courtesy nola.com and Brett Duke

What you think you know about gun deaths is probably wrong

That’s what happens when you get all your news from the Democrat PR firms mainstream media . . .

When most people think about the number of gun-related deaths in America each year, the first images that likely come to mind are of gang violence or mass shootings. Our national debate on gun control is almost always centered on an active-shooter event or a plea to get guns off the streets.

But while gang activity devastates many neighborhoods and communities, that violence accounts for only 1 out of 5 gun-related deaths nationally. And while mass shootings are horrific in so many ways, they are responsible for less than 1 percent of firearm deaths annual.

The largest number of gun deaths in the United States by far — 63 percent — are a result of something rarely even mentioned in the gun control discussion: suicide.

Gen Z more concerned about minimum wage than gun control
courtesy axios.com and Getty

Poll: Minimum wage is a more important issue than gun control to Gen Z

David Hogg and Emma Gonzalez hardest hit . . .

By the numbers: The morning consult polled 12,771 registered voters, which included 494 voters between 18 and 21 years old, to gauge their opinion on issues such as gun control, minimum wage and medicare for all.

Only 56% of voters surveyed said they’d be more likely to support a candidate advocating for stricter gun laws.

68% of those same voters said they’d be more likely to support a candidate who supported raising minimum wage. 66% said they’d do the same for a candidate supporting medicare for all.

Abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency was at the bottom of the list at 46%.

Guns smuggled from US to Latin America Fast and Furious
courtesy washingtonpost.com and AP

As immigrants flow across US border, American guns go south

It’s nice that at least the US Government isn’t still in the same business . . .

Among the thousands of immigrants who have been coming across the U.S.-Mexico border in recent months, many are seeking to escape gang and drug violence raging in their homelands. The weapon of choice used to intimidate them? Often an American-made gun.

While the flow of drugs and immigrants into the U.S. has been well-documented for decades and become a regular part of the political debate, what is often overlooked is how gangs and drug cartels exploit weaknesses at the border to smuggle guns from the U.S. into Latin America.

A 2013 report by the University of San Diego says the number of firearms smuggled from the United States was so significant that nearly half of American gun dealers rely on that business to stay afloat. On average, an estimated 253,000 firearms each year are purchased in the United States expressly to be sent to Mexico, the report said, the vast majority of the sales originating in the border states of California, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona.

Four arrested at Kent State University open-carry gun walk after tense standoff between gun activists, counter-protestors, police

Gun-rights activists led by Kent State University graduate Kaitlin Bennett marched on the KSU campus Saturday afternoon, openly carrying a variety of weapons and creating a tense stand-off with angry counter-protestors.

Hundreds of police officers from all over the state were deployed to keep the peace, lining up in riot gear to physically keep the two groups apart.

No serious injuries were reported, according to the university, although one man seemed to be knocked unconscious and a protestor had an abrasion on his forehead.

There were four arrests. All were charged with disorderly conduct, with one additionally charged with assault on a police officer.

courtesy 3D Printing Nerd and youtube.com

The end of gun control

At least one young skull full of mush has learned something . . .

For my entire life, the gun control debate has primarily been fought on philosophical grounds. One side argues that the Second Amendment is an absurd holdover of a past era. They believe its existence not only makes our country a more dangerous place, but also renders us a backwater laughing stock in the eyes of the world. The other side counters that although the Second Amendment is hundreds of years old, it continues to be both our surest safeguard against tyranny and represents the timeless truth that human beings have a fundamental right to defend their life, liberty and property.

Yet, as the debate has swung back and forth over time, the march of technological progress continued in the background. For years, we have relentlessly argued about whether we “should” restrict gun ownership. But in doing so, we never considered whether we “could.”

48 COMMENTS

  1. Who the Sam Hill do you think we are? We know about the percentage of suicides which is one of the points we use when discussing with gun controllers and the idea that control would dramatically reduce deaths. Christ, we can read FBI reports, probably better than you can. Just remember, Prohibition didn’t prevent drinking and, oh, the “success” of the war on drugs. How many suicides are the end result of drug abuse? Huh?

  2. Damn, you are a really special kind of stupid. We know all about the cartels. Who the hell do think will get guns into the country if simple twits ban them? You ARE WAY BEHIND THE CURVE. Damn! And the left calls gun owners simple. Jeez!!!

      • Always it is the simple minded that the charlatans go for power over. Any operative brain knows right away the simple minded can be made to believe anything, such as; “The moon is made of green cheese”, or; “Anyone can see the world is flat”.
        Now, it is said that 1 out of 4 millennials believe the earth is flat again. Some even say that forests no longer exist:
        https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/09/flat-earth-truthers/499322/
        This is why the crooked seek out the simple minded. It is the easiest way to gather followers, and thus power, to oneself. Obviously, if one believes that a large rock used to be a tree simply because of the general shape, then that is a one that can be made to believe almost anything, given a properly constructed fairy tale. Deeper thinkers will only question such tales, like; “If Devil’s Tower is just a fossilized tree, and these giant trees used to be everywhere, then where are all the OTHER giant petrified stumps?”
        And, since the tale spinner can have no answers for probing questions, thus appears the need to censor all questions, since there are no answers, and never can be.
        It’s a very simple axiom; Anyone, and everyone, who is pro censorship is a criminal type, only looking to increase their control over their brainless horde. This is why the beltway crowd has gotten so insane over the last few years. Sheeple are waking up and becoming people. These are starting to ask questions, and the controllers have no answers. And since they know they never will have any, the end of questioning is the only answer they can think of. They’re not very far sighted, these idiots who think they are so smart because they can control a few sleeping sheep with some TV programing. If they had any real intelligence they would never have made the attempt in the first place because they would know that no brainless mob of conditioned sheep can ever accomplish much, for they have no creativity, no brain, and just enough sense to think that; “The world looks flat when I look at it….. DUH!”
        Seems pretty obvious to me that such a crowd will screw up any task they are given, no matter how simple. The one thing such a crowd is good for, is donating money to whichever one of his pockets the leader suggests might be a good idea to fill up.

  3. We can end “gun violence”? How? (I’ll wait.) (Also, stupid and inaccurate term.)

    At Kent State, were any of the gun carriers arrested? It seems like no. Also, counter-protestors hassled people with guns. That doesn’t look too smart to me. The anti-rights are soooo lucky that we PotG are level headed (for the most part). Those maroons could get hurt.

    • What isn’t smart is tugging on super man’s cape, spitting in to the wind, pulling the mask off the lone ranger, and messing around with Jim.

      Legal gun owners (for the most part) are the most law abiding and law conscious segment of the population. Protesters who mess with gun owners know that gun owners won’t do anything so long as they don’t do anything to justify deady force.

      To think otherwise would be to equate gun owners to violent psychpaths.

  4. One half of all FFL’s in the country “stay afloat” by relying on the sale of 253K firearms that end up being smuggled South?

    In other words, if “built the wall” and it worked then half the gun dealers in the US would go out of business because of the revenue lost when a paltry 253,000 firearms were not sold?

    Stated yet another way; half the gun industry is based on the sale of about a quarter million guns annually?

    I find this hard to believe.

    • I can’t help but wonder if they’re including lawful sales and transfers to foreign government entities. After all, the US provides a lot of firepower to foreign governments, much of it underthe rubric of “The War On Drugs,” much of which ends up diverted to criminal uses.

      • It doesn’t matter. There were almost 2 million NICS checks this year in July alone.

        The claim that half the FFL’s in the country would go under if sales dropped 253K/year nationwide is laughable no matter how you dice up the numbers.

        When I say “I find this hard to believe” it means I’m calling bullshit.

        • 24 million NICS per annum. A few million dollars in sales can’t possibly doom half of the FFLs nationwide. I agree. Utter bullshit.

      • Logical conclusion: If building a border wall to control trafficking could put nearly half of American gun dealers out of business, then all the progbots should support it.

        Liberals get to cripple an industry they hate, and conservatives get to squelch illegal immigration. Both sides win. BUILD THE DAMN WALL.

        • The Dems don’t want to do anything that would help the Republicans (or help the US, for that matter).
          If building the wall would put half the LGS out of business, but at the same time cut the influx of illegal aliens, they won’t do it, simply because it would do something that the Republicans want, and help the US.
          They would rather kill their own children (which, BTW, they do at an amazing rate).

    • Yeah, this sounds like something that was being set up to support policy proposals after Fast&Furious had achieved it’s goals.

      I am deeply skeptical, and think some third-party review of the study might be a good idea.

    • I smell BS too. Most of the guns I see seized in these big cartel busts are U.S. manufactured guns purchased by foreign governments then either stolen or resold to the cartel via corupt government agencies. I’d like to see the numbers and methodology of the article’s statistics.

  5. Total of 12,771 voters, 494 18-21 voters and 56% are in favor of stricter gun control. I think we be in big trouble. Of course it doesn’t say who did the poll.

    • Yes it does. The Morning Consult did the poll. It says that in the second sentence.

      If you follow the links it even takes you to the poll. I’m not gonna get into the internals because sushi sounds better than poll internals right now but it’s not a great poll and you can tell this right off the bat due to its +/-4% MoE.

        • As I said, I haven’t torn the poll apart so I can’t comment on its internals. I’m simply saying that polling like this was a big part of my first college degree and that when you see +/-4% it’s not a great poll.

          When we properly construct and administer a poll with good controls we like to see an MoE of +/-3% or less. Good, solid, well constructed polls should come out with your standard 95%+ confidence interval and something like and MoE of +/-2% to 2.5% with proper sampling to boot (which is why anyone who looked at the state by state polling in 2016 knew it was rigged and the MSM was full of shit and that Trump had a damn good shot at winning but that’s a whole other story). The problem is that this is time consuming and expensive. OTOH 4% is fucking slapdash for anything past a daily tracking poll.

        • “(which is why anyone who looked at the state by state polling in 2016 knew it was rigged and the MSM was full of shit and that Trump had a damn good shot at winning but that’s a whole other story)”

          Strych, you’re the man to ask this one –

          I agree the models were flawed in 2016 (well, obviously!), but my question *today* is, by looking at the current mid-term polls, have they changed their methodology to correct the errors of 2016?

          Are the mid-terms looking to be a repeat of the results of 2016? Is their current lead in the polls bogus?

  6. “A 2013 report by the University of San Diego says the number of firearms smuggled from the United States was so significant that nearly half of American gun dealers rely on that business to stay afloat.”

    Now, that is a special kind of stupid! Of course the leftists want this to be true, because that way they can pretend all those AR-15s aren’t in common use.

        • Or we could arm the cartels have them mass at the border, and attack the USA. The instant the cross the border, unleash conventional fire power such as artillery, rockets, close quarter air support such as heavily armed Blackhawks, Apaches, Cobras, fighter/bombers, etc…, and when the smoke clears, send Commandos of all services to clean up the mess and confiscate All of the serviceable weapons. Then Mexico can return to the beautiful land of peace and prosperity Itonce was.

        • Yup, we currently spend 100 Billion on illegal immigration per year. That includes prison, medical, education, law enforcement and social services. if we deported them all, we could build the wall and have 75 billion left over in just the first year.

        • Sounds like a lot of sneaky shit. Why? Just a hundred years ago (and for a million years before that), the obvious solution would be to invade, kill off all opposition, assume control of the government, fucking *enslave* the cartels, and loot the government’s coffers to pay for the wall and the invasion. 30-50 years later statehood could be considered.

          Marty; if we deported them all, they would immediately return, net loss of money. If we shoot a million or 2, the rest would leave in panic and never return.

      • There is no such thing as a “shady” gun, like there is so such a thing as a “shady” car or a “shady” drill press.
        Shady is a criminal INTENT. Intelligent creatures can have intent, but objects cannot. People can be shady, inanimate objects can not.
        Simple, yes?

    • Among the obvious problems is that well over half the nation’s FFLs are nowhere near the southern border. Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California combined only make up a little over a 6th of the nation’s FFLs (as of 2015). If you combine Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana (states only one state away from Mexico, even if some of them require driving the entire length of one of the largest two states) they aren’t even 1/11th of the total FFLs.

      • Nanashi,your math don’t add up. my math teacher decades ago says one sixth is larger than one eleventh, but I get your point.

  7. Minimum wage my ass, Minimum wage was $1.25 in 1964, five silver quarters. The melt value of those quarters is $13-15 depending on the month. Fix the money, not the damn wage.

    • Or, you know, set it at $420 per hour. Or $1,000,000.57. Hey, I know, how about a fixed payment of $275,000 per year regardless of whether you choose to work or not?

      Once you agree that there should be “a” minimum wage, what’s conceptually stopping you from setting it so everyone can be rich with minimum effort? Or, heck, no effort?

      • Believe it or not there are “extremists “ that want to try that. They call it UBI; Universal Basic Income.

    • First, money would have to be understood. Including the difference between money and currency. And that would lead to understanding usury. Which is the fee that puts the powerful in charge. Which is why such education has never been available, but has always had to be self taught.

      • Kenneth, you sound like a kid. Of course usury was taught in schools, even high school! There was even a law against usury, until Jimmy Carter managed thru socialist goals and actions to get the inflation rate higher than the usury limit, COMPLETELY untenable (no one will lend any money to anyone, due to guaranteed loss), so the laws were removed, now we have savers paid 0.01% and credit cards charging 23%, completely ridiculous. Banks love it, and individuals don’t seem to get it, I still hear people discussing how sly it is to go into debt to fund a savings account. 50 years ago that had some (minimal) merit, when savings accounts yielded 6% and loans cost 7%. Today loans cost 230 times what your savings account will yield, the *only* sensible investment is to, first, get completely out of debt.

  8. “Poll: Minimum wage is a more important issue than gun control to Gen Z”

    So…apparently it’s a poll about my priorities and they still didn’t freaking ask me.

  9. Nearly half the people polled wanted to abolish ICE? That’s a dangerous kind of stupid, and it definitely shows they were already aiming for Left-Field (D)-voters with their sampling.

    • Most Americans are utterly ignorant of the fact that Central America is the most violent region on earth in spite of a firearms ownership rate lower than Australia’s. Even “civilized” Costa Rica has a homicide rate double that of the US. It’s as if they are demanding to remove the walls and doors from our maximum security prisons.

      Generation Z = Zero Common Sense.

  10. Gotta love how the news says it’s the 2A demonstrators that “created a tense situation.”

    They could easily have told the truth — that violent counterprotesters turned what would have been a peaceful demonstration of civil rights into a tense confrontation that had to be broken up by police — but instead they chose to lie about what happened.

  11. Even if minimum wage and health care for all are more important to these young people than gun control, the same people who advocate for the first two are the same who advocate for gun control.

  12. It’s like the questions for that poll came directly from the DNC’s website. That’s literally their entire platform. It’s not like they are forced to choose a candidate based on the issues, there’s a dem candidate who’ll support all of them.

  13. Know and preach about the suicide stats whenever and wherever I can.
    Gen Z is worried about when they will next hook up…their battery status…and how many likes they have.
    Perhaps other countries need better border control if they are letting in all those guns…just sayin’…

  14. Maybe Gen Zs just want the government to be their new mommy. You know — house them, feed them, wipe their @sses for them. Mommy stuff.

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