.

Either your gun store purchases will be factored into your credit score or your personal ESG score or some other social credit score that will be used to determine what sort of undesirable citizen you are and which of your privileges should be restricted.

And for those who say “but I only use cash,” that’s utterly useless.

There is so much stuff only available on line, e.g., optics, holsters, etc., that it’s almost impossible to kit yourself out without buying something with a credit card.

Even then, businesses run on credit, so every gun store, guide, shooting instructor, etc., is stuck getting tracked.

This will be used to violate our Second Amendment rights the same way the government conspired with Facebook to violate your First Amendment rights.  At arms length by making the unconstitutional violation a private sector policy.