PA Bill Number: SB945
Title: Consolidating the act of August 9, 1955 (P.L.323, No.130), known as The County Code; and making repeals.
Description: Consolidating the act of August 9, 1955 (P.L.323, No.130), known as The County Code; and making repeals. ...
Last Action: Third consideration and final passage (199-0)
Last Action Date: Apr 17, 2024
FOAC's Weekly Message For Sunday August 25th 2019 :: 08/25/2019
In the aftermath of mass shootings in El Paso and Dayton earlier this month, calls from Democrats to ban firearms or severely restrict their use have hit a fever pitch. But one huge question is that is part of this effort to cover up for the failure of government to do their job? Let’s look at the mass murders in Parkland where 17 people were killed by an individual who, by some accounts, had at least 39 visits from local law enforcement prior to his heinous acts. NOW, everyone is calling for ‘more’ gun control laws yet lost in all this furor is the question of why didn’t law enforcement use current laws?
Could they have AND, if so, then WHY the big LIE??
| Hearings in PA Senate on Gun Control Coming Up in September (24 & 25) |
| For More please see the FOAC ALert at this link: https://foac-pac.org/Action-Alerts/68 |
Just a few days ago, in Florida, Sheriff’s deputies took action against a teenager who made threats on social media. It didn’t take 39+ times AND law enforcement did NOT use the newly passed Red Flag Law but one that has been on the books for decades demonstrating that the Parkland (Marjorie Stoneman) mass murder COULD HAVE BEEN PREVENTED! The laws already existed – ‘serious’ laws – AND government failed those young people who ‘shouldn’t’ have died and are ‘now’ being used to push for NEW laws that takes away the freedoms of ALL Americans! So, WHY, is there such a focus on gun control that won’t have ANY effect on ANY of these incidents???
Even President Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, is pushing the President and others on Gun Registration and Gun Confiscation in a misguided effort to pick up Democrat voters? Ivanka Trump is reportedly working furiously behind the scenes, urging Senators to pass Universal Background Checks and Red Flag gun confiscation orders.
The Democrat proposals for extensive limitations on the ‘rights of ALL citizens’ include expanded background checks, “red flag” laws, bans on “high-capacity” (read: standard-capacity) magazines, mandatory gun buybacks and, of course, a renewal of the so-called “assault weapons” ban.
In each case, gun-grabbing Democrats attempt to make a moral argument, proclaiming, “If just one innocent life can be saved, we must ban firearms!” Yet considering that more innocent children are killed in Planned Parenthood clinics each day than are killed in mass shootings in a decade, one might be forgiven for doubting the motives of the anti-gun Democrats.
Of the “assault weapons” ban, Bill Clinton recently pontificated, “How many more people have to die before we reinstate the assault weapons ban & the limit on high-capacity magazines & pass universal background checks? After they passed in 1994, there was a big drop in mass shooting deaths. When the ban expired, they rose again. We must act now.”
Joe Biden insisted the same thing in a New York Times op-ed titled “Banning Assault Weapons Works.”
But is that true? Not really.
As nearly every gun owner knows, in 1994, a ban so-called “assault weapons” was implemented, banning 118 firearm models and all magazines holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition. The banned firearms were selected for their appearance rather than any purported special lethality. And since fully automatic firearms have been effectively banned since the National Firearms Act of 1934, every banned weapon was semiautomatic. In other words, the ban prohibited some semiautomatics and left others legal. It was pointless.
Despite Clinton’s claims, a 2004 study commissioned by the U.S. Justice Department found that, “should it be renewed, the [assault rifle] ban’s effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”
Even the 2019 study of the NYU School of Medicine cited by Clinton doesn’t support Clinton’s claims. In the study, epidemiologist Charles DiMaggio focused on mass-shooting deaths. In raw numbers, he found 68 mass-shooting fatalities from 1981-1993 (pre-ban), and 53 fatalities from 1994-2004 (during the ban), a drop of only 1.5 deaths per year.
The doubtful efficacy of the ban was echoed by other researchers as well.
Yet the study’s findings have been disputed. Columbia University professor Louis Klarevas points to significant flaws in the data and methodology, noting the “authors misidentified the involvement of assault weapons in roughly half of the incidents.”
And Grant Duwe, director of research and evaluation for the Minnesota Department of Corrections, who has compiled a database on mass shootings, notes that DiMaggio did not control for “rival factors” that may have impacted mass-shooting deaths.
But even accepting these flaws as fact, even DiMaggio himself determined, “There is some evidence they actually declined — or at least didn’t continue to increase during the period of the ban,” admitting, “It is pretty much impossible to prove cause and effect.”
Duke University’s Philip Cook concurred, stating, “Violence rates were quite volatile during that period generally for reasons that had nothing to do with gun regulation.”
Furthermore, recent studies from the Journal of General Internal Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) both reviewed state gun laws and found any link between bans on certain guns or standard-capacity magazines and homicide rates to be statistically insignificant.
Further undermining the justification for a renewed ban is the fact that while the drop in mass-shooting deaths during the ban was very small, the rise in mass-shooting deaths after the end of the ban didn’t occur until 2012 — nearly a decade after the ban ended.
In reality, the vast majority of gun-related deaths are the result of handguns, not rifles (assault or otherwise), and only a tiny fraction occur during mass shootings. The FBI’s latest data shows knives (1,591) were used four times more often to commit murder than rifles of any type (403), and mass-shootings deaths where an “assault weapon” was used accounts for just 0.24% of all firearm homicides.
It is important to note that, as tragic and horrifying as even one of these mass shootings is, the blame lies not with the weapon, but with the killer.
And in any case, as The New York Times’s Alex Kingsbury recently lamented, “It’s Too Late to Ban Assault Weapons.” There are approximately 400 million guns in the hands of about 100 million U.S. citizens. Every day, 99.99999% of those gun owners manage not to commit murder. In fact, a 2013 CDC study commissioned by none other than Barack Obama found guns are used defensively between 500,000 and 3,000,000 times per year. Don’t lament, Mr. Kingsbury! That’s a good thing!
If gun bans worked, the Democrat strongholds of DC, Baltimore, and Chicago, with some of the most draconian gun laws in the country, would be the safest cities around, instead of having murder rates rivaling war-torn countries.
And for all of their current facades and pretenses, these gun-grabbing Democrats have already revealed their hand, openly admitting their goal is to confiscate firearms from law-abiding citizens.
At the end of the day, gun control should be rejected for one simple reason; the right to keep and bear arms, to defend the life of yourself and your family — and our very republic and Liberty itself from tyranny — is a God-given, constitutionally protected right that “shall not be infringed.” These laws and bans amount to stripping American citizens of their rights without them ever having committed a crime.
And that is not only immoral. It is intolerable.
The LIE of Gun Control--30% of Confiscated Firearms in California are Homemade and the Number is Increasing both Here and Around the World
Several media outlets in California have teamed up with the anti-Second Amendment organization, The Trace, to investigate and write about homemade guns in California. They claim that BATFE sources say 30 percent of guns confiscated in California are homemade.
An Investigation by NBC Bay Area in partnership with NBC San Diego, NBC Los Angeles, and the non-profit journalists at The Trace found that law enforcement agencies across California are recovering record numbers of ghost guns. According to several ATF sources, 30 percent of all guns now recovered by agents in communities throughout California are homemade, un-serialized firearms, known on the street as “ghost guns.”
Guns have been made at home and in small shops for the entire history of the USA. From criminaldefeselawyer.com:
Individuals in this country have been making their own guns for centuries. The practice is deeply rooted in our constitutional history and tradition. Legal scholars have recognized that the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms would be meaningless in practice unless the state afforded individuals the ability to exercise that right—which includes making their own guns.
For the past almost half-century, however, the sale and subsequent control of firearms have been heavily regulated by federal law. It may come as somewhat of a surprise that even in this era of regulation, it is still completely legal to make and own a homemade gun. Even more surprising is the fact that a gun made wholly or even twenty percent at home need not be registered and its owner is not required to be licensed.
The individual manufacture of guns has not been illegal or regulated at all until very recently, and then only ineffectively. California recently required people who wish to make guns at home to apply for a state-supplied serial number before they make the gun. The law has been largely ignored.
Government regulation of individual making of firearms is probably unconstitutional under the Second Amendment, as applied to the states by the fourteenth amendment. It should be unconstitutional for the federal government because of lack of jurisdiction, but with the promiscuous application of the commerce clause to all activities, that remains to be seen.
In the world at large, the making of guns at home has been criminalized in nations with fewer Constitutional protections than the United States. That has not stopped homemade and small, clandestine shop manufacture. From Beyond State Control, published by the Small Arms Survey:
Improvised and craft-produced small arms account for a sizable proportion of weapons seized in domestic law enforcement operations in several countries. In the UK, some 80 per cent of all guns used in crime in 2011 and 2012 were improvised, craft-produced, or converted; in São Paulo, Brazil, 48 per cent of the sub-machine guns recovered during the same period were homemade; and in Indonesia, 98 percent of the guns confiscated from robbery suspects in 2013 were homemade.
The approach pushed by anti-gun groups and their lackeys in the legislature are rooted in fantasy land and their wish for a disarmed population ignores real world examples is not reasonable or achievable.
As shown in other countries, limiting access to firearms parts or even to machine tools has been spectacularly ineffective. Homemade/small shop guns are being made in Australia, India, Brazil, China, Canada, the Philippines and now, in spectacular quantities, California.
The United States is a first-world country with easy access to metals, machine tools, electricity, and computing power. Making guns is 15th-century technology. Making an unregulated gun in the United States is a weekend project any hobbyist is capable of.
At what point do the proponents of disarming the public admit their scheme is counter-productive, ineffective, and does nothing to stop crime?
Never it seems because it is not criminals the anti-gunners want to stop from having guns. It is you. Failing that, they intend to turn you into a criminal.
March for our Lives / Parkland Teen Anti-Gunners Reveal Gun Control Wishlist
The anti-gun- student activist group March for Our Lives, has announced a sweeping gun control agenda that appears to be straight out of the gun ban lobby playbook.
According to Axios.com, the wish list presented by the leader, David Hogg, of “March for Our Lives” includes the following:
- Ban so-called “assault weapons” and “high-capacity” magazines.
- Implement a mandatory gun buyback program (considered by some to be a “compensated confiscation” scheme).
- Raise the minimum age to buy a firearm from 18 to 21.
- Create a national licensing and gun registry that would include in-person interviews and a 10-day waiting period before gun purchases are approved.
- Install a “national director of gun violence prevention” who would report directly to the president.
- Create a “Safety Corps,” similar to the Peace Corps, for gun violence prevention.
- Create community-based programs for suicide prevention, domestic violence and urban violence.
WATCH: David Hogg and Tyah Roberts, March for Our Lives co-founders, discuss their new proposed gun control plan. https://t.co/WPuLIaAPwm pic.twitter.com/0gKvC03jPv
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) August 21, 2019
Hogg and other student leaders education on Constitutional Rights is obviously lacking and they may need to brush up on them. As defined at Wikipedia, “Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people, according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory.”
Rights are not government-regulated privileges, nor should they be subject to a public vote, i.e. a popularity contest.
As reported by Axios.com, Hogg tweeted, “We know this seems ambitious given Washington’s apathy to decades of bloodshed in our schools, neighborhoods, and even our houses of worship… “
But do their demands have a chance? They might with the slowly shrinking herd of Democrat presidential hopefuls, all of whom have supported some or even all of their demands on gun control.
Anti-Gun Democrats Call for the Creation of Secret Lists, But Don't Worry Your 2A Rights Will Be Fine
Over 700k Russians were rounded-up by Stalin’s dreaded NKVD and summarily shot during his infamous “purges” of 1937/38. Countless others rotted and died in gulags.
“A mournful discovery: Who agree with you are ‘insane’. Who do not agree with you are in power.” ~ PK Dick
Many were executed by “troikas” (secret military tribunals). But for 44k, their death sentences were personally approved by Stalin. His initials, always scribbled in bright red, appear on 357 separate “lists.”
On Sunday (8/18), Bernie Sanders proposed the creation of a “list” of “disreputable federal law enforcement officers” He also proposed federal funding to assist states in establishing similar “lists.” When in power, Bernie will surely establish all kinds of such “lists.” Of course, membership on such a “list” is arbitrary, but permanent, and despite all phoney Democrat/socialist/Marxist/Communist drivel about “transparency,” such “lists” are secret, capricious, and ever-lasting.
They’re off to a good start with Red Flag Law [and terrorist watch] “lists.”
Once you’re arbitrarily “red-flagged,” your status as a shunned, ever-distrusted, “mentally-ill,” second-class citizen is permanent. Your Second-Amendment Rights as an American Citizen are forever revoked, without trial, without recourse, and all in secret!
No transparent “due process” is ever involved when your name is casually added to the “Red Flag List,” and you can never get off the “list.”
All this, despite the fact that you’ve never been so much as charged with, much less convicted of, any crime, nor have you ever been examined by any real doctor to authoritatively determine your mental-health-status.
Simultaneously, Bernie wants to release from prison violent felons who actually have been, via exhaustive due process, charged, convicted, and sentenced. So, real criminals go free, while innocent citizens go on a ‘list’?
When you’re wondering what “socialism” looks like, you need look no further.
“Dictatorship of the Communist Party is maintained by recourse to every form of violence.” ~ Leon Trotsky
Does This Florida Incident Forecast the Future for PA Gun Owners if ERPO Laws are Passed?
On Wednesday (8/21), Floridian Jon Carpenter was served a certified letter from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. Upon opening it he was floored.
The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services was notifying him that they have suspended his concealed handgun permit.
“On or about August 12th, 2019 in Osceola County, Florida, an injunction was entered restraining you from acts of domestic violence or acts of repeat violations,” the notice read.
The letter shocked Carpenter, who has never had a run-in with the law.
Carpenter went to the Clerk of the Court's office whereupon the Clerk informed him that there was an injunction against a Jonathan Edward Carpenter.
“What do I have to do to prove that you have the wrong Jonathan Edward Carpenter?” he asked the Clerk.
The Clerk instructed Carpenter to go downstairs to talk to the Osceola County Sheriff's office to clear things up. Carpenter still figuring that it was just a mistake that the Sheriff’s office could quickly clear up went and spoke with him.
The Sheriff’s office supplied Carpenter with a copy of the injunction. In the statement, the plaintiff stated that she rented a room out to a “Jonathan Edward Carpenter” and his girlfriend. She alleged that this Carpenter was a drug dealer who broke her furniture and sold her belongings without her permission. He had a gun, and she feared for her life. She was not sure if the firearm was legal or not.
Carpenter had never met the woman in question and never lived at the address listed in the restraining order. Moreover, other than being white, he looked nothing like the man the terrorized the woman.
What’s more, the man in question is 5'8. Carpenter is 5'11. The alleged drug dealer is 110lbs. Carpenter is over 200. The man has black hair. Carpenter is completely bald. Last but not least, the man in question is covered in tattoos, and Carpenter only has a few.
Guilty Until Proven Innocent?
It was apparent that the police had the wrong man, but Carpenter was in for his biggest shock yet. The Sherriff’s office told Carpenter he had to surrender his guns. Carpenter never even had as much as a hearing, yet he was losing his rights.
Furthermore, he would not be able to get them back until he goes to court so the women can verify to the judge that they have the wrong Jonathan Carpenter. He would have to petition the court for the return of his firearms. An added expense that Carpenter would have to cover himself!
For many, this is an example of how the system is broken. This kind of abuse of process happens all the time with Temporary PFA’s (because of the ‘low’ standard of evidence) and misidentification, when purchasing a firearm, is rampant with the Pennsylvania Instant Check System. Adding Extreme Risk Protection Orders (ERPO) into this complicated mix will only serve to make the abuse of individual rights that much more problematic and is a diabolical and insidious way to attack individual liberties!
NASCAR Follows Dicks Down the Rabbit Hole-Adopts Anti-Gun Stance
‘Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.’ ~Winston Churchill. The words are as true today as when Churchill uttered them in 1948. Yet, major organizations, those with no stake in politics, are taking political sides and alienating their consumers in the process. Perhaps the CEO of Dick’s Sporting Goods was just ignorant of his consumer base or Yeti made a miscalculation when it cut ties with the NRA.
NASCAR chooses Anti-Gun stance
However, when it comes to NASCAR taking an anti-gun approach, it simply baffles the imagination as to who is calling the shots and how out of touch they are with their fan base.
“We just heard from NASCAR on a number of gun related ads and unfortunately, due a gradual shift in NASCAR’s position on guns, these ads must be edited/changed—especially those that are depicted as assault-style rifles/sniper rifles. NASCAR is still open to some of the less controversial gun accessories, concealed carry, or classes.”
Consider this, even if your audience was split 50-50 as to the issue of the Second Amendment, why would you intentionally alienate half of your base? Let’s take it to an extreme. What organization wants to intentionally anger even 10 percent of its base? I am sure much more than 10 percent of NASCAR’s fan base is pro gun, but that seems to be of little import to NASCAR. This is an organization which bragged for years that it was born out of bootleggers running Moonshine.
Nascar’s “Gradual Shift”
In March and April 2019, several firearms retailers and manufacturers were contacted by National Event Publications, Official media sales agent for the NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, NASCAR, PGA, NHRA, & USA Today Lifestyle. The pitch was to buy advertising in the official program for the last 26 races of the season. K-Var opted to advertise, as did at least 16 other manufacturers or retailers including CZ-USA, Beretta, Daniel Defense, and others. The deadline to have our artwork submitted for approval was April 19, 2019.
Then, on August 19, 2019 (four months later) we were contacted by National Event Publications with the following message.
We just heard from NASCAR on a number of gun related ads and unfortunately, due a gradual shift in NASCAR’s position on guns, these ads must be edited/changed—especially those that are depicted as assault-style rifles/sniper rifles. NASCAR is still open to some of the less controversial gun accessories, concealed carry, or classes.
Do the executives at NASCAR think they are being sly and trying to judge its fans’ position on America’s most popular rifle, the AR-15 or Modern Sporting Rifle, or is it so blind to the interests of its own fan base’s demographics?
Whether or not you are a hardcore NASCAR fan, do you think the majority of NASCAR’s fanbase is pro Second Amendment or pro gun control?
Is the Media Intentionally or Incompetently Lying about the Pistol Used in Dayton Mass Murder?
When the mass murder in Dayton Ohio was conducted by a leftist drug addict, most in the media jumped to the conclusion that he used a rifle. It was not hard to do for those ignorant of firearms and the arcane classifications created by the National Firearms Act (NFA) of 1934 and its follow on legislation.
The logical contradictions of the NFA have become more and more obvious, partly through legal holdings of the BATFE, and partly from Court decisions. It takes a serious understanding of the law to know what is a pistol and what is a rifle. Some study is required to know when a $200 federal tax stamp, and processing through the Byzantine BATFE bureaucracy is mandated, and when it is not.
There ‘may be’ understandable reasons why some media outlets were confused. Here are a few that have not corrected their misunderstanding of the technology, more than a week after the killing:
From newyorkpost.com August 12:
Betts, armed with an assault rifle, opened fire in the Oregon District, a trendy nightspot neighborhood, early Aug. 4. He killed nine people in 30 seconds before police officers shot him dead.
From nbcnews.com August 12:
Ten weeks ago, documents said, Betts and Kollie assembled the rifle in the latter's apartment. Six to eight weeks ago, Betts returned to retrieve the rifle and to pick up the body armor and the 100-round magazine, prosecutors said.
Armed with a .223-caliber high-capacity rifle with 100-round drum magazines, Betts fired 41 shots in fewer than 30 seconds, killing his sister, Megan, and eight others in Dayton’s entertainment district, police said.
Dayton Ohio, WKRC local12.com August 12:
Betts used a .223 rifle with drum magazines containing 100 rounds. Police have said he legally bought the gun online from Texas and picked it up at a local gun dealer.
The Washington Post, about as mainstream (Progressive) a media outlet as can be, noted the firearm used was a pistol on August 5th. From the washingtonpost.com August 5:
Wearing body armor and a mask, Betts opened fire with an AR-15-style pistol outside a bar in Dayton, Ohio, early Sunday, killing nine people.
The Daily Beast used the correct nomenclature on August 12th. From thedailybeast.com August 12:
Betts, 24, legally purchased the AM-15 pistol used in the attack, authorities previously said. The pistol has a shorter barrel than the AR-15 rifle variant, but uses the same ammunition and magazines.
We are making progress when the Washington Post correctly identifies a firearm.
What should come of this, but probably will not, is an understanding of the irrational, unsupportable nature of the restrictions and artificial distinctions between pistols and rifles that have been built into the National Firearms Act and the BATFE interpretations of it.
All those legalistic distinctions between a short-barrelled rifle and a pistol with an arm brace, and firearms that were designed to be fired without a stock, really are silly.
It would be better to do away with the NFA altogether.
I do not think we have the media power to do that, at least not this year. It makes wonderful sense, with logic and reason, to do so. But public perception is tremendously influenced by urban elites who know almost nothing of firearms and are proud of their ignorance.
An intermediate step would be to reform the NFA to only differentiate between concealable (anything that can be fired in a configuration of fewer than 26 inches in length) and long guns, anything longer than 26 inches in length. Suppressors, also known as silencers, should never have been in the NFA. They are primarily safety equipment, are seldom used in a crime, and were not regulated for decades in many countries which otherwise heavily regulate firearms.
I do not see machine gun regulation being reduced to that of ordinary rifles, at least in the near future. It should be possible to remove the 1986 freeze on any new guns. Legal machine gun owners are the most lawful of the lawful. They should not be punished for being extremely law-abiding.
It is relatively easy to make fully automatic firearms. It is easy to make silencers/suppressors. Yet both are rarely used in a crime. The law ought to take that reality into consideration. There is no point of having heavy regulation of short-barreled rifles and shotguns when pistols and revolvers are protected by the Second Amendment.
Why Do Anti-Gunners Fear Guns???
Anti-Gunners oppose gun-ownership because they are simply scared of guns and propaganda from a dishonest media, keeps them in a perpetual state of gun-fear.
With all this talk about Red Flag Laws, gun-buybacks, and gun confiscations, there’s one thing that Gun-Owners often don’t recognize about the anti-gun crowd.
Gun-Owners consistently bring up the logical argument that, the anti-gun crowd works hard to take guns away from law-abiding citizens but does nothing to get guns out of the hands of criminals. This argument is valid because it’s true. Although the Gun-Grabbers claim to want to keep guns out of the hands of criminals, they really want to take guns away from everyone.
However, most Anti-Gunners oppose gun-ownership, because they are simply scared of guns. They typically have no experience with guns and they often make no attempt to educate themselves by going to the range or discussing the topic with Gun-Owners. This lack of knowledge, coupled with skillfully twisted half-truths and anti-gun rhetoric along with the propaganda from a dishonest media, keeps them in a perpetual, sometimes hysterical, state of gun-fear.
The most disturbing part of the gun-grab and those who support it is that they typically support banning guns altogether because they have been taught to believe that guns are the culprit. They believe that guns “cause” people to do bad things. They believe that when people have access to guns they often act irrationally. In other words, “the gun made me do it.”
Gun-Grabbers consistently make the argument of “what if?” “What if someone gets angry in traffic.” “What if two people have an argument?” They often imply that under these situations and others like them, people will pull out a gun and shoot someone. What they fail to recognize is that, those thoughts are occurring in their own mind. They often don’t consider the fact that rational people are able to restrain themselves. Most people look at situations like this and can’t imagine someone being so angry that they would want to kill another person, because the thought would never cross their mind. On the other hand, many among the anti-gun crowd can’t imagine someone not pulling a gun out and killing people when under stressful situations. What does this say about them?
Sigmund Freud coined the term “Projection.” In short, Projection is the process of person “A” blaming person “B” for the thoughts that are occurring in the mind of person “A.” Anti-Gunners often want guns banned because they are scared to death at how they would react in the presence of a gun.
Bicycles Accidents Kill More Children Than Guns, But You Don't See Calls to Ban Bikes
Did you know that there are FAR more fatal accidents involving children and bicycles than there are involving children and guns?
It is documented in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) fatal injury database.
As you can see from the illustration below, for the last 19 years, from 1999 to 2017, there were 2,467 children killed in fatal accidents involving bicycles, versus 1,994 children killed in fatal accidents involving a firearm.
Total accidental deaths of children (unintended deaths). Data from WISQARS database.
Both of the rates are very low. The firearm rate is 1.4 per million children; the bicycle rate is 1.8 per million children. There are numerous things far more commonly involved in unintended deaths than bicycles or guns for children.
The total accidental deaths of children (unintended deaths) from 1999 to 2017 were 135,259. Fatal firearms accidents were 1.47 percent of the total. Many other circumstances accounted for much higher numbers of unintentional deaths than those occurring with firearms. Here are numbers from the CDC database for the same period, 1999-2017, for children aged 0 – 17.
- Occupants of motor vehicles 27,189
- Unknown situations, motor vehicles 24,201
- Suffocation 21,008
- Drowning 17,270
- Pedestrians and motor vehicles 12,098
- Fire/burning (non-residential) 7,982
- Fire, residential 7,237
- Poisoning 5,166
- Other land transportation 3,489
- Bicycles (pedal cycles) 2,467
- Falls 2,118
- Firearms 1,994
- Natural/Environmental 1,797
Fatal accidents involving firearms and children are low and have been trending downward for decades, even as the number of firearms, both absolute and per capita, have increased exponentially.
The rate of fatal firearms accidents has been cut by 94% since 1933 while, as a wealthy society, the number of firearms per capita has increased nearly fourfold, from .35 to 1.28 firearms per person in the USA.
Why is there so much focus on requiring gun owners to lock up guns, but not requiring poison owners to lock up poisons? People are told it is a good preventive measure to lock up poisons, but there is no legislative effort, that I know of, to criminalize the failure to do so.
The political reason seems clear. People who do not own guns do not see any cost to themselves by creating penalties that only apply to gun owners. The politicians are appealing to non-gun owners.
One problem, at least in our eyes, of requiring guns to be locked up and unloaded is it prevents guns from being used in self-defense. From 1999 to 2017, there were 33,095 children who were deliberately killed with firearms. Most of them were murdered (the CDC does not differentiate between justified homicide and murder).
The CDC, during the Obama regime, found that firearms were used for defense and to prevent crime, from 500,000 to 3 million times a year. From the CDC:
Defensive use of guns by crime victims is a common occurrence, although the exact number remains disputed (Cook and Ludwig, 1996; Kleck, 2001a). Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million (Kleck, 2001a), in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008 (BJS, 2010).
Responsible people can judge their own risks and requirements better than the government can.
Why compare fatal accidents with bicycles to fatal accidents with guns?
It is a starting point for a discussion about how few fatal accidents with guns there are. The fear of guns has been hyped by the media as part of their effort to demonize guns and gun ownership.
When someone calls for guns to be locked up, you can tell them bicycles are involved in more children's fatal accidents than guns are.
Defensive gun uses are at least five thousand times more common than fatal firearms accidents involving children. That should give pause when the government considers legislation to effectively make the defense of self and others in the home with any weapons, difficult. But the real elephant in the room is why are we not calling for bans on bikes?
Interesting Video: Virginia Psychiatrist testifies to the Virginia Crime Commission about the dangers of and problems with Red Flag Laws (ERPO).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YadSH4cEbuE
1st Point to Ponder: “Ohio Attorney General says more than 100 people deemed mentally unfit have concealed carry permits,” ABC’s News 5 Cleveland reported Saturday. “To decrease gun violence, Attorney General Yost said officials need to start enforcing the laws that already exist.”
Further down in the piece we’re told: “Yost said more than one hundred people who were ruled incompetent might still have their concealed carry permits.”
“Might” adds a very different perspective on things. It’s hardly a legal standard to justify gun confiscation, which is where this will ultimately lead, whether they admit or not.
2nd Point to Ponder: “Bernie Sanders says ‘We will go to war against white nationalism and racism',” WND.com reports. Don’t assume hyperbole. If they’re going to go to war, they don’t want those they attack to be able to fight back. The only “weapons of war” they want “on the streets” are theirs.
3rd Point to Ponder: “Kamala Harris is proposing a new kind of ‘red flag' law to take guns away from racists,” The Blaze reports. And guess who gets to determine who those are, and what level of “due process” they’ll be afforded.
Quote of the Week: – “[T]hey’re all fundamentally flawed,” California attorney Donald Kilmer warns, relating how the “law” has been abused there and the burdens it places on the innocent. “The enforcement problems with gun-grabbing ‘red flag’ laws are even worse than you think.”
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Founding Father’s Statement on Freedom: “Because We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition Revenge or Galantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” From John Adams to Massachusetts Militia, 11 October 1798
Yours in Freedom!
Kim Stolfer, President
As a reminder, you can join the FOAC meeting from any PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android phone by clicking on the link below:
Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://zoom.us/j/702096306
One-tap Mobile: US: +19292056099,,702096306# US (New York)
Dial by your location: +1 929 205 6099 US
Meeting ID: 702 096 306
