http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-U9l2sqYoA

Forrest Gump was right. Case in point: James Hayes of Ambridge, Pennsylvania. We all know you shouldn’t bring a knife to a gun fight. Now we need to add don’t bring a BB pistol either, which is what Hayes used to try robbing a convenience store. The only problem is that the clerk had a real gun and didn’t hesitate to pull it. The surveillance video showing the ensuing scuffle (above) is actually kind of funny to watch; too bad it doesn’t have sound, too. Interim Police Chief James Mann said Hayes “is one of the world’s dumbest, and luckiest to be alive, criminals.” (h/t to RichG)
Elsewhere in Stupidville…

No discussion of stupid behavior would be complete without some mention of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. His latest cause célèbre is “stand your ground” laws. From up on high comes these words of enlightenment: “But one fact has long been crystal clear: ‘shoot-first’ laws like those in Florida can inspire dangerous vigilantism and protect those who act recklessly with guns… Last year, I joined a broad coalition of civic leaders to shine a light on the impact of ‘shoot-first’ laws and work to eliminate them… We will continue that work – and the tragic death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed child attempting to walk home from the store, will continue to drive our efforts.” Excuse me for a moment while I look for a barf bag.

And then there’s Jon Andrew Meyer Jr of Grants Pass, Oregon. He was sitting on the couch at a friend’s apartment. When he started to get up, he used his “assault rifle” as a crutch to help him get up. Somehow in the process he fired a burst through the ceiling and killed a five-year-old girl in the apartment above. Meyer said he’d been “assured the gun was not fully automatic.” He’s being held on $250K bail on charges of manslaughter, assualt and “unlawful possession of a machine gun.” Oh, and a bonus stupid award for whoever chose the photo to illustrate the article in the NY Daily News.

Stupid knows no age boundries.  The Detroit Free Press reports “an 87-year-old Highland Township man who uses a wheelchair was jailed on a felony charge after police say he pulled two handguns in succession and fired a shot at his [73-year-old] wife.” They were having an argument over some checks the old guy had signed and put in the mail, and she went out to the mailbox to retrieve them. When she got back in he was pointing a pistol at her. She managed to get it away from him and he pulled another one from somewhere and shot at her. He missed and is now cooling his heels in the county lockup. It was probably the first thing he’d been able to shoot at her in years.

Hopefully pro boxer and three-time champion Adrien Broner is shooting off his mouth and nothing else. He recently stupidly tweeted “I’m bout to play Russian roulette with a fully loaded pistol maybe all my problems will go away!!! I don’t care bout being dead or in jail!!!” Someone needs to take this idiot to a morgue somewhere and show him what happens when bullets meet heads and that impress upon him that irresponsible behavior like he’s showing could lead some kid to trying what he’s talking about. Then they need to ban him from sports until he can act like an adult. Of course, if that was a criterion for being in pro sports, two-thirds of pro athletes would be out of a job.

Leave it to someone in California to figure out a new way to harass gun dealers. The San Marcos City Council has voted to require criminal background checks for all employees at the three firearms dealers in the city. They’re giving the dealers a one-year grace period to comply. They claim that all this additional red tape will somehow help limit illegal gun sales. So when are they going to start requiring criminal background checks (and let’s add mental health certifications to that, too) before someone can run for public office? Oh… that’s what I thought. Never mind.

OK. It’s been confirmed: the MSM has the attention span of a 3-month-old lab puppy. The WaPo analyzed the number of gun-control-related stories since Sandy Hook and discovered “media coverage in the wake of major shootings tends to follow what’s known as the ‘issue attention cycle’… despite a photo-op of… former congresswoman [Giffords] firing a pistol at a Las Vegas range – about as close as you can get to journalistic catnip – there is no evidence that it regenerated the media’s interest.” There may be a slight uptick on the number of stories following the Zimmerman verdict but “once the Senate gun control bill died in April, so did the story.” And for that we’re thankful.

And finally, something you’ll never see on MSNBC or Piers Morgan: “The ten states given the highest ratings by the Brady Campaign for having the most stringent gun control legislation have about triple the amount of gun deaths compared to the ten states that have the least restrictive gun legislation.” Examiner.com used data compiled by Slate on gun deaths since Sandy Hook and compared them to the Brady Bunch’s ratings for states having the most stringent gun control legislation. They discovered “the top ten states with the most restrictive gun laws had 2,002 gun deaths, versus the ten states with the least restrictive gun laws, which totaled 696 gun deaths.” I wonder what Mothers Demand Action and other civilian disarmament groups would have to say about that?

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

62 COMMENTS

  1. I have to cry foul on the final story. What is the rate per 100k? You should know better than to quote raw numbers.

    And the video. The fat guy with bb gun is a pussy.

    • Also, if the guy “fired a burst”, I’d say that definitely is an assault rifle, no quotes needed. What a tragedy, that guy need to be in jail for a long time.

    • Yeah, from what I’ve seen, the “gun death” rate in the most restrictive and least restrictive states isn’t a slamdunk for either team.

      The death rate (not total number, the number compared to population) is alarmingly high in a couple of highly pro-gun states and surprisingly low in a couple of anti-gun states, while most of them muddle around somewhere close to the national average.

      On the other hand, the 100% Brady-rated states do seem to have more than their share of hyper-violent urban cesspits… I’d be interested in seeing numbers on how the biggest cities in the Brady states compare to the cities in the 2nd Amendment states. Seems to me that’s where the rubber meets the road.

    • Exactly. Totals are useless unless population is factored in. When it is, the results are inconclusive in either direction.

  2. I wonder which convenience store that is in Ambridge. Looks like the Circle K. I’m gonna have to go there now and tell him he’s a celebrity!

  3. The perp stayed a lot longer than I thought he would.

    Case study in why you keep your firearm away from the perp.

  4. Memo to clerk:

    Good work, but go get a little training.

    Just like you don’t pick up the remote to the TV and then walk over to the TV to use it, take advantage of a firearm being a remote device. Don’t get it anywhere near the bad guy.

  5. Also a good example of someone who learned all they know about wielding a pistol from watching TV and movies. All that gangsta stuff from the clerk is a good way to be disarmed.

      • That’s his default comment when he has nothing else to say.

        In this case it could apply to the Bloomberg story, the San Marcos story, or the WaPo story, I suppose.

  7. The first story is incomplete without this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ivz4NA4zHzQ (NSFW language)

    “And the fact that you’ve got ‘Replica’ written down the side of your guns… And the fact that I’ve got ‘Desert Eagle point five-o’ written down the side of mine… Should precipitate your balls into shrinking, along with your presence. Now… Fvck off.”

      • Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels are 2 of the funniest movies ever. It sucks to be a traffic warden in England.

  8. The Examiner article from the last story points out that

    While the figures here do not account for population (obviously, densely populated areas would be much more likely to result in more violent crime), the figures do indicate that there are other trends worth exploring if the real goal is to reduce violent crime.

    I would be interested to know how it shakes out per capita. I know that it won’t be “triple” anymore, but I’m pretty sure there will still be a differential. I just wonder how much closer the numbers get when they’re adjusted for population.

    • Well it’s not that hard…pull up the list of states by Brady rank, look up the populations for the top 10 and bottom 10, then adjust accordingly.

        • This.

          But looking at the states, I don’t think it’s really a fair apples to apples comparison. The states with the most deaths were also the most populous, so I wouldn’t be running around citing how New York or Massachusetts has more total gun deaths than Alaska, North Dakota, or Montana.

        • I did the math for ya, and the news ain’t great. At best, you could claim it’s a statistical tie, since the methodology is somewhat suspect (counting anyone killed by a bullet as a “gun death” for these purposes is silly, since suicides and criminals shot by cops aren’t really what most people think of when they think of “victim of gun violence”). Worst case, adjusting by population inverts the stat, and seems to indicate that there are fewer “gun deaths” when more restrictive laws are put in place. A more illuminating statistic, to determine if these laws actually reduce crime, would be to include all violent deaths, not just those involving a small piece of fast-moving lead.

          Adjusting for population (using the state population estimates on Wikipedia), I come up with:

          Ten most restrictive states: 1.81 deaths per 100,000

          Ten least restrictive states: 2.18 deaths per 100,000

          The population figures I came up with are (in case anyone wants to check my math):

          Most restrictive: 110,678,731
          Least restrictive: 31,964,014

        • Thanks for doing the Math. There is something not quite right when you use Brady scores. Both Virginia and Florida have few restrictions on gun ownership and CCW. The combined population of both states 27 Million.

          I pose a better test. What is the murder and total violent crime rate from the FBI data base for states with shall issue CCW and restricted or no issue.

  9. While I appreciate the sound-byte quality of the last stat, it should be pretty clear to everybody that “gun deaths” is not a useful statistic when comparing NUMBERS of deaths in CA and NY vs. AK and WY. We really need to see gun deaths per X to get a useful picture.

    That said, I don’t think the prevention of criminal activity is the sole purpose of the second amendment, so I’m not sure either number would really matter a whit to me.

    EDIT: I see the post above me posted largely the same thing. My bad.

  10. that clerk may need training, but he did just kick a guy twice his body weights ass, one handed and he pistol whipped the b!tch. Beast

  11. I hope that the convenience store clerk had as much fun kicking that m0ron’s @ss as I did watching him do it.

    The story did not mention whether the cops were able to identify the would-be Clyde Barrow from the tape, the gun or the stain on his drawers.

  12. I just ran the numbers. Per capita gun murder rate vs Brady Campaign score. Higher Brady Campaign score means more restrictive gun laws. There’s very barely a positive trend (higher Brady score leads to more per capita gun murders), but the correalation is pretty weak (R^2 value of .00223). It’s probably safe to say that gun laws have no effect on criminal murder at all.

  13. Shows humans getting more retarded generation to generation. Thanks to the lame 60 idiots to start reverse evolution of the American.

  14. A shoot-don’t shoot scenario for the books. Laugh-don’t laugh?
    Gun owners as the crazed, foaming at the mouth, itchin’ ta bus’ a cap on
    someone has been given a well deserved kick to the short and curlies.
    The clerk didn’t “blow the perp’s head clean off” a la Dirty Harry. Nope.
    He assessed the situation(that the perps gun was not a threat) and acted
    with surprising restraint, considering what we just went through with the
    George Zimmerman trial.

  15. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/calif-woman-killed-boyfriend-bizarre-bb-gun-accident-article-1.1324769
    http://woodinville.patch.com/groups/police-and-fire/p/edmonds-man-killed-by-pellet-gun-shot-early-sunday-ne331b7d299a
    http://www.theledger.com/article/20130425/NEWS/304255020
    These three stories are found in the first 10 results that google gave me, and just happen to be from this year alone.

    Unless there’s blaze orange at the tip, I’d assume it’s a lethal weapon and hope I would neutralize the threat. To be honest I wouldn’t even specifically look for an orange tip, but if I happened to notice it, then so be it. As said by others, pistol-whipping the guy is a great way to get the gun turned on you, by someone who obviously has no problem killing a man.

  16. That was a great video. Marvelous self control by the clerk. I wonder if he has an interest in the store and is not just working for wages? Most people confronted by an armed robber simply give them the money. Our guy spanked the bad guy and sent him packing. Funny as hell.

  17. The first thing I noticed in the article about Bloomie is how he turns “stand your ground” into “shoot first.”

    Calling people like that “asshole” is truly an insult to the human anus.

    • He is in charge of the NYPD, so I understand why he equates self-defense with shoot first (and reload…then shoot some more…then plant a gun on the corpse).

      • Come on, that’s a little harsh.

        Everybody knows the NYPD plants marijuana on the corpses.

  18. I notice it’s always “the gun went off,” much like “the car went out of control,” rather than “the idiot fired/drove negligently.”

  19. I did the per capita math on the Brady list. There were multiple states tied for tenth “worst” gun laws (i.e. 10th best respect for individual liberty). One of them was FL, which really impacts the data, given it’s huge population. Without knowing which ten they picked, we can do the math without FL, and without ND (the least populated state tied for 10th) to establish a minimum and maximum potential value. Here’s what we get:
    Bloomberg’s 10 favorite states have a per capita rate of 18.09 deaths per million people. Ted Nugent’s 10 favorite have either 13.75 (with FL) or 21.78 (with ND) or somewhere in between if they dropped one of the other states tied for 10th.
    So the conclusion that will shock every TTAG reader: at best, gun control does nothing to prevent gun violence.

    Now that number includes murder, self defense, accidents, police shootings, etc.: any time a human dies from a gunshot. We can safely assume that gun-toting states like AZ and MT (the mountain states are disproportionately represented in the “bottom” 10) involve more self defense shootings by law-abiding citizens than the victim disarmament states like NY & NJ (the DC-Boston corridor dominates the “top” 10), because in NJ law-abiding citizens rarely own, let alone carry, guns. So if we hypothesize that a higher percentage of shootings in the “top” states are criminal, and a higher proportion in the “bottom” states are defensive, we can intuit that (brace yourselves for another shocker) the number of per capita criminal shootings in the gun control states is much worse than in gun liberty states.

    But of course, like any government program: the war on poverty, the war on drugs, the war on terrorism, the bailouts, the stimulus… This failure doesn’t prove that the policy is bad; the situation would likely have been much worse in those anti-gun states if they hadn’t implemented draconian, basic human rights violating gun laws. Rather it clearly shows that we need more gun control to eliminate all violence. And it wouldn’t hurt to sprinkle a bit of pixie dust on the next gun control bill.

    • The raw numbers just mentioned “gun deaths”. What we are trying to root out is “crimes with guns.” More information is needed to root out the potential results we are looking for since “gun deaths” numbers include homicides committed with a firearm, suicides, accidental deaths with a firearm, justified self defense, and police shooting. The numbers could also hide who is dying by firearms in comparison to the “strength” of gun laws per Brady Campaign, ie. are more bad guys being shot at a higher rate than innocents in comparison to the states with vastly different gun laws?

      We already know that a lot of states with the highest raw population numbers already have the most stringent gun laws, ie California and New York. So working with those raw numbers, it of course looks like they have sky rocketing gun deaths, they do, because they have a bigger pop. Not saying that gun control laws work, but we know better than to use raw numbers. The correct use of rates per XX and using the correct rate numbers is needed.

      • And here I was thinking we are trying to root out criminality. Period. Silly me for thinking I will be equally dead from stabbing, hit over head with tire iron as from being shot. Why we just don’t compare all violent crime? I mean- better access to firearms for decent folks should lower it, while still increasing number of “gun deaths”. If someone defends himself from attack with a knife and shoots the perp it will still figure in gun deaths, but not in crime number. If he does nothing and dies by knife, is everything ok, since it was not a gun that did the killing?

  22. That’s one lucky clerk. A more aggressive perp could have taken his gun away several times. Never get close enough for the perp to get his hands on you or your gun!

  23. I agree we shouldn’t go up against gun grabbers with un-adjusted data, but this date may not be that bad for real life. I don’t care about the per-100k numbers since I am still but one person regardless of which state I go to. I don’t care how many criminals kill each other or how many people kill themselves (well I do care, but it doesn’t effect my safety). I only care what the chances are of a chubby white man who isn’t involved in criminal activity and is minding his own business being shot by a total stranger. Alaska has a tragicly high suicide rate (9 times the national average for the native people I think I heard), so that’s going to throw off the numbers. And it seems logical that rural states have more gun accidents (due to just a lot of gun activities going on) and urban areas have more criminal on criminal shootings. All I really want to know is MY chance of being shot on any given day in any given area. You can bet it’s much higher in LA, Chicago, and NY. Still probably less risky than heart disease though.

  25. Wow… Watching this 1 minute and 9 second video lifted my spirits for the day. What a great video. Shop keeper holding his own to the BB gun wielding idiot. He could have shot the criminal and faced no charges whatsoever. Awesome he kept his cool and just spent his time humiliating the moron. Cops should have pulled prints from the BB gun left on the floor and arrived at his place of residence waiving the BB gun for further humiliation.

    • actually, the dude was just asking for trouble placing his weapon that close to the would be robber, and even more so allowing him to grab for his weapon. If he knew it was a BB gun, he should have just left the pistol under the counter and beat the crap out of the guy.

  26. In my comments about GZ allowing TM to get too close, I said that none of us would allow the threat to get with in fist distance but this clerk seems to be saying, “hey, I’ll put my gun in your face and let’s see if I can pull it back before you can grab it, see that, I’m too quick for you, OK, let’s try again, Oh, that was a close one, you almost got it, for this next one I’ll come around from the counter(protective barrier/cover) to make it a little easier, wow that was close, I think you can go now”.
    Was that truely an intuative response? If so, some training is required to counter that DGU methodology.

    • It kinda looks to me like the only “training” the clerk got was from the movies and TV “cop” shows.

      Kinda like “environmental scientists” who got their scientific education from Saturday matinee “B” sci-fi movies.

  27. Using the 1st google result for state by state violent crime, census data from 2006 (http://www.census.gov/statab/ranks/rank21.html#footnote2) to determine the average violent crime rate, per 100,000, in tandem with the brady campaigns rankings:

    The average violent crime rate for the ‘best’ ten states, according to brady, was 421.7 per 100,000 residents.

    The average violent crime rate for the ‘worst’ ten states, according to brady, was 352.1 per 100,000 residents.

    A 17% better chance to be the victim of a violent crime in a top ten brady state. That pretty much closes th books, using brady’s list and federal statistics. The ten best list also doesn’t include the District of Columbia, which I’m sure would get the #1 spot if it were included. If you were to make the DofC number one, and drop Pennsylvania, number 10, from the list, the average in the ‘best’ states goes up from 421.7 to 528.6 (yes, disarmed DC is really that bad). This makes living in the top ten disarmed ‘states’ 33 percent MORE dangerous (speaking on violent crime) than best ten for gun rights.

    Huzzah, fin, QED.

    • Good work. I am tired of comparing murder rates instead of total violent crime. Murder is still a rare crime.

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