“Yet, amid the drumbeat of bloody news, well-meaning, fearful individuals take the seemingly rational decision to arm themselves. Almost all plan to be prudent with their guns. That, alas, is what everyone thinks.” – God, good guys and guns; An understandable impulse to self-defence is nevertheless mistaken [via economist.com]
I suspect I am much better prepared with a firearm than this bozo will ever be with “journalism” – enough military service, including the 25th Infantry Div. will do that. Whereas journo school = not so much.
At first they came for the journalists….
and I gleefully ate popcorn as they were taken away! We all lived happily ever after. The end.
Liars all. Good riddance.
The vast majority of them are prudent if you look at accidental death statistics.
Almost all plan to be prudent with their guns. That, alas, is what everyone thinks…and most of them do. More than I can say for liberal so called journalists. I really do think Ayn Rand had these critters pegged with the Toohey character in Atlas Shrugged. They are worthless spiritual Communist parasites.
He’s wrong about attempts to correct a problem creating a worse problem. Unless you mean like, food labels and pyramid give you fat kids, (D)’s aren’t evil POS’
Actually, the food pyramid HAS created fat kids. There is zero scientific support for using grains as the basis of human nutrituon.
Thanks to the food pyramid, we have a much more severe obesity epidemic, and people with heart disease in their 20s.
We also have a population around 100 times larger than pre grain cultivation…… Starving to death as a child, does reduce ones chance of being part of the obesity statistic, it would seem.
(D)’s aren’t evil POS’. Government has the anit-Midas touch where everything turns to crap.
“It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.”
— P.J. O’Rourke…Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government
It’s called the Fecal Touch, Tom
It is a given, those under the beneficent management of the state, managed by the public masters and their anointed, blessed and badged enforcers; are incapable of acting as mature and responsible adults.
To imagine that a simple civilian, without the highly specialized and professional training that only the state does provide, could effectively and safely use an incredibly powerful weapon like a pistol, let alone an engine of mass death like an assault weapon, is delusional at best, insane at worst.
No, the common ownership of these types of public health danger instruments of mass death rightly should only be in the hands of those capable of using them wisely. That is the government and their designated agents of enforcement.
If a moderately powerful semiautomatic rifle qualifies as an “engine of mass death”, then does my Ford F250 qualify as a weapon of destruction, like a nuke? 🙂
Only if it’s a dually with a diesel.
Absolutely! It is the full sized pick-ups that are causing the destruction of our planet through global warming, just the opposite of nuclear winter.
At least, according to the eco- freaks.
Plus they are integrally suppressed.
And electrical powerplants. We are fortunate that Obumer has a pen and is going to illegally solve the “problem”.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20150802/us-obama-power-plants-c4787dfcb7.html
Obama’s in the dark most of the time. Everyone else should be also.
This type of thinking is the norm for those in positions of power. But the bizarre aspect is that the “civilians” agree with this type of thinking.
Dude…you made me spit up my joe. You owe.
“Daniel Webster of the Johns Hopkins Centre for Gun and Policy Research says that, other factors being equal, keeping a gun at home is associated with a double or triple risk of homicide.” If you are at a greater risk, aren’t defensive measures appropriate?
Exactly. Chicken or the egg argument.
Assuming those stats are correct, and I’m sure they are, you have to look past the “gun in home brings death to family”-spin. If you can afford a gun (which are obviously pricey), then you have probably have lots of other stuff; big TVs, clothes, cars, family, furniture, electronics, toys, etc. These represent value to a burglar or home invader, and a gun becomes the deterrent to that crime. The presence of that gun is included in the statistics, which can be interpreted as being the cause rather than the effect.
Like the Normandy invasion brought Allied casualties up a hundredfold – oh the horrors!
Should just sit on our hands and send another stern letter, while Gypsies, Jews, Poles and Slavs continue to march into the gas chambers.
Some people seem to be obsessed with achieving “peace in our time.”
The statistics, although they do not mention the fact, include suicides in the “home death” category, which is kind of a “duh.” If one is going to do him/herself in, the home is the usual place this is accomplished. And as you probably know, 2/3 of deaths in which a firearm was used are suicides. Therefore, one can infer that nearly two out of three “gun” deaths occur in the home when suicides are included. Now if they only counted deaths caused during the commission of a felony, I think the numbers would be significantly different. The real public health issues are not guns, but suicide and violent crime.
A family that feels the need to buy a gun is more likely in a position where the gun might be needed. Low income, bad neighbourhood, whatever. Buying the gun doesn’t put them in more danger, they were in danger so they bought a gun.
All these studies include high risk populations, i.e. Juwon the gangbanger. if this claim were valid then murders would be uniformly distributed across the entire population. However, murders are concentrated in small geographic areas were Juwon lives. That is why DC looks like Kabul and across the river a few short miles away looks like Toronto despite the abundance of all sorts of weaponry. When one of your gun grabbing associates brings this up be sure to ask them why “gun violence” is concentrated in a few areas.
Remember Bloomberg paid for most of these studies.
Everybody knows those guns just jump right up and commit mass murder all on their own once you bring one into your house!
I have a computer and his name is HAL and it is his job to watch my guns. HAL is very trustworthy and he takes pictures any time there is movement around my gun safe and he emails them to me. Hal never sleeps and he never gets bored, but I do not trust him with my life support system.
Why no rebuttal on this post, they are quoting an fbi study I haven’t seen mentioned or rebutted before.
You are being facetious about not having heard mention of that FBI study? I may be a bit slow this morning.
“This impulse to self-defence in kind is natural—but mistaken.”
No mistake about defense. A child will raise their arm to defend when attacked. Any words against that fact is without merit and belies everyone’s right to lawful self defense.
From the article:
“A recent FBI study of 160 public mass murders (committed or attempted) with guns between 2000 and 2013 found most ended when the assailants fled or killed themselves.”
They fled or committed suicide because they were confronted with force. They did not end their murder sprees by choice. That is the common thread in these cases.
“The Violence Policy Centre, an advocacy group, points out that Americans who legally carry concealed weapons are far more likely to perpetrate mass shootings than prevent them; it counts 29 such events since 2007.”
Bull. We might possibly have had 29 mass shootings since 2007. There is no way they were all done by concealed weapons card holders.
“Daniel Webster of the Johns Hopkins Centre for Gun and Policy Research says that, other factors being equal, keeping a gun at home is associated with a double or triple risk of homicide.”
He got that figure by lumping hardened criminals in with law abiding people.
Also notice how the writer never identifies the Violence Policy Center or the John Hopkins Center for Gun and Policy Research as gun control advocates?
I doubt even a single mass shooting was committed by a concealed carry licensee.
The thing about these “mass shootings”, is that they not only include, but are predominantly gang/drug-related. These are basically urban outlaws kill, rape and pillage on a daily basis, for fun and profit. They’re already breaking a dozen laws daily, so no further criminalization of activity, especially activity that only applies to regular law abiding people, is going to make a difference.
They lump the crazy, media splashy, big spree shooting events in with the regular everyday gangland violence. That doesn’t merely pad the numbers. It completely upends the reality of what’s going on out there. Furthermore, it misleads readers into supporting a solution that doesn’t even address the stated problem.
And why would educated, experienced journalists with ready access to abundant data publish such drivel? Because their real goal is civilian disarmament and not criminal control.
Can people please, for the love of all that is good and holy, read the freaking intro to that study? Specifically, the part where it says explicitly that it is not a study of mass murders .
It is a study of active shooter events, not mass shootings.
Sure, right after you put down what I can only surmise must be your second or third triple shot espresso, and start breathing into a paper bag until you’ve calmed down.
The Economist was a respected financial and news entity a decade ago.
It went euro-socialist-left in the opinion secion, slowly but surely and is not now a trusted nor respected news outlet, by those who know best.
This is clearly just another example of embedded journolista/paid propaganda, probably at the direction of Bloomberg, an major advertiser and data provider to the Economist.
Yep. Used to have a subscription with them until about a decade ago. Used to read them occasionally at the Library or off the magazine rack after that. When they publicly supported Obama for his second term (while at the same time admitting he was a bit of a disappointment), I stopped reading them.
Thank you, I now understand I’m to stupid to form a rational thought. It’s just good to know people who know better than me are willing to look after my rights for me. Puke.
There are over 100 million gun owners in the USA. Why is it that people cannot do the simple math and divide the approximate 10 thousand killed each year with firearms (not counting suicides who would just find another way) by 100 million? And that is playing a little game giving the antis the edge, that each person killed is killed by a different gun/shooter, when we all know that isn’t true. The rate is .0001, or .01%. In other words, more than 99.99% of guns don’t kill anyone, and that even accounts for all those in the hands of the gangbangers, etc. I hate leftist propaganda, but I hate the dummies who believe it even more.
Britian/England stopped being a serious player on the international stage in 1945. Why would any American want to know anything one of their premier rags has to say?
Studying the history of WW2, and noting that the people of the Empire voted-in a socialist government before the war ended, the conclusion can only be that had the war not ended in Europe in May ’45, the British government would have made a serious attempt to end involvement in the allied effort. The people of England apparently were tired of “blood, sweat and tears” and wanted more government programs offering free benefits. Such programs would have required all the money being spent on the war, meaning the people would not get what they wanted, or the government would need to stop funding their military.
The Economist looks at the world through glasses with two smudged images. On the one hand, they remember Empire, and boast their observations based on some sort of twisted notion that because they were so important for so long, the British have some sort of legacy validity to comment on the conditions of other nations. On the other hand, they observe the world through the knowledge that they are a tiny little island relegated to the status they deserve….and they pretend the rest of the world is denying reality. Reminds me of a comment attributed to Churchill regarding his political rival Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin, “Occasionally he stumbled over the truth, but hastily picked himself up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.” England/Britain is like that.
The Economist is a dead horse that hasn’t hit the ground yet.
That magazine used to be highbrow business reading back in the 80’s and early 90’s, and then the Internet happened. Since then, The Economist hasn’t had a salient thought on economics, business, innovation or world geopolitics since about 1995. Their style of writing is stale, antiseptic and the intellectual equivalent of Kraft processed cheese slices.
Today, I think the only people who still read their nonsense are MBA students and middle managers stuck in dead-end jobs, and both groups are trying to look more sophisticated than they really are.
I will NOT stand for anyone besmirching Kraft Processed American Cheese Food Product by comparing it to the Economist!
On “The Economist” at Insty.
+1. Dys said it better, than I did later, above. In a previous life I did a lot of traveling and work in the investment business, at C-suite and institutional investment advisor level, and the change in the Economist is well understood by those who need to know the facts at that level. Its generally dismissed as useless euro-twaddle now.
“euro-twaddle” – I’m stealing that. Great description.
Mr. Anonymous Economist Writer, what you’ve just wrote is one of the most insanely idiotic things I’ve ever read. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone on the web is now dumber for having read it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.
I like that little sketchy connection they make between the recent Charleston shooting and arson at black churches, particularly those in the 1990s.
Like most of you, I was around in 1990s and I remember the spate of arson at black churches at the time. I remember the Jackwagon-in-Chief getting on T.V. talking about his memories of the same back in Arkansas when he was growing up during segregation. (Of course, no such arson events took place at that time and place, so that was just more lying out of him, but I digress.)
What “The Economist” won’t tell you, is that those arsons at black churches in the 1990s were not racially motivated. They were just plain old vandalism, taken to the extreme, and committed by black youths.
Man, I remember a time when I really revered “The Economist” as the best publication in the world. This was decades ago, of course, but still, was I really ever that young and naive?
And shit like this is why I ended my subscription to the Economist. When it comes to things like the economy and business, they have great articles. However, they have a few pet issues (mainly, gun control and government run healthcare) where they just will not let facts stand in the way of their feelings.
It only seems that way, because you are in a better position to judge quality wrt gun control and government run healthcare, than wrt to “the economy and business.”
I have a bachelors in Economics and a masters in Applied Economics. Whoops.
Your ardvark is superior. You has de win!
ever notice there are numerous “schools” of economics, but only one school of physics?
Yes and no, lasttoknow. Strictly speaking, economics is a social science, not a natural science. So the rules by which is operates are not exactly immutable as those of the universe are. That said, they are still driven by human nature, which has some very durable and predictable qualities of its own.
Economics in a broad sense can be divided into positive and normative economics. Positive economics is the meat of the discipline, the rigorous scientific part. That’s where you get the graphs, equations, theories, principles, and complex econometric models. In these aspects of economics, there is disagreement, but not as much as one might conclude by the existence of different schools of economic thought. (Note: “positive economics” is just the term this concept goes by, it does not mean “positive” in the sense of conveying any moral judgment as in “positive” meaning “good.”
Normative economics is more policy and preference oriented. In this aspect of economics, there are innumerable and varied positions, deeply held and hotly debated, spanning everything from laissez faire pure free marketeers to stone cold communists. Somewhere in there are so-called “mainstream economists”, as well as others regarded as serious schools of economics thought.
So, yes, there are multiple schools of economic thought, but more so in terms of what policies to pursue, rather than varying understandings of what impact those policies would have. For example, lowering capital gains tax rates results in greater investment, expanded employment, and paradoxically, increased tax revenue to the government. That vast majority of economists will agree on this, from a positive economics standpoint.
From a normative economics standpoint, you’ll have liberal economists say they completely agree with what I just wrote are the consequences of lowering capital gains tax rates; but because of “fairness”, they’d rather not lower rates, but increase them. There are liberal economists out there who will argue that it’s better to have less tax revenue, less business investment, and even less employment, if it means that that greedy SOB rich guys don’t get away with lower tax rates. It’s absurd.
And don’t think that physics is oh so immune from this phenomenon, too. You may have 100% of nuclear physicists agree on the principles and mechanics associated with splitting an atom (let’s call that positive physics). However, you may well get arguments from all of them as to whether and when to build and employ nuclear weapons, or whether whether and where to build and operate a nuclear power plant. Let’s call that normative physics.
In either disciplines case, the underlying science isn’t in question, but the application of it is.
neat reading.
btw, are you actually dr. kent “foul-mouth” ferguson, professor of economics at a minor texas university? reason i asked is your response sounds exactly like his first lecture when i was a freshman. i dropped econ (and a business major because of the apparent chaos of economic theories). instead, i took up political “science”, where i knew everything was BS and i wouldn’t have to work hard to sort out the BS because it was/is all BS.
thanx for the compact macro view of econ as a line of inquiry.
cheers,
And you STILL think the Economist are even close, when opining about issues in those fields????
You sure you’ve read any copy since the Reagan Era? Even the NYT were a pretty good source for Business and Economics back when Hazlit was there. Nowadays, the two differ mainly wrt whether they view NY or London as the capital of our collective dystopia.
i never actually got beyond, “This impulse to self-defence in kind is natural—but mistaken.”
yo, america to england: we won’t be there a third time !!!!
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