A thought on the DC Gun Ban Case

The ban comes "nowhere close to disarmament of residents. The District's overwhelming interest in reducing death and injury caused by handguns outweighs respondent's asserted need . . . ." The obvious key here is that DC says people can use rifles and shotguns for self-defense. DC also adds that they don't believe that the regulations that lock up and require the disassembling of guns does not "prevent the use of a lawful firearm in self-defense."

Here is the problem that DC faces. 1) The law is very clear. If you assemble and load a rifle or shotgun, that long gun becomes an illegal weapon. 2) On top of this, DC has won a previously legal victory before the Supreme Court that says that the DC police are not responsible for harm that comes to people. 3) The bottom line is that the DC police are not obligated to protect citizens AND DC will not allow people to defend themselves. I don't know how DC gets out of this. Either people are at least given the option to defend themselves or the city has to bear responsibllity.

Something worth listening to on who are these gun owners

For many anti-gun people this will be educational. It is something that I posted to years ago when it came out. I guess the fourth picture and discussion is my favorite one.

In Britain Air Guns are classified as firearms

TOUGH new laws about the sale and possession of air weapons and crossbows come into force today.

The crackdown, which will force all retailers to be registered as firearms dealers and restrict the sale of airguns and crossbows to the over-18s, represents a combination of UK and Scottish initiatives.

The UK government introduced the new laws on airguns, requiring dealers to conduct face-to-face sales and to record the name and address of the buyer and details of the weapon sold. The UK government was also responsible for raising the purchase age limit to 18. . . . .

Ministers moved to tighten the law following a rise in airgun crime in Scotland - offences have hit a seven-year high.

There have been three fatalities across Britain in the last two years, including the high-profile death of two-year-old Andrew Morton, the Glasgow boy who was shot in the head by Mark Bonini.

These three deaths over two years are tragic, but just out of curiosity how many other ways in the UK and Scotland have averaged at least 1.5 deaths per year?

More benefits from Ann Coulter mentioning my book

Neal Boortz was nice enough to plug my book. I owe Ann a lot on this book.

Friday, October 5, 2007
COULTER CATCHING FLACK

You just knew the left was going to go into Ann Coulter's new book "If Democrats had Brains They'd be Republicans." It look like the left is going to focus on Coulter's statement that if women didn't have the right to vote we would never elect another Democrat president. If you would like to look at the science here, instead of just going along with the leftist crowd, get a copy of Dr. John Lott's book "Freedomnomics." There's a chapter there on voting ... it will open your eyes. Here's your link if you want to order the book. I enjoyed it immensely.

More on Endangered Species act and Salmon

I think that this television interview is pretty good, though I would have mentioned that there is no obvious evidence that wild raised salmon have an great advantage over hatchery fish. The higher rate of survival of hatchery salmon up to the point that they are released in the wild is offset by a higher death rate after that, but in the end the overall survivorship rate is the same.

Market Failure: Supposedly not enough diversity

This brings us back to Nike's new shoe. Foot Locker is full of options that fit me and most other Americans. But American Indians make up just 1.5 percent of the U.S. population, and with feet on average three sizes wider, they need different-sized shoes. If we had all voted in a national election on whether the Ministry of Shoes should make wide or typical-width shoes, we surely would have chosen the latter. That's why Friedman condemned government allocation. And yet the market made the same choice. If Nike's announcement looks like a solution to this problem of ignored minority preference, it really isn't. The company took too many years to bring the shoe on line, and according to the Associated Press, the new sneaker "represents less of a financial opportunity than a goodwill and branding effort." . . . .

1) Just because Nike wasn't producing these shoes, I would have liked some evidence that shoes weren't already being produced for this segment of the market. I looked up some shoes on the internet and it seemed that this market niche was well covered see here, here, and here. You get sizes from EEEEEE to XW, and I haven't even heard of some of these sizes since they are so wide. I see no evidence that the basic claim in this article is correct.

2) "That's why Friedman condemned government allocation. And yet the market made the same choice." If the size of the particular group is so small or if those in the group aren't willing to pay that much for the shoes, you might not get a product specifically designed for each small group, but it is a long way to implying that the market doesn't produce a lot more diversity of products than the government.

3) "The company took too many years to bring the shoe on line . . . ." There is a cost and benefit from producing this diversity of products. I would guess that the benefits now exceed the costs. Possibly the cost of making products for such small niches has gone down. The article mentions that these wider feet might be a result of "diabetes and related conditions" and possibly more people generally are suffering from this problem. (It isn't clear from the piece what percentage of the 1.5 percent of the population who are Indians have these wide feet, but presumably it is less than 1.5 percent.) Bottom line: what evidence is provided here that it took "too many years" to provide these shoes. That is, "too many years" in the sense that the costs of doing this were less than the benefits (total costs including the costs of figuring out that such a market existed) and yet it was not provided.

Big UN push for more gun control

If the Bush administration wasn't there, the UN would represent a real threat to gun ownership. You can only imagine what would happen with Hillary Clinton in office.

Britain, Japan, Australia and others are pushing for an unprecedented treaty regulating the arms trade worldwide, in a campaign sure to last years and to pit them against a determined American foe, the National Rifle Association.

In what U.N. officials say is an "overwhelming" response, almost 100 governments have submitted ideas for such a treaty, to be reviewed over the next year. There's an "extremely urgent" need for controls on the international gun trade, says Kenya, echoing the sentiment in much of guns-besieged Africa.

But in the U.S., the NRA says it sees a creeping attempt to limit civilian gun ownership within nations - even though the focus now is on setting standards for arms exports and imports.. . . .

"Jodie's got a gun: Foster finds social meaning in 'Brave One' "

This movie [The Brave One] plumbs the deep, shameful truth about us that nobody wants to admit ... There is no question that this movie is
subversive ... ". . . .

This seems like quite a change from Foster's earlier statements on guns discussed here.

Jonathan Turley: "A liberal's lament: The NRA might be right after all"

"Principle is a terrible thing, because it demands not what is convenient but what is right ... Like many academics, I was happy to blissfully ignore the Second Amendment. It did not fit neatly into my socially liberal agenda. Yet, two related cases could now force liberals into a crisis of conscience ... It is hard to read the Second Amendment and not honestly conclude that the Framers intended gun ownership to be an individual right." . . . .

I wish them good luck with this, but . . .

I agree completely with the end goal that these students have, but I just hope that they are as organized as they seem to think that they are.

On April 16, 2007, twenty-seven students and five faculty members at Virginia Tech lost their lives to a madman who possessed one distinct advantage over his victims—He wasn’t concerned with following the rules. Undeterred by Virginia Tech’s status as a “gun free zone,” this mentally unstable individual carried two handguns onto the university campus and indiscriminately opened fire.

During the week of October 22-26, 2007, college students throughout America will attend classes wearing empty holsters, in protest of state laws and campus policies that stack the odds in favor of armed killers by disarming law abiding citizens who are licensed to carry concealed handguns virtually everywhere else. . . . .