Arizona Lawful Gun Owner Accidentally Shoots Himself While Shopping at Wal-Mart - No Charges Naturally

Local news reports

Police say shoppers at a Phoenix Wal-Mart store were sent into a panic after a man accidentally shothimself in the leg.

Phoenix police spokesman James Holmes says a male shopper's gun, which was at his hip, went off around 10:30 a.m. Saturday at a Wal-Mart near 19th Avenue and Bethany Home Road.

Holmes says Wal-Mart managers evacuated the store, which was shut down for a short time.

Holmes says the man is not facing any charges.

The Smart Gun Situation on New Jersey

post by ssgmarkcr

 Thought I'd throw this out considering the talk recently of the New Jersey smart gun legislation and its effect on the development of the technology.  Recently, the author of the legislation has suggested repealing the law contending that the consumer interest exists and the law mandating its use isn't really necessary.

    And now it seems the Brady Campaign is throwing into the issue.  While I normally try to use more neutral sources, I'm using this one because it contains links to documents detailing the event.  I have seen it covered in much shorter articles from regular news sources,

http://thegunwriter.blogs.heraldtribune.com/16785/breaking-brady-group-sues-nj-for-not-enforcing-smart-gun-law/

Today the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the Million Mom March Mercer County Chapter of the Brady Campaign are filing a lawsuit to force New Jersey to comply with the New Jersey Personalized 

Handgun Law passed in 2002. The law requires the Attorney General to issue a report every six months on the availability of personalized handguns, also known as “smart” handguns. No reports have been issued since 2003. The law further requires only “smart” handguns to be sold in New Jersey within three years after these firearms are found to be available in the United States.

    So now that they passed the law, someone is telling them to fish, or cut bait.  I'm guessing the Governor has been hoping this would stay below the radar due to the potential for affecting his possible Presidential run. 

    Its going to be fun seeing how this plays out.  My personal preferences run towards the law being repealed.  This would remove the onus of marketing and developing the technology curtailing the gun rights of citizens. 

    My next preference would be to remove the military and law enforcement exemption to the law.  After all, if the technology is good enough for John Q. Public, it should be good enough for those who protect and serve.

Tom Tomorrow Asks...

A question that is always on my mind in a society where it is considered "normal" to walk around carrying weapons:

If you had actually read Robert Heinlein's Beyond This Horizon,  you would know that in the "Armed Society" which is considered "a polite society" that there is the custom of dueling to keep societal order.  Someone can  wear distinctive clothing to show an unwillingness to duel, but this results in a lower social status.

That may sound appealing to you, but it's science fiction and fantasy to everyone else.

Yet another reason to fear accurate gun use research.

It seems that there was a study published in the Western Journal of Medicine back in 2001 that came up with these results:

RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS

Even after many of the firearm victimization reports were excluded, the data show that more survey respondents report having been threatened or intimidated with a gun than having used a gun for self-protection. Most judges rated the reported self-defense gun uses as probably illegal in most cases, even assuming that the respondent had a permit to own and carry the gun and that the respondent had described the event honestly.

Guns are used to threaten and intimidate more often than they are used in self-defense. Most self-reported self-defense gun uses may be illegal and against the interests of society.

Results like that don't look too good for the "pro-gun" side.  That might also be a reason for the "Get Away with Murder" laws since it doesn't look too good to have a legal inquiry into these matters if most cases of "self-defence" may be illegal and against the interests of society.

Much better to say "I wuz actin' in sef-deefence" and end the inquiry in that case.

See:

Are guns used more by US civilians for self-defense or for intimidation? West J Med. Jun 2001; 174(6): 396.

Chipotle Restaurants in Texas

@ChipotleTweets @ChipotleMedia difficult to eat a burrito AND secure your weapon. #BurritosNotBullets pic.twitter.com/eJwpVCRYKG

— Lana Koga (@KogaLana) May 19, 2014

The Hypocrisy of Gun-Rights Legislators

The New York Times

In the Carolinas, guns are allowed in bars. In Arkansas, you can take a gun into some churches and religious schools. In Indiana, you can keep a gun in your car on school property. In West Virginia, residents with concealed-carry permits can bring firearms into public recreation facilities such as tennis courts and swimming pools. Since the massacre in Newtown, 18 states have passed laws allowing guns in more places—but in only four states can you bring a gun into state legislative chambers.

“They did it everywhere but where they are,” Danny Jones, the Republican mayor of Charleston, W.Va., said of his state legislators. “The road to power is paved with hypocrisy. That’s what’s going on here.”

Why the disparity? Some of the laws are aimed at preventing towns and cities from enacting their own gun-control measures. Steve Hickey, a Republican state legislator in South Dakota who owns 17 guns, believes more guns make people safer. He sponsored a bill that allows some teachers to carry guns in schools, but opposed one that would allow them into the statehouse.

“We have the most contentious issues being debated in publicpolicy, affecting people in irate, angry ways and affecting millions and millions of dollars,” he told Bloomberg Businessweek. “This is different than when you go work at the bar. This is different than you [are] working at the bank.”

Something to think about:

From Salon:

Death threats. Think about that for a moment. Is there anything that says you have lost the argument more loudly than that? When you make death threats in place of arguments, it’s because you know your argument’s laughable. A joke. Increasingly that is what the so-called gun rights organizations have become. A sick joke. And everything Raymond said — about their hypocrisy, their cowardice and their hostility to freedom — is absolutely true.

As I have said before, gun loon arguments do not stand scrutiny, which is the major reason I don't pay too much attention to what you have to say (not to mention I've pretty much heard them all and found they are Bullshit).

After all the reason that gun violence research cannot receive federal funding is that the law says that “none of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control.” And this was in reaction to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine by Arthur Kellerman and colleagues called “Gun ownership as a risk factor for homicide in the home,” which presented the results of research funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

That study found that keeping a gun in the home was strongly and independently associated with an increased risk of homicide. The article concluded that rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.

So, is this yet another thing you lot are afraid of?