Concealed Carry Shootings Now Part of Chicago's Gun Reality

Chicago Tribune - an interesting article about concealed carry guys acting properly - then there's this:

Later that month, a man attempted to help police foil an armed robbery at a south suburban Crestwood phone store by firing at the fleeing suspect. A police officer had to duck for cover when the unidentified license holder fired at the suspect.

None of those shooters was charged. Illinois law says firearms can be used in cases of imminent danger and in defense of self and others.

Murder-Suicide at the Manhattan Federal Building

The Daily Beast

The shooting was at a federal building in downtown Manhattan that houses the immigration court and processing center.

Anybody who has been listening to Donald Trump rant about a supposed illegal alien crime wave might have imagined that the gunman who inexplicably drew one of two .38 caliber revolvers he was carrying in a plastic bag and fatally wounded a security guard on Friday was a homicidal foreigner.

But after the gunman had stepped beyond the dying guard and passed through the metal detector and fatally shot himself, a search of his wallet showed that he was 68-year-old retired U.S. Army Reserves officer and onetime government employee named Kevin Downing from a place no more distant than just across the Hudson River in Fort Lee, New Jersey. He had briefly worked as an economist with the U.S. Department of Labor, which has offices in the building. He had been let go before he completed the one year trial period and he had unsuccessfully sued to be reinstated, charging he had been fired for being a whistleblower who reported “a gross waste of funds.” The hearing board found he had “not revealed anything not widely known” and had “failed to make a non-frivolous allegation.”

Detectives noted that Downing had opened fire without exchanging so much as a word with the ill-fated guard. The guard, 53-year-old Idrissa Camara, had been due to go off duty at 4 pm, but he had agreed to work an extended shift when he could have gone home to his wife and children. He was a native of the Ivory Coast, which means in this case the immigrant was the victim. He had died simply because he had the terrible luck to be there at 5:05 PM when Downing appeared with his two handguns.

Trigger Warning: 10 Shocking Truths About Gun Violence

The Guardian

5 The gun has been behind some of the great advances in medical history

As guns have evolved through the centuries, so too have medical responses to the injuries sustained from them. In the 14th century, gunpowder’s harm caused doctors to believe bullets were contaminants. This led to the practice of burning the wound to rid the body of poison. By the American war of independence (1775-83) surgeons were suggesting that, if a gunshot wound was to be sewn up, a piece of onion was best put inside, and the wound reopened after one or two days.

By the Crimean war of the 1850s, though, Florence Nightingale’s efforts to clean hospitals had a notable impact on patient mortality, which dropped from 52% to 20%. Joseph Lister’s experiments applying carbolic acid to wounds also helped reduce death rates. And Roentgen’s development of the X-ray in 1895 helped pinpoint fabric, bullets and bone fragments. The impact of these discoveries was revolutionary: research into the Spanish-American war in 1898 suggests that 85% of US casualties survived.

Medical innovations in gunshot trauma continues today. Tranexamic acid, used to ease heavy menstrual flow, has also helped save the lives of haemorrhaging gunshot patients. Syringes containing tiny sponges can stem a gunshot wound in seconds.

Being Armed and Trained is Not the Answer

NGVAC

Months before Illinois became the last state in the union to legalize “conceal carry,” a droll cartoon ran in the local papers. A masked man threatens another with a handgun, saying “Hand over all your valuables.”

“Nope, I’m armed,” says the would-be victim. “Just give me one minute to get my concealed gun out of its holster.”

The armed citizen movement, driven by gun makers and whipped up fear of “bad guys,” is predicated on the self-defense that carrying provides. Yet if being armed and looking for trouble were true protection, would law enforcement officers ever be killed?

It has been two years since Kaufman County, Texas District Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia were shot to death in their home.

Mike McLelland carried a gun even when he walked his dog and his wife Cynthia also had a license to carry a concealed handgun. “There were guns hidden all over the house,” his son, J. R. McLelland, told the New York Times. “Behind doors, everywhere. He could have been standing next to a .40-caliber Glock and you would not have known it. When they said that he got shot, it was unbelievable because he was so well-armed and so well-versed in guns.”

Guns With History

Iowa Attorney Gives Employees Bonuses to Carry Guns

The Growing Risk of Suicide in Rural America

The Atlantic

In rural America, where there are more guns, fewer people, and fewer doctors than in the urban U.S., young people are at particular risk of suicide.

A study published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics analyzed suicides among people aged 10 to 24 between 1996 and 2010, and found that rates were nearly doubled in rural areas, compared to urban areas. While this gap existed in 1996 at the beginning of the data set, it widened over the course of this time period, according to Cynthia Fontanella, the lead author on the study, and a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center.

Both adults and adolescents are at greater risk of suicide in remote areas of the U.S., according to a 2006 literature review. But suicide is in general more common among adolescents and young adults: It’s the third leading cause of death for people aged 15 to 24, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the second for people 25 to 34, and the 10th most common among the general population.

More than half of the youths who killed themselves in this time period did so with a firearm, and gun suicides (though generally on the decline) were particularly common in rural areas—nearly three times more common. This may be because gun ownership is higher in rural regions. According to 2014 Pew data, 51 percent of people in rural areas kept a gun at home, compared to 25 percent in urban areas, and 36 percent in the suburbs.

To Sell or Destroy? Law Enforcement Agencies Weigh Fate of Seized Guns

The Star Tribune

New Hope Police Chief Tim Fournier and his department were still reeling from the ambush shooting of two officers by a mentally unstable man when the investigation took a startling twist. The 12-gauge pistol-grip Stoeger shotgun wielded by attacker Raymond Kmetz had come from the Duluth Police Department.

That department followed all state and federal laws when it sold the gun and 45 other confiscated hunting guns to the public over the last two years. Kmetz, who was prohibited from owning a gun because of his mental health history, ordered it from an online auction site and had a friend pick it up in an illegal “straw” purchase at a gun shop in Princeton, Minn.

On Jan. 26, Kmetz, 68, took the gun to New Hope City Hall, where he shot the two officers. Other officers returned fire, killing him.

“You can’t guarantee where guns go,” Fournier said.

Duluth police pocketed $5,538 for selling the 46 shotguns. Feb. 13, Duluth Police Chief Gordon Ramsay said his department now is weighing a change in the way it discards confiscated weapons no longer needed for investigations or training.

“The New Hope incident is yet another example of why we need to develop sound strategies to keep weapons from individuals who are ineligible to lawfully possess them,” Ramsay said.

If Duluth decides to start destroying them, it will join many Twin Cities metro-area and outstate departments whose chiefs say that policy sends the right message about keeping guns off the streets.

Missouri Gun Deaths Surpass Vehicle Deaths in 2013, Part of National Trend

Local news reports

Motor vehicle deaths long have been the leading nonmedical cause of death across the country.
Not in Missouri in 2013.

Firearms proved more deadly, and by a wide margin — 880 to 781 — according to the most recent federal data available. And Missouri appears to be a harbinger of things to come.

Some experts predict that for the first time in decades, firearms will kill more people nationwide this year than motor vehicles.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article9311399.html#storylink=cpy

Georgia Domestic Shooting - 5 Dead, 2 Wounded

Huffington Post

A man shot six people Saturday afternoon, killing four of them, including his ex-wife and several children before turning the gun on himself on a quiet, suburban street west of Atlanta, police and neighbors said.

States with Weak Gun Laws and Higher Gun Ownership Lead Nation in Gun Deaths

VPC

Newly available data for 2013 reveals that states with weak gun violence prevention laws and higher rates of gun ownership have the highest overall gun death rates in the nation, according to a Violence Policy Center (VPC) analysis of data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. 

Meanwhile, states with the lowest overall gun death rates have lower rates of gun ownership and some of the strongest gun violence prevention laws in the nation. However, even in these states the human toll of gun violence is far above the gun death rate in other industrialized nations.

The VPC analysis refers to overall gun death rates in 2013, the most recent year for which data is available. A table of the states with the five highest gun death rates and the five lowest gun death rates is below. For a list of gun death rates in all 50 states, see http://www.vpc.org/fadeathchart15.htm.

States with the Five Highest Gun Death Rates				States with the Five Lowest Gun Death Rates
Rank	State	Household Gun Ownership	Gun Death Rate per 100,000	Rank	State	Household Gun Ownership	Gun Death Rate per 100,000
1	Alaska	60.6 percent	19.59	50	Hawaii	9.7 percent	2.71
2	Louisiana	45.6 percent	19.15	49	Massachusetts	12.8 percent	3.18
3	Alabama	57.2 percent	17.79	48	New York	18.1 percent	4.39
4	Mississippi	54.3 percent	17.55	47	Connecticut	16.2 percent	4.48
5	Wyoming	62.8 percent	17.51	46	Rhode Island	13.3 percent	5.33

  The five states with the highest per capita gun death rates in 2013 were Alaska, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Wyoming. Each of these states has extremely lax gun violence prevention laws as well as a higher rate of gun ownership. The state with the lowest gun death rate in the nation was Hawaii, followed by Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Each of these states has strong gun violence prevention laws and a lower rate of gun ownership.

Dodge City

"The Carrying of Firearms Strictly Prohibited" - Dodge City, 1878 after a theater shooting #gunsense #p2 pic.twitter.com/c9fBCVqNsQ .

— US Gun Violence (@usgunviolence6) January 31, 2015

The Myth Behind Defensive Gun Ownership

Gary Kleck

Politico

Respondents in two Harvard surveys had more than 3 times as many offensive gun uses against them as defensive gun uses. Another study focusing on adolescences found 13 times as many offensive gun uses. Yet another study focusing on gun use in the home found that a gun was more than 6 times more likely to be used to intimidate a family member than in a defensive capacity. The evidence is nearly unanimous.

Beyond the defensive gun use versus criminal use dichotomy lies an important question: Are all defensive gun uses good? Undergirding gun advocates’ rhetoric touting the millions of defensive gun uses every year is the assumption that these uses are necessarily good. However, most cases of defensive gun use are not of gun owners heroically defending their families from criminals.

Kleck himself admitted in 1997, in response to criticism of his survey, that 36 to 64 percent of the defensive gun uses reported in the survey were likely illegal—meaning the firearm was used to intimidate or harm another person rather than for legitimate self-defense. His conjecture was confirmed by a Harvard study showing that 51 percent of defensive gun uses in a large survey were illegal according to a panel of 5 judges. This was even after the judges were told to take the respondents at their word, deliberately ignoring the tendency of respondents to portray themselves in a positive light.

Let’s assume for a moment that Kleck and Getz’s estimates are accurate. Rather than being a boon to civilized society, then, these estimates of 1 million to 2.5 million defensive gun uses annually would instead indicate an epidemic of irresponsible gun owners—millions! Lucky for us, despite what the NRA’s favorite criminologists claim, this clearly isn’t the case.

The myth of widespread defensive gun use is at the heart of the push to weaken already near catatonic laws controlling the use of guns and expand where good guys can carry guns to bars, houses of worship and college campuses—all in the mistaken belief that more “good guys with guns” will help stop the “bad guys.” As Wayne LaPierre of the NRA railed in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting: “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.”

Vermont's Gun Problems

Vermont suicides

The 2010 Vermont suicide rate was significantly higher 
than the U.S. death rate (15.7 versus 12.1 per 100,000). 

Gun deaths vs. car deaths

According to a study released this week by the Violence Policy Center in Washington D.C., Vermont had 78 gun deaths in 2011, compared to 54 fatal car accidents as reported by the Governor's Highway Safety Program.

States with Most Gun Owners Have More ‘Non-Stranger’ Homicides

The Boston Globe

Examining data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports for all 50 states from 1981 to 2010, the researchers confirmed a 2013 study, which found total homicide rates were higher in states with the highest percentage of gun owners. But the latest finding published in the October issue of the American Journal of Public Health also found no difference among states in the incidence of murders committed by those who didn’t know their victims.

What did increase with gun ownership? The incidence in murders committed by loved ones, friends, and acquaintances, such as rival gang members.

“Not only do guns not protect people from having strangers kill them but having those guns around puts them at greater risk for being killed in a situation with someone that they do know,” said study co-author Dr. Michael Siegel, professor of community health sciences at the BU School of Public Health.

The new study found that, for each one-percentage point increase in state-level gun ownership, the state’s non-stranger homicide rate increased by 0.9 percent, with firearm homicides increasing by 1.4 percent.

In Wyoming where nearly 74 percent of households own guns, 12 percent of gun homicides were committed by strangers — and 88 percent were committed by those who knew each other. In Hawaii, where just 13 percent of homes have a gun, 21 percent of gun murders were committed by strangers.

Southern Beale's 2nd Amendment Hero of the Day

Southern Beale

Concealed-carry is so safe, y’all:

MANATEE — A 59-year-old Bradenton man accidentally shot his 58-year-old wife in the head about 8:40 a.m. Sunday in the 3800 block of 100th Street West, according to a Manatee County Sheriff’s Office report.
Deputies responded to Blake Medical Center to interview the principals separately.
Both said they were preparing to play golf when he removed a small five-shot revolver from his pocket, dropped it and it discharged when it hit the floor, according to the report. The round grazed the woman on the side of her head and they drove together to the emergency room.
The victim was alert and talking and was going to be released after receiving treatment for the wound.
At this time, this incident appears accidental, according to the report.

On the golf course, no less. What a dumbass.

States With the Highest and Lowest Rates of Gun Deaths

CBS

Hawaii has the lowest rate of gun deaths in the United States, while the District of Columbia has the highest, according to new research.

Over the past decade, deaths from gun-related violence -- including murders, suicides and unintentional shootings -- varied widely across the United States, the study revealed. Hawaii's rate was roughly three per 100,000 citizens. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the District of Columbia had the highest rate of gun deaths, with about 22 per 100,000 citizens.

Aside from geography, race/ethnicity also played a role in gun death rates. The national rate of gun deaths was twice as high among black people as it was among whites. The researchers noted, however, that the number of black people killed as a result of gun violence fell in seven states and the District of Columbia. Meanwhile, gun deaths involving white people fell in only four states.

Gun deaths among Hispanics also declined in four states, while gun deaths involving non-Hispanics increased in nine states, according to the study published online Sept. 18 in BMJ Open.

Is ‘Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes’ Anti-Gun?

MTV dot com

The critics and the people have spoken, and “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes” is a bona fide summer success.

The sequel to the 2011 James Franco reboot “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” is a stunning achievement for motion capture acting and definitely an action-heavy blockbuster, but much of the buzz surrounding the film has largely centered around how refreshingly profound and thoughtful it is — particularly on the issue of violence. Gun violence, to be exact. “You’ll hear instances where actors have said, ‘I won’t appear in a movie poster with guns,’ or directors will say, ‘I will never put a gun in my movie,’ but there certainly aren’t many examples where [blockbusters] tackle this head on,” Dan Gross, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, told MTV News over the phone. “In this case, it very compellingly shows that before the gun was introduced, a fight was a fight. And now, when a gun is introduced, it has a much greater chance at turning lethal.”

Walmart Shooting: Arizona Man, Kyle Wayne Quadlin, Fatally Shoots Customer In Self-Defense

Arizona police said a man who fatally shot another man inside of a Walmart on Sunday was acting in self-defense. (Photo : Reuters)

HNGN

According to authorities in Arizona, a man who fatally shot another man inside of a suburban Phoenix Walmart on Sunday was acting in self-defense.

Kyle Wayne Quadlin, 25, opened fire at Kriston Charles Belinte Chee, 36, following an argument at a service counter. Investigators who looked into surveillance footage from the incident said both men were fighting before the shooting occurred. 

"Mr. Quadlin was losing the fight and indicated he 'was in fear for his life,' so he pulled his gun and shot Mr. Belinte Chee," police said in a statement. 

After the shooting, Quadlin remained at the Walmart for a short while and then fled from the scene. Authorities were able to locate him after family members called police to report where he was. 

Though Quadlin has not been booked in the case, investigators will send their investigation for review by the Maricopa County Attorney's Office.

Gun debate: Is the price of an armed America a more dangerous America?

CSM

Charles Ingram and Robert Webster were neighbors inFlorida, but friends said the two older men had little love for each other and often quarreled. On a spring day in 2010, the two men, both gun enthusiasts who had state permits to carry concealed weapons, got into another argument across their lawns.

This time, police later said, both men pulled out their weapons. When Mr. Webster began approaching, Mr. Ingram raised his gun, as did Webster. Two shots rang out simultaneously, and both men fell. Webster died almost instantly, Ingram less than a month later.

That "Deadwood"-style neighborhood gunfight is one of 555 examples compiled by advocates of gun control detailing how the mere presence of legal guns can turn mundane moments into tragedies – sobering rebuttals against the estimated tens of thousands of times a year Americans brandish guns in self-defense to thwart crimes in progress.