Posts Tagged ‘John Lott’

LinkSwarm for May 23, 2016

Monday, May 23rd, 2016

This kept getting pushed out by other posts, so enjoy a heftier-than-usual LinkSwarm:

  • U.S. district court judge rules that House Republicans lawsuit against ObamaCare on separation-of-powers grounds can move forward. (Hat tip: Elizabeth Price Foley at Instapundit.)
  • You know how American leftists claim socialist Denmark is paradise on earth? Yeah, not so much. “Denmark’s suicide rate has averaged 20.8 per 100,000 during the last five decades, with its highest level of 32. The American suicide rate averaged only 11.1 during the last five decades, and has never exceeded 12.7. Danes are deeply deprived, driven by severe narcissism, and so more than 11 percent of adult Danes – the supposed happiest people in the world – are on antidepressants.”
  • Why the left hates the Jews:

    The Arab–Israeli conflict is a bitter and ugly one. My own view of it is that the Palestinian Arabs have some legitimate grievances, and that I stopped caring about them when they started blowing up children in pizza shops. You can thank the courageous heroes of the Battle of Sbarro for that. Israel isn’t my country, but it is my country’s ally, and it is impossible for a liberty-loving American to fail to admire what the Jewish state has done.

    And that, of course, is why the Left wants to see the Jewish state exterminated.

  • Vaguely related: “Frank Sinatra’s Love Affair With the Jewish People.”
  • Brazil’s President impeached.
  • This just in: Europe is still screwed.
  • Greece approves new “austerity” measures that they’ll no doubt continue to cheat and ignore while spending money they don’t have.
  • Speaking of Greece, “More than one in five school-aged refugee children in Greece have never been to school, a study has revealed. Child refugees stranded in Greece have been out of school for on average 1.5 years, and many of them ‘cannot even hold a pencil.'”
  • Hezbollah operations chief killed by Syria, but nobody’s entirely sure by who.
  • Why did the feds give Bill Clinton’s pedophile friend Jeffrey Epstein a sweetheart deal?
  • Elijah Woods says there’s widespread pedophilia in Hollywood. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • One billionaire moving to Florida is going to cost New Jersey $140 million in tax revenue.
  • Electric cars don’t lower emissions overall.
  • No sign of a down ballot Republican crackup.
  • Target has shed $10 billion in stock value since announcing its tranny bathrooms policy.
  • Why feminists hate sex: “The new feminist puritans see heterosexual sex as confirming and reinforcing outdated gender roles. That men and women not only have sex but enjoy it is a threat to the notion that both gender and sexuality are merely social constructs, to be crafted and rejected as instinct takes us.”
  • Why did 16 Republican Senators save the agency that’s hell-bent on creating instant public housing slums across America?
  • More than 300 UK CEOs come out in favor of a Brexit.
  • Eye-open infographic on mass public shootings from John Lott.
  • More proof that Social Justice Warriors hate everything, no matter how cute.
  • World’s oldest woman, and last living American born in the 19th century, dies. (Hat tip: Director Blue.)
  • Listeria outbreak among frozen fruits and vegetables. “Some of the affected products were sold under brand names such as Earth’s Pride, Panda Express, Signature Kitchens and Trader Joe’s.” (Hat tip: Ace of Spades HQ.)
  • Meet the vegan Bernie Madoff. (Hat tip: Ed Driscoll at Instapundit.)
  • Black Pimps Matter.
  • Safety tip: Try not to get killed over cutting in line for the taco truck.
  • Facebook bans conservative for saying that Facebook bans conservatives. (Hat tip: Instapundit.)
  • Canadian company working on 20km high space elevator.
  • Jim Geraghty visits NRRAM.
  • The Dallas convention center sucks.
  • Microsoft is gonna Microsoft redux. (Hat tip: Borepatch.)
  • Wikipedia editor contemplates suicide over toxic atmosphere of powertripping.
  • Rehab for Internet addiction. “The program costs $25,000 for 45 days at the center.” Obviously I can’t be addicted to the Internet, because there’s no way I could afford the rehab…
  • I’m stealing this from Ace of Spades HQ:

  • The UN Arms Treaty: It’s Baaaaack!

    Wednesday, September 25th, 2013

    Because those bitter rednecks clinging to their guns and religion (also known as “voters”), Obama hasn’t been able to disarm law-abiding Americans the way he would like. What to do, what to do?

    Hey, how about using that UN Arms Treaty to disarm Americans?

    You know, the one Secretary of State John Kerry just signed?

    John Lott notes that

    The Arms Trade Treaty will regulate individual gun ownership all across the world. Each country will be obligated to “maintain a national control list that shall include [rifles and handguns]” and “to regulate brokering taking place under its jurisdiction for conventional arms.” In fact, the new background check rules approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee include just those rules — a registration system and a record of all transfers of guns.

    Will Obama even submit it to the Senate for approval, knowing he doesn’t have even 50 votes in the Senate for it, much less the 67 votes required to ratify it?

    More Colorado Gun-Grabber Recall Fallout

    Thursday, September 12th, 2013

    Some more reactions and tidbits on the Colorado gun-grabber recall:

  • John Lott has a lot of interesting analysis over at NRO. Some tidbits:
    • Both state-senate districts were overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2012, President Obama carried Morse’s district by 21 percentage points and Giron’s by 19 points.
    • These were the first recalls of legislators in Colorado history. Nationally, recalls of state legislators, particularly state legislative leaders, has been very difficult. Morse and Giron were only the 37th and 38th state legislators in U.S. history to face recall votes (before this vote, precisely half the efforts had succeeded). Prior to Morse, there had only been four recall elections against legislative leaders, and the legislative leader was retained in three of those four races. Giron was also a powerful senator, serving as vice chairman of the very important, especially for her rural district, Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Energy Committee.
    • Not only did getting a recall on the ballot require a number of signatures amounting to 25 percent of all the votes in the previous election, but the Democrats didn’t take even that battle lying down. During the signature-gathering effort, recall proponents were outspent by the groups backed by billionaire Mayor Bloomberg that went in earlier with ads to discourage signature gathering.
    • In their last races for the state senate, in 2010, Morse raised $163,972 and Giron $68,710. By the last filing for the recall, on August 29, Morse had raised $658,230 and Giron $825,400. While the NRA had donated $361,700, just two billionaires, Bloomberg and Eli Broad, donated a total of $600,000 between them. Left-wing organizations such as the Daily Kos and MoveOn.org continually bombarded their members with requests for money. Of the $3.5 million spent on the recall election, almost $3 million came from its opponents.
  • How did the pro-Second Amendent side win? A superior ground game.

    It’s one thing for a deliberately polarizing legislator like Morse to lose a close race in a swing district. It’s quite another for Giron to lose by 12 points in a district that is 47% Democratic and 23% Republican. One reason is that in blue collar districts like Pueblo, there are plenty of Democrats who cling to their Second Amendment rights. As the Denver Post noted, 20% of the voters who signed the Giron recall petitions were Democrats….

    For abuse of office, John Morse and Angela Giron have been recalled from office by the People of Colorado, to be replaced by legislators who will listen before the vote.

    (Hat tip: Shall Not Be Questioned.)

  • Today’s example of media bias on firearms comes to from the Denver Post.

    For starters, the headline writer displays a rather loose grasp on reality: “Colorado recall slows gun-control momentum.”

    Uh, what momentum? The gun grabbers have lost every fight since the initial knee-jerk legislation.

    Writer Ryan Parker works a bit of rhetorical slight of hand further in: “And while the pro gun-control movement — on both the state and national level — had significant momentum following the Aurora and Sandy Hook massacres of 2012, Thursday night’s history-making recall election may have all but stopped Democrats’ response, Second Amendment supporters claim.”

    “Had” momentum being the key word here, and only in the immediate aftermath, and only where it was possible for liberals at the state level, backed by overwhelming in-kind support from their local and national media wing, to exploit the tragedy by pushing rushed, ill-conceived legislation through against the wishes of actual constituents. Did Mr. Parker not notice the crushing defeats the gun-grabbing agenda experienced at the national level? Was he on vacation when that downpayment on the gun-grabbing agenda, Manchin-Toomey, failed to make it out of the Senate? That’s point when “momentum” for the gun-grabbing cause went from “small and slowing” to “non-existent.”

    Also, note how Parker reprints one whole sentence from an NRA spokesman, but concludes with three paragraphs from members of the gun-grabbing camp.

  • A more expensive breakdown of spending from NRO’s Jim Geraghty.
  • Sean Trende on why the results just might be important.

    Democratic incumbents simply don’t lose in states like Delaware and California unless they have done something very, very wrong. They certainly don’t lose by 12 points. In fact, even in the great GOP midterm election of 2010, only a handful of Republicans won in districts where the president approached 60 percent of the vote (using his 2008 numbers, of course), and most of those were in Illinois, where Obama’s vote share had been somewhat enhanced by his “hometown hero” status. It’s just really difficult to write these results off completely, especially given that these were relatively high-profile special elections, driven by issues rather than personality….

    The bottom line is that there is something of a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don’t aspect to the Democrats’ argument. If this isn’t about turnout, but rather is a reaction to policy, then relatively modest gun-control efforts look pretty radioactive, and an awful lot of Democrats who supported the federal gun-control bill ought to look over their shoulders. This is especially true in Colorado, where nine Democrats occupy seats that are more Republican than the ones Republicans just flipped.

  • From the Pueblo Chieftain:

    Elected to replace them were Republicans George Rivera in Pueblo and Bernie Herpin in Colorado Springs. They promised to be responsive to and representative of the people. This seemed to strike the right chord with voters who have tired of local legislators joining the liberal metrocentric crowd in Denver.

  • Democrats Can’t Help Wanting to Ban Guns. It’s What They Do.

    Tuesday, December 18th, 2012

    Like a foolish dog returning to eat its own sick, liberals can’t stay away from expressing their long pent-up desire to disarm law-abiding Americans. Their central governing principle is to give more money and power to the federal government (or the UN, when they can get away with it), and independent gun owners stand in their way. The Sandy Hook shooting victims weren’t even in the ground before Democratic lawmakers were calling on Obama to “exploit” (their words) the tragedy to push for more gun control.

    Liberals seem to regard guns like Sauron’s One Ring: as an evil object of magical power that automatically warps and corrupts the user. Frequently, they also seem to see people disagreeing with them as a sign of mental illness. (Check Twitter for how many call 2nd Amendment activists “sick” or “insane.”) I suspect that makes it harder for them to recognize real mental illness. And when they say they want a “dialog” over guns, what they really mean is “Shut up and hand over your guns and I’ll temporarily stop calling you deranged, bloodthirsty killers.”

    When the plan to deter gun use by the criminal and insane starts out “Step 1: Disarm the Sane and Law-Abiding,” I think I see a flaw in their brilliant scheme. It’s as if there were a rash of food poisonings from unlicensed food carts, and the liberal solution was to ban an all food carts.

    Two years ago I said that when push comes to shove, there’s no such thing as a pro-gun Democrat, and this week West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin is the prime example, “A” rating from the NRA notwithstanding. Expect any pro-gun Democrats to either undergo a mysterious conversion to the gun-grabbing cause, or get pushed out of the party, just like nominally “pro-life Democrats” either caved (Bart Stupak and his bloc) or were pushed out (pretty much every national election over the last 20 years).

    Other Sandy Hook shooting fallout:

  • David Kopel notes that “Today, Americans are safer from violent crime, including gun homicide, than they have been at any time since the mid-1960s.” (Kopel is author of The Samurai, the Mountie, and the Cowboy, which I recommend for anyone serious about looking at both sides of the debate over gun control.)
  • Remember that the problem of random mass murder is not a new one. “Mass murder was just as common during the 1920s and 30s as it has been since the mid-1960s.”
  • It’s hard to tell from the media reports, but the .223 Bushmaster reportedly used by shooter Adam Lanza does not appear to have any of the cosmetic features covered by the Clinton-era “assault weapons” ban (i.e., any two of a folding stock, pistol grip, bayonet mount, barrel shroud or flash suppressor). Therefore it’s not an “assault weapon.” (The liberal definition of an “assault weapon” is “any gun that looks scary.”)
  • And the result of the Clinton “assault weapon” ban? As per Clayton E. Cramer, “he policy has been tried and found wanting.”
  • Every single recent mass killing save one has taken place in a “gun free” zone.
  • John Lott, author of the essential More Guns, Less Crime, says that we should arm teachers and ban “gun free zones.”
  • Notice how the repeated failure of gun control is always used as the justification for more gun control? Which is pretty much liberal policy on every issue (welfare spending, regulation, etc.) in a nutshell.
  • The record of gun control in reducing crime in other countries is also generally one of failure as well.
  • Here in Austin, the owner of Thai Noodle House (probably the worst Thai restaurant in town) declared that “I don’t care if a bunch of white kids got killed.” Strangely enough this did not win him many friends, and the restaurant is currently closed.
  • For still another view of the problem, read “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother,” probably the most passed-around article in the blogsphere and Twitter this week.