Some self defense stories from March 18th

JACKSONVILLE, FL (3/18)

A Citicab driver was dropping off two passengers Thursday night at the Lighthouse Bay Apartments when he was approached by an armed robber. 43-year-old George Robert Ramm has a license to carry a concealed weapon in his taxi.

WILMINGTON, Del. (3/18)

A Wilmington woman got the scare of her life when a nearly naked intruder broke into her home, but she turned the tables on the man, who quickly turned tail and ran.

According to police, Keith Simpson, 32, was wearing nothing more than a red T-shirt when he tried to break into her house Friday morning. "Somebody was ringing my doorbell and so I yelled, 'Who is it? Who is it?' They wouldn't answer," said Cheryl Pettaway. Pettaway grabbed her son and her gun and started to call 911.

That was when the half-naked Simpson broke through Pettaway's back door.

"The next thing you know, I just heard somebody in my house and I ran midpoint down the steps and I fired shots randomly," Pettaway said.

She fired her gun at least eight times, but missed the intruder. He tried to flee through the garage, but that is where he was caught by police.

FAIRFIELD, Tx. (3/18)

The resident told investigators that he armed himself with a handgun andwent to investigate. Shipp said that when the resident saw Richardson, clad only in a pair of underwear and still attempting to enter the house, he fired his weapon. He then went outside, fired additional shots and held the suspect at gunpoint until police arrived.

None of the shots hit Richardson, but he was later treated for cuts to his head. Investigators did not know how Richardson suffered the cuts.

Ann Coulter on Affirmative Action in Hiring Police

Ann's piece is very entertaining (the title is great "FREEZE! I JUST HAD MY NAILS DONE!"), and it was extremely nice of her to cite my research.

John Lott has looked at the actual data. (And I'll give you the citation! John R. Lott Jr., "Does a Helping Hand Put Others at Risk? Affirmative Action, Police Departments and Crime," Economic Inquiry, April 1, 2000.)

It turns out that, far from "de-escalating force" through their superior listening skills, female law enforcement officers vastly are more likely to shoot civilians than their male counterparts. (Especially when perps won't reveal where they bought a particularly darling pair of shoes.)

Unable to use intermediate force, like a bop on the nose, female officers quickly go to fatal force. According to Lott's analysis, each 1 percent increase in the number of white female officers in a police force increases the number of shootings of civilians by 2.7 percent.

Adding males to a police force decreases the number of civilians accidentally shot by police. Adding black males decreases civilian shootings by police even more. By contrast, adding white female officers increases accidental shootings. (And for my Handgun Control Inc. readers: Private citizens are much less likely to accidentally shoot someone than are the police, presumably because they do not have to approach the suspect and make an arrest.)

In addition to accidentally shooting people, female law enforcement officers are also more likely to be assaulted than male officers -- as the whole country saw in Atlanta last week. Lott says: "Increasing the number of female officers by 1 percentage point appears to increase the number of assaults on police by 15 percent to 19 percent."

My paper is available here.

New piece up on the congressional hearings on steroids

Sonya Jones and I have our new piece up on the congressional hearings. Among other points, the piece on National Review Online notes:

The committee’s chairman, Rep. Tom Davis (R., Va.) dismisses baseball's new rules, justifying the tough threats because steroid use by juveniles “is a public health crisis. [W]e have the parents of kids who have used steroids and committed suicide.”

The New York Times this month ran a long story this month on the late high-school-student Efrain Marrero, whose family claims that his stopping using steroids provides a “plausible explanation” for his suicide. While there is no scientific evidence linking steroids and suicide, the Times points to “persuasive anecdotal evidence.”

Yet, some perspective is needed here. While Davis claims that currently “over a half a million youth are using steroids,” the Times notes that, in addition to Marrero, only “two previous suicides had been attributed by parents to steroid use by young athletes.” With steroid use in high schools dating back to the 1950s, the suicide rate — even if Marrero's death were actually linked to steroids and not other factors — seems negligible compared to a male suicide rate for 15-to-24-year — olds averaging more than 20 per 100,000 over the last 30 years.

Even more startling is how the young male suicide rate has fallen over the last decade while steroid use has grown. On Meet the Press, Rep. Henry Waxman (D., Calif.) claimed that, over the last decade, steroid use had risen from one out of every 45 kids to one out of 16, while the young male suicide rate has gone down from 26 to 20 per 100,000.

Debate tonight on Social Security

I will be participating in a debate tonight at Swarthmore College on Social Security reform. The debate will basically be 4 against 1, with me being the one to defend the Social Security reform.

After Right-to-carry laws have been in effect for a year Ohio has the same news stories everyone else has had

Ohioans have been carrying concealed weapons -- legally -- for nearly a year now, and so far, area law enforcement officials say they have not encountered the problems many feared.


Last April, when Ohio became the 46th state to permit law-abiding citizens to carry guns, some in law enforcement worried that routine traffic stops and road rage incidents would turn violent.


That hasn't happened.


``Knock on wood, so far it has been uneventful,'' said Portage County Sheriff Duane Kaley.


Through the end of February, more than 45,000 licenses have been issued in the state.

The article has a nice figure showing permit issuing rates by county in Ohio.

"Gun certification moving slowly"

Pilots who monitor the program estimate that between 4,000 and 4,500 have been trained and deputized to carry guns since the Federal Flight Deck Officer program began in April 2003. That total is about three times as many as a year ago, yet a fraction of the 95,000 pilots who fly for U.S. airlines.

David Mackett, president of the Airline Pilots Security Alliance, a group formed to lobby for guns in the cockpit, said tens of thousands of his colleagues are interested in the program.

"We have an armed pilots program that's arming very few pilots," said Mackett, who hasn't signed up because of the way the program is run. He said many others won't join for the same reason.

Thanks to Jon Zurell for alerting me to the article.

President of Harvard Gets No Confidence Vote

It shows just how far out of it academia is when they view even a liberal democrat such as Larry Summers as unacceptable.

The vote, 218-185, was largely symbolic. The FAS is one of 10 faculties that comprise the university, and Summers reports to the Harvard Corporation (search), the university's governing board, which has expressed its support for him.


But the unexpected passage of the vote was nonetheless a significant setback to Summers' efforts to rebuild his standing with Harvard's faculty in the wake of the uproar over his comments about women in science at an academic conference in January.


The measure stated simply: "The Faculty lacks confidence in the leadership of Lawrence H. Summers."

One perspective on the legal attempt to over turn the DC gun ban

Bob Levy and Alan Guru in today's American Spectator online write:

Imagine that your local government makes it a crime to engage in an activity that you believe to be constitutionally protected -- like possessing a handgun in your home for self-defense. Imagine further that the weight of legal scholarship, from liberals and conservatives alike, holds that the Second Amendment secures an individual right to keep and bear arms. Too bad if you live in Washington, D.C., where you may be faced with a Hobson's choice. You can forego possessing a gun for self-defense, and perhaps suffer personal injury. Or you can defy the law, illegally own a gun, use it to defend yourself, then risk arrest, prosecution, fine, or even incarceration when D.C. authorities investigate your "crime."

"Study Shows U.S. Election Coverage Harder on Bush"

U.S. media coverage of last year's election was three times more likely to be negative toward President Bush than Democratic challenger John Kerry, according to a study released Monday.

The annual report by a press watchdog that is affiliated with Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism said that 36 percent of stories about Bush were negative compared to 12 percent about Kerry, a Massachusetts senator.

Congressional Investigators of Steroid Use in Baseball said to have the wrong motivations

George Will gives Congressmen Tom Davis and Henry Waxman a trashing.

The committee has discovered that its duties include informing all Americans, and especially children, that dangerous and illegal behavior is dangerous and illegal. So the committee has subpoenaed some baseball and players association officials and some current and retired players, including Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Committee staffers say it has not subpoenaed Barry Bonds because his presence might make the hearing a media circus. Heaven forfend.

Canseco also gets a just discussion:

The one witness eager to testify is Canseco, who is flogging a book in which he accuses many players of using steroids. Jeff Merron of ESPN.com read the book — has Canseco done that? — and found:

Canseco says that during spring training 2001, when playing for the Angels against the Mariners and their second baseman Bret Boone, "I hit a double, and when I got out there to second base I got a good look at Boone. I couldn't believe my eyes. He was enormous. 'Oh my God,' I said to him. 'What have you been doing?' 'Shhh,' he said. 'Don't tell anybody.' " But in five Angels-Mariners games that spring, Canseco never reached second base.

He recounts game six of the 2000 World Series — which ended with game five. He recalls baseball in 1982 being "closed" to Latinos — although there were 62 major leaguers from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic and more from other Latin countries.