Yesterday Weer’d posted about the response of one of the handful of anti-gun bloggers out there to the counter-demonstration staged in response to their “stop a bullet with a candle” publicity stunt.

I don’t read the anti-gunner’s sites because they don’t say anything worth reading and it just gives them traffic.  I believe the best way to deal with them is just to ignore them and let them wither on the vine.  If it weren’t for pro-freedom people reading and linking them, they wouldn’t have any traffic at all…or at least very, very little.

With that said, I used to engage them and try to discuss the issues with them, as they inevitably claim they want to do.  Every time I did so, I was met with derision, name calling, obfuscation, and the breaking out of “reasoned discourse” wherein any comment they couldn’t refute, was simply not published, followed by unfounded and unsupported claims that the unpublished comments were harassing, threatening or obscene.

The conclusion I drew from these experiences is simply that the anti-freedom lobby is made up of flatly dishonest professional victims who are incapable of actually engaging in discussion about the issues, whereupon, I stopped reading or engaging them.

This background was necessary in order to illustrate the irony of the comment that Weer’d pointed out in his post:

So far, no comments from the gun rights extremists are worth publishing. Come on guys, you can do better. “Dancing in the blood of victims”? Really guys. How rude and insensitive.

As if they actually would publish a comment that they can’t think of a way to dismiss out of hand.  That’s funny right there.

I couldn’t resist so I actually followed the link to her place where I found some other aspects of her position that I just had to respond to:

No one said candles would stop anything. You totally missed the point of the whole thing- on purpose I would add.

…

You seem to have forgotten the many other people for whom the bell was rung and for whom candles were lit on Sunday. Jan. 8th was the anniversary of a horrific national tragedy that highlights our lax gun laws. The vigils on Sunday were to call attention to the way too many victims of gun violence. Gabby Giffords story is known to the world. There were videos and photographs of her plastered all over the media all over this country calling attetntion to the one year anniversary and many of them to our lax gun laws as well.

To which I responded:

We didn’t miss the point at all and I think you know it…because you know as well as we do what the point really was. It was about attempting to commandeer the memorial of a tragedy to exploit it for publicity and political gain.

You can claim that your sideshow was, in part, to honor the victims of the Tuscon tragedy all you want, but I find it interesting that at the ACTUAL memorial service, no mention was made of you, your group, your agenda, or your political stunt.

You know what I find rude and insensitive? People exploiting the deaths of others, even of loved ones, to push a political agenda that has virtually nothing to do with, and would not have prevented, the incident(s) being exploited.

This is how you honor them? By using their suffering and even death like a poker chip in a political game? By trying to use their victimhood as a shield against criticism?

It’s not just rude and insensitive, it’s downright disgusting.

You should be ashamed. But I’m pretty sure you’re not. Which is why I don’t much bother any more.

So far that one “wasn’t worth publishing”.

In response to commenter “Country Tea”, she asserted:

No one is going to take your rights away Country Tea. 

To which I responded:

“No one is going to take your rights away Country Tea.”

Especially not the Brady Campaign, that’s why they tirelessly fight for your rights.

For example:  They strongly supported the effort to overturn Washington DC’s unconstitutional ban on defensive firearms in the home.

Oh…wait…

Well, they strongly supported the effort to overturn Chicago’s unconstitutional ban on defensive firearms in the home.

Oh…wait…

Well, they strongly oppose the proposed ban of certain types of firearms specifically protected by the second amendment under the “in common use” language used by the supreme court in the Heller decision.

Oh…wait…

Well, they strongly support the property rights of individuals re: the ability of citizens to lawfully sell their privately owned property without the interference of the government.

Oh…wait…

Well, they strongly support the right of law abiding citizens to practice the “bear” part of “keep and bear arms” and carry defensive firearms in public.

Oh…wait…

Well…never mind all that.  They really don’t want to take any of your rights away;  just ask them, they’ll tell you.

In another case of a comment that turned into a post:

My good friend Thirdpower, over at Days of our Trailers, pointed out the fallacies in a recent editorial by perennial anti-gun bigot Jesse Jackson.

Although Thirdpower did a good job of succinctly pointing out a major problem in Mr. Jackson’s first point, I don’t feel he went far enough.

Under a federal assault weapons ban from 1994 to 2004, there was a 60 percent drop in assault-weapon deaths. – Jesse Jackson

There was a 60% drop in ALL homicides during that period. -Thirdpower

I’ve looked at this issue in detail before, when researching the issue in forming my own opinion about it (an exercise I heartily recommend for anyone before taking a position on an issue) so I started to put some of my findings out there in his comments section.  As usual it got too long for a comment, so here’s the truth about “assault weapons” and homicide and the effect of the ban on scary looking cosmetic features (sometimes referred to as the “assault weapons ban”):

All my data came from the FBI Uniform Crime Reports.  Not from the NRA, or Brady Campaign, or any other biased group that may have massaged the numbers to make them say what they want them to say.

Every year’s UCR has a table that breaks down homicides by weapon for the year of the report and the preceding 4 years.

The UCR doesn’t differentiate between “assault weapons” and other rifles (probably because there IS no functional difference) so the numbers I use to represent “assault weapons” is actually the number of homicides where ANY type of rifle is used.

That’s an important distinction because it means that these numbers are actually TOO HIGH.  We don’t know by how much, but they are, in fact, inflated in favor of the anti-gun position.

So:  What do the numbers say?

In 1994, the year the ban was passed, and the first year Mr. Jackson cited for his claim, there were 22,084 homicides.  Of those, 15,463 involved firearms.  only 724 were committed with rifles of any type.

That means that rifles of any type were used in 3.3% of all homicides in 1994 and only in 4.6% of “gun homicides”…the metric that the anti-gun lobby likes to use because, I guess, you’re less dead if you’re killed with a knife or something.

Although the number of homicides decrease steadily throughout the period 1994 to 2004 (a trend which actually began in 1991, well before the passing of the Clinton Crime Bill), so did the use of rifles…so the percentage remained fairly steady.

In 2004, the year the ban expired, there were 14,210 total homicides, of which 9,385 were committed by perpetrators using firearms, and 403 using rifles.

To give credit where due, Mr. Jackson was correct that there was a 60% decrease of homicides in which rifles were used (actually 55.6%, but that’s close enough for government work isn’t it?)…but Thirdpower was absolutely correct that there was a corresponding decrease in total homicide (64.3%) and firearms homicide (60.7%).   In fact, if we pretend (as the anti-freedom lobby regularly does) that a simple correlation can be used as proof of causation, then the assault weapon ban decreased non-firearm homicide more than it did firearm homicide.

At any rate, getting back to my point: crunching the numbers again, we find that a very similar percentage of homicides were committed by criminals using rifles of any type:  2.83% of all homicides and 4.29% of gun homicides.

So there may have been a slight decrease but the numbers are remarkably steady.

But, since Mr. Jackson’s contention is that the ten years of “assault weapon ban” CAUSED that slight decrease, obviously, when the ban expired in 2004, the rate of murders with “assault weapons” MUST have gone back up right?  Especially when you consider the huge upsurge in popularity of the AR-15 style platform in all types of shooting endeavors.

Um…not so fast there buster.

In 2010, there were 12,996 total homicides…note the continued decreasing trend…including 8,775 gun homicides and 358 committed by criminals using rifles.

Hmm.  That means that in 2010, 2.75% of all homicides were committed using rifles of any kind, and only 4.09% of gun homicides were committed using rifles.

That’s six years AFTER the ban expired.

Hmmm.

Something doesn’t add up here.

Something is definitely causing our homicide rate to decrease, but it sure wasn’t any ban on pistol grips and barrel shrouds.  In fact, there is no correlation at all between any gun control measure and the significant decreases in homicide rates we’ve been enjoying since about 1991.

You know what HAS correlated nicely with the decreasing homicide rates?

(click the image to go to the source)

One other point to make regarding the use of “assault weapons”, or any rifles for that matter, in homicide:

According to the same FBI Uniform Crime Reports – hands, fists and feet are consistently used two to three times more often to commit homicide in this country than rifles of any type.

Two to three TIMES more often.

That’s 200 to 300 percent.

Perhaps we should be registering and restricting ownership of bodily appendages.

You see how it works?  By focusing on one small element of the issue, and ignoring the greater context, they can make something relatively minor look like a much bigger problem than it really is.  So-called “Assault Weapons” are involved in only a tiny fraction of homicides and even if restricting them were 100% effective (which it would not be…in fact, the 1994 to 2004 AWB demonstrated pretty thoroughly that such a law is approximately 0% effective), it would only reduce homicides by less than 3 percent…and that’s assuming that the bad guys don’t just use their hands and feet instead.

This is what is known as “a solution in search of a problem”; and is prima facia evidence of the lack of rational thought that goes into your typical anti-freedom advocate’s issue selection process.

If you want to verify that the information I presented here is an accurate representation and not just “cherry picked” to reach a predetermined conclusion (another favorite trick of the anti-freedom lobby), here are links to the source data:

1994 to 1998, Table 2-10 (pdf): http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/1998/98sec2.pdf

1999 to 2003, Table 2-9 (pdf): http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2003/03sec2.pdf

2004 to 2008, Table 8: http://www2.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/expanded_information/data/shrtable_08.html

2006 to 2010, Table 8: http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2010/crime-in-the-u.s.-2010/tables/10shrtbl08.xls