Mumbai Musings

Like most people, I was shocked and saddened to hear of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai, India last week. Close to 200 people dead so far, with untold numbers more injured. It is a tragedy of terrible scope.

Speaking as someone who works with violent crime survivors, I can attest that there is a hidden cost that very few of us will ever see. Thousands upon thousands of people were involved with the victims, from family members and close friends to coworkers and casual acquaintances. Most of those people will find their lives have been changed, and rarely for the better.

Although hardly an expert on terrorism, I have been paying attention to the issue over the years. I thought I’d share a few thoughts.

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About Freakin’ Time!

Most people who are not firearm enthusiasts are surprised when I mention that the city of New Orleans enacted a campaign of illegally seizing privately owned firearms in the aftermath of Katrina.

Think about that for a moment. With the looting, the breakdown of order, and the sheer overwhelming job that the police and authorities faced when it came to providing aid to those who needed it, disarming law abiding citizens who needed their guns to protect their homes and loved ones was still deemed top priority.

It was conducted like a military campaign. National Guard troops were under orders to break into homes to find guns, and they were ready to shoot any who resisted.

Sounds like some paranoid right wing conspiracy novel, doesn’t it? But all you have to do is watch this video to hear them freely admit it. Note the images of innocent home owners, flex cuffed and lined up by the side of the road like they were terrorists.

One of the most egregious example of police overstepping their authority was caught on video.

Do you think that cop needed to tackle an old woman, in her own kitchen? God only knows what they would have done to her if the cameras weren’t rolling, considering how she is such a terror and all.

This was all three years ago. Why am I bringing up this ancient history?

Because New Orleans has finally agreed to return the guns they seized illegally. It seems that the city has been extremely reluctant to return the private property of the residents, even requiring a sales receipt. Considering that it takes more than a century for regularly maintained firearms to wear out, and many firearms are family heirlooms passed from one generation to the next, this is a ridiculous burden that was enacted by the city to avoid obeying the law.

It has been a long time coming. Let us hope it doesn’t happen again.

Obama and Guns

I just finished reading most of the posts to which Glenn Reynolds so helpfully linked on this topic. I also read many of the comments in response to those posts. The gist of the discussion is that pro-Obama people say Obama doesn’t really oppose the right to arms, while pro-gun people say he does.

I don’t understand why anyone would doubt the validity of the pro-gun people’s argument.

If Obama supported gun rights, many pro-gun people, even Republicans, would support him, because many pro-gun people are single-issue voters on this topic and Obama’s opponent has a spotty record on gun rights. (The NRA and pro-gun rights voters have supported pro-gun Democrats in many elections.) Also, if Obama really supported the right to arms, it’s likely that many additional Republican, libertarian and independent voters would support him because conservatives and libertarians often interpret a politician’s support for the right to arms as a reliable proxy for that politician’s support of other individual rights. This point seems especially strong now, since many Republican voters distrust Obama’s opponent on free speech, business regulation and other big-govt-vs-individual-rights issues.

So on the one hand we have single-issue pro-gun people opposing Obama on guns, and on the other hand we have people who are primarily Obama partisans, not gun people, arguing that pro-gun people should trust Obama on guns. Who should we believe?

UPDATE: Via John Lott, this statement from Richard Pearson of the Illinois State Rifle Association:

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Something Rotten in Geneva

The headline reads “Armed killings cost nations billions of dollars”. survey from the United Nations Development Program and the

Okay, so there is an economic cost to violence. That is obvious just through the lifelong revenue lost when someone is murdered. But the first sentence of the news article wants to make a point.

“The United States leads the world in economic loss from deaths caused by armed crime, according to a global survey released Friday.”

The US leads the world when it comes to economic costs due to violence, but the author also points out that there are countries with higher levels of violence than the United States. No doubt the higher standard of living and GDP we enjoy here when compared to majority of the world has something to do with it, but the article makes no mention of that.

There is also no attempt made to define what is meant by the phrase “armed killings”. Do they mean any weapon, with rocks and sticks lumped in with machine guns and crossbows? Are improvised weapons included, such as normally innocent clotheslines used for hanging or water in bathtubs which is used to drown someone? How do they discount people who are killed by bare hands alone? Isn’t someone who is strangled or beaten to death just as dead, the economic costs just as high, as someone who is deliberately run over by a car?

And I wonder about suicides. Are they included as well? Suicide is illegal, so it would certainly fit the definition of “armed crime”. What about people who overdose instead of slitting their wrists or shoot themselves? Are prescription pills considered a weapon when deliberately used to end an innocent life?

All of these questions I am raising might seem frivolous, and they certainly are. But that is because I find the entire premise to be laughable. The people behind this study are obviously trying to advance an agenda of some kind, and the details they ignore say more about their motives than anything they claim to reveal. It is no surprise that the study was sponsored by the United Nations Development Program and the Small Arms Survey.

These are the same people that like to argue that the 2nd Amendment is actually a violation of human rights. (PDF file here.) Looks like they are up to the same old tricks, using smoke and mirrors to try and make their case.

Please Help Me Understand

I am a very simple person, with simple thought processes, and a pretty black and white view of things.   Since owning a firearm is essentially illegal in the City of Chicago (for now) can someone please explain this to me?