Tuesday, September 7, 2010

New Orleans Shooting - No Motive

CNN, as if in response to my observations the other day that too few Louisiana gun stories are reported, reports on a terrible shooting which took place in New Orleans.

It could have been road rage, or a drug or gang related thing. The shooter could have been a lawful gun owner with a CCW license, but somehow I doubt it. This one we'll have to blame on gun flow and you know whose fault that is.

What's your opinion? Please leave a comment.

11 comments:

  1. Yah, you could blame it on gun flow, but I don't buy it.

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  2. "This one we'll have to blame on gun flow and you know whose fault that is."

    Criminals? No wait, a crime was involved so it must be the fault of the law-abiding or society or something. Anyone but criminals. No criminals would commit crime or anything.

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  3. All right, lets clarify.

    There are 100 lawful gun owners and 50 criminal gun owners, let's say for argument's sake.

    The 50 are definitely criminals, no one doubts it. But the 100 are not all law abiding. Some of them are really criminals who just havn't been caught yet.

    How's that work for ya?

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  4. "The 50 are definitely criminals, no one doubts it. But the 100 are not all law abiding. Some of them are really criminals who just havn't been caught yet.

    How's that work for ya?"


    Ok, for argument's sake, so what do you do about them? Catch the criminals that haven't been caught yet or lock up all 100 until you sort them out?

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  5. If you want to make a realistic scenario, you'd need to take that 100 and turn it into 10,000. The 50 goes down to 5.

    That'll make it a more realistic comparison to the real numbers.

    Now, repeat the lesson by answering FatWhiteMan's question.

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  6. Anonymous, You bring up an interesting point which I havn't seen much written about. I always hear of the 80 million gun owners who are presumably civilian non-criminals. How many more are police and military and how many more are criminals?

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  7. Well, first of all, I think the 80 million number can be thrown out the window. Salesman of the year Barack Obama has probably in creased it to 90 million unique owners, but the truth is, there's no way to know that. The NRA has always said that it was a conservative estimate anyway, based upon sales, and the knowledge that there are plenty of people who buy more than one firearm.

    Imagine trying to conduct that phone poll, though! "Hi, we're calling to find out if you're a gun owner. You don't have to tell us if you have more than one, or what types, or anything like that. We just are trying to get an accurate count on the number of gun owners."

    Responses would range from unprintable expletives to "Yeah, I'm sure you'd like to know."

    As far as police, nationwide, there's only about 800,000 I believe. And some of them (not the desk jockeys, but the beat and patrol guys) would consider themselves "gun people" so there's going to be some crossover there.

    Military, including all reserves, is just under 3 million, according to Wikipedia. Again, assume some crossover. How much is a guess, just as the police would be.

    Criminals is a harder guess, because we can look at the number of people incarcerated, but does that really tell the whole story? Besides incarceration, we have plea bargains (which let people plea guilty to lesser crimes, but they actually have committed worse) and misdemeanors which may or may have removed a person's right to own a firearm.

    And of course, there is some crossover there, but again it is a guess. (Your 10% theory, which you like to tout, is way too high, though. Basic math proves that.)

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  8. WHAT?

    "And of course, there is some crossover there, but again it is a guess. (Your 10% theory, which you like to tout, is way too high, though. Basic math proves that.)"

    After what you wrote, I can't believe you said that. I honestly thought you were about to say "way too low."

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  9. You're certifiably insane if you truly think that 10% (or more) of the at least 80 million gun owners are criminals.

    The incarcerated population of the US, taking into account all current inmates, regardless of their criminal history, is about 2.5 million. Add in everybody on parole, and the total number goes to almost 7 million. Let's assume that every one of them is or was a gun owner, giving you a massive advantage in the numbers.

    7 million divided by 80 million =8.75%

    Well under 10 percent. With every possible allowance given to your side, it would still never get to 10%. Your number is fantasy. Like I said, basic math proves it.

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  10. Dear Anonymous, If I ever said 10% are criminals, please forgive me. If I've ever said that, it was simply because I was typing too fast.

    What I do say, and you can check the original post on the subject, is 10% should not be trusted with guns. It is from among them that we have most of the trouble and since it's not possible to predict which ones will go off the deep end, we need to raise the bar just a little bit.

    I also realize fully well that we're only talking about the non-criminal gun owners. We've already written off the criminals; we expect trouble from them. But it's the hidden criminals and the borderline legitimate gun owners we can affect by removing guns from the bottom 10%.

    Does that help you understand my position?

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  11. "What I do say, and you can check the original post on the subject, is 10% should not be trusted with guns."

    There are days when I feel 10% of the people driving can't be trusted with an automobile and a license. Or oxygen. I feel your pain. I really do. But you can't legislate against "stupid."

    You can go to youtube and watch sixty bazillion videos of guns being fired, and find some idjits that think it's funny to let a girl who has never fired a gun fire one without proper instruction. She inevitably gets hurt or nearly killed, and they all laugh. Or the one where the guy holds the shotgun butt against his gonads and fires the gun, taking the full recoil in the groin. Idiots. There's idiots aplenty in our world.

    Do I agree that these idiots ought never to touch a gun again in their hopefully short and unproductive lives? You bet. Do I think there ought to be a law against it? Hell no.

    But the reality is, your number is still too high. Seriously, if you want to, add up every video everywhere you can on youtube and other video sites of people being outright stupid with guns.

    Then go find the videos where you don't see any obvious blatant stupidity.

    Compare the two numbers and get back to us with a percentage. I'll wager it doesn't even come close to 10%. Granted, it's not a scientific approach, because not everyone who fires a gun films themselves doing so. Heck, I've never done it, and I've been shooting for nearly 25 years. But I'd be surprised if 1 in 10 gun videos was people being stupid with their guns.

    I guess the flip side of that is, why bother posting the video if something doesn't happen in it?, such as the guy firing the .50 cal where the round bounces off the steel plate and comes straight back at him.

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