Dale Hansen over at HuffPo is using his bully pulpit (okay, with 798 likes and 18 shares, maybe that’s being charitable) to lambaste Vince Vaughn (whose recent pro-gun comments to GQ UK have stirred up a minor firestorm) and the various members of FoxNews’s The Five. In the process Dale manages to display either abject ignorance and credulity or an unusual willingness to lie through his teeth when it supports the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex agenda. Here’s the quote Dale’s knickers are so bunched over . . .
I support people having a gun in public, full stop, not just in your home. We don’t have the right to bear arms because of burglars; we have the right to bear arms to resist the supreme power of a corrupt and abusive government.
It’s not about duck hunting; it’s about the ability of the individual. It’s the same reason we have freedom of speech. … All these gun shootings that have gone down in America since 1950, only one, or maybe two have happened in non-gun-free zones.
The Five’s Greg Gutfeld supported Vaughn’s statements in the face of much media displeasure, calling the outcry “fact free,” a statement with which Dale disagrees:
Of course the bigger problem here is that Gutfeld is convinced that his version of reality represents facts. Is it true that since 1950 only one or two mass shootings have occurred in non-gun-free zones? The shootings at Fort Hood and the Washington Naval Base[sic] are two recent mass shootings which clearly don’t fit the “gun-free” profile.
Unfortunately Dale’s answer to his presumably rhetorical question is flat out wrong; like many who never served, Dale is unaware of the fact that guns are pretty much banned on all military bases. For the six years I was stationed at Norfolk Naval Base, the only people who were allowed to carry on base were the gate guards and base police. So yeah, Dale, Fort Hood and Washington Navy Yard actually were and remain “gun-free” zones.
Since Dale’s two examples are wrong, let me answer his question: Yes, it is true that according to information from Dr. John Lott, from 1950 to April 2014 only two mass casualty shootings have occurred in non-gun-free zones. One was the 2011 Tucson spree which killed six and wounded 13 others (including the apparent target, Representative Gabby Giffords). The other was also in 2011, at the Carson City, Nevada IHOP where the shooter killed four and wounded seven before eating his own gun.
The reality is that even Gutfeld is only able to find less than a handful of mass murders where the perpetrator took the gun-free status into account.
This is probably because it’s hard to divine the motives of mass-murdering nutbags, especially if they off themselves. But let us not get distracted by this particular red herring; it really doesn’t matter if these shooters deliberately and knowingly chose a gun-free zone to wreak their twisted revenge on whomever. The point is that for whatever reason, more than 95% of mass shootings have taken place in so-called gun-free zones.
Dale continues:
Not to be outdone, Gutfeld’s colleague Eric Bolling adds his own misinformation to the mix when he stated: “You want facts, here are the facts. Since 1993 gun ownership has gone up by 50 percent. In that same period of time the murder rate has gone down by 50 percent”. The only problem with this “fact” is that it suggests this correlation represents causation.
Actually Dale, it is typically the antis who suggest that correlation equals causation. Look at the New York Times piece, “More Guns = More Killing,” or the “study” out of the New York University School of Medicine, More Guns Equal More Deaths, Study Finds, or the following table from our friends Miller, Azrael and Hemenway of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center (with more correlation = causation claims here):
What I gather from Bolling’s statement is the exact reverse of what Dale thinks; Eric is pointing out that the antis are wrong when they try to argue that more guns inevitably lead to more murders.
If Bolling thinks that things are getting better, he might also want to point out that in 1977 over 50% of households owned a gun while in 2014 that number had fallen to 31 percent. Perhaps the causation here is that there are less murders now because less people have access to guns.
Nice bait-and-switch there, Dale. Bolling was talking about gun ownership and you flipped it around to households with guns. And Dale bases his argument on the GSS; you know the Federal government’s General Social Survey? Yeah, I’m sure that most people have no problem telling the government how many guns they have, right? All sarcasm aside, however, according to CNN (based on the CNN/ORC Poll of 04/05/13 – 04/07/13 available here):
At the start of the year, 53% of Americans in a household with a gun said that they thought the government was trying to take away their rights; now [04/10/2013] that number has grown to 62% of all gun households.
And if we look at the number of respondents to that question (477) divided by the total number of respondents (1,012) that gives us a rough number of households with guns: 44.2%.
Another poll question (which I couldn’t find coverage of) gives more insight into just how much trust people put in government (this question was posed to all 1,012 respondents, not just gun-owners):
If the federal government does create a national list of people who own guns, do you think the government would use that information to take guns away from people who own them?
Date Yes No Unsure
4/5-7/13 66% 32% 2%
Bolling’s numbers do stand up, however, if we look at the number of guns rather than the number of households with guns. According to The Christian Science Monitor (not exactly a right-wing mouthpiece) “[p]er capita ownership of firearms in the US has doubled since 1968.” According to the Congressional Research Service, in 2009 estimated 310 million privately owned guns in the US. Going to the FBI’s NICS data table we find 101,455,876 NICS checks from 01/2010 through 05/2015. Assuming that 60% of these were sales of new firearms (based on comparing NICS checks with the ATF’s production, export and import data for 2009 – 2012 (the most recent year for production numbers)), that gives us about 60,900,000 additional privately owned guns for a rough total of 371 million privately owned firearms in the US. This gives us 4 ½ year increase of about 19.7% so an increase of 50% over the 12 years from 1993 to 2015 is not at all unreasonable. See Dale? You just need to look at facts.
As for the reduction in homicide rates, according to the CDC the overall (age-adjusted) homicide rate in 1993 was 9.51 per 100,000 with gun-related homicides at 6.75 per 100,000. In 2013 (the latest data the CDC has available) the overall homicide rate was 5.16 with gun-related homicides contributing 3.61 per 100,000. So yeah, I’d call a 46% drop in the overall rate and a 47% drop in the firearm rate close enough to 50% for talking head purposes.
Dale offers some more generalizations and heaps scorn on The Five’s approval of New York City’s recently halted “stop-and-frisk” program (that’s okay, I scorn it too) before finishing up with:
The good news is there is a compromise available. The word “arms” in the constitution has not been specifically defined, which means it is open to interpretation. Instead of trying to outlaw guns, gun control advocates should simply outlaw the manufacture and sale of bullets. The second amendment would remain intact while gun deaths would fall dramatically.
Actually Dale, SCOTUS did a pretty good job defining “arms” in the Heller case:
The 18th-century meaning is no different from the meaning today. The 1773 edition of Samuel Johnson’s dictionary defined “arms” as “[w]eapons of offence, or armour of defence.” … Timothy Cunningham’s important 1771 legal dictionary defined “arms” as “any thing that a man wears for his defence, or takes into his hands, or useth in wrath to cast at or strike another.” …
The term was applied, then as now, to weapons that were not specifically designed for military use and were not employed in a military capacity. …
But setting all that aside, I would like to remind Dale that antagonizing a large portion of the population by passing laws which significantly impinge on the natural, fundamental, and inalienable human, individual, civil and Constitutional right to own and carry the weapon of your choice will assuredly do nothing to reduce “gun deaths.”
Be careful what you wish for. Just sayin’.
Dale…. you are an idiot. Please don’t phone home.
So you’re critical of Gutfeld & Co why? I don’t expect perfection or orthodoxy from them. I expect idiocy from HuffPOO…
Before thinking we need more gun control think of the outcome where only the criminals have the guns and the control.
Y’know, I saw a movie that only too perfectly depicted such a world.
I was called Schindler’s List.
They deliberately left out one of the most important bits of that history: Schindler armed his Jews, because getting them free with no means to defend themselves would have been the height of stupidity.
If you look up “millennial douchenozzle” on Urban Dictionary, that’s the picture that comes up.
Can we get this guys work email address posted up here. I would like to write him a calmly worded letter explaining why he’s very very wrong.
Doubt he will read much of it. Stuck in his own reality IMO. Would not waste my time if I was you.
Here you go Montana: [email protected]
[email protected]
More excellence from Mr. Krafft. Well done.
To answer the title: Pierce Morgan for 1.
The definition of “household” has changed since the 1970s. There are now more households per 100,000 population (single moms and single dads) than there were back then which accounts for a great deal of the “drop” in household gun ownership.
“The term was applied, then as now, to weapons that were not specifically designed for military use and were not employed in a military capacity. …”
wat?
Meaning it was not just limited to merely military weapons: clubs, daggers, etc. were included in “arms”.
No. Hansen was actually trying to say that the 2nd Ammendment does not cover military arms, and that it never has. If he dared crack a history book, he might see that is incorrect, so I’m a little surprised that Krafft did not touch upon this.
In the 60s the weakbrain dudes who wanted to get laid joined the hippy chicks protesting any/everything but in particular the draft/Vietnam. Today the same type of dimwits that want to get laid by chubby tattooed gals join them in protesting: gender, carbon, work, and guns. Ignore them, either they figure out they are idiots/outgrow it or like their babyboomer predecessors they spend a lifetime as full on progtards and run govt and “education”.
So we just need to win over the chubby tattooed gals, and game over!
You mean the fascist tyranny you right-wing terrorists do to us civilized americans and the civilized world on your outdated 19th century beliefs that more guns equals less crime.
Criminals would have guns if you didn’t..
The fascist belief of forcing every tom, dick and harry against their wills into possessing weapons they and the civilized world don’t ever want that are instead put into the hands of criminals causing even more innocent people to suffer and the tyrannical fascist NRA organization and the vile arms companies profiting off the blood of innocents all in the name of “Feedum fur murica!”
The same fascist beliefs you penis compensating gestapo use in promoting backwards outdated pseudo-science beliefs that were heavily debunked by actual scientific organizations here and abroad along with international police agencies even pointing out more guns in the hands of innocents would cause more crime.
They fact this great country has to suffer at the hands of you actualy savages freaks?, Who is going to protect us from you?
did you forget your meds? nothing you spewed has any grounding in reality.
Don’t know…Did you take too many swigs of moonshine ya fascist redneck?
Gotta love how you gun-nuts attack, threaten and try to detract those who want to pass and support actual sensible laws that would reduce gun crime, put more scrutiny on gun-dealers, improve our mental health care system and prevent massacres like the tragedy in south carolina that you murderers caused.
Gotta love that gun-nut terrorist hypocrisy and all your doing is proving me right that you and the rest of the gun-nuts on this site our nothing but terrorists who support your tyrannical fascist NRA and your gun lobby masters into turning this country into some nightmarish darwinian.
Face it gun-nuts, I don’t like you and not amount of your backwards “logic” has not convinced me or any of us “liberal progressive trolls” you attack, Intelligent americans don’t like you, The civilized world treats like the villainous scorn you are, Your “more guns/less crime” studies were debunked time and again from various sources and you idiots have no given me one study that has proved other wise.
You gun-nuts are nothing but extremists with an agenda.
Your not really free if your allowed to own an instrument of death without a license or proper training and permits.
So, Tubesteak. Do you get paid by the word or by the comment from MDA?
JWM, he’s getting of with himself.
It wouldn’t surprise me if he was masturbating while he wrote that…
*Snicker*
You, sir, are what the gals I know who have been sexually attacked refer to accurately as “pro-rape”. It’s quite simple: out of the handful of them, only one didn’t actually get raped. Why? Because she was the one with a gun. She let him tear at her clothes while she got her anti-crime tool, and then rather than him piercing her, she punctured him: end of incident, and end of the danger of him ever raping anyone again.
Nature itself teaches that those with no means of defense are prey. Why you long for your fellow humans to be prey, to be raped and assaulted, is a mystery — although Freud explained that the fear of arms was a sign of cowardice, which seems to cover just about all the arguments advanced against others being armed.
If you want to be prey, that’s your choice. But for you to insist that women and men as well walk around as prey just because you find certain inanimate objects frightening is vile.
Willy (or is that Hillary), let me get this:
Evil NRA forcing everyone to buy guns so they can dress like fascists and shoot up schools. Guess I missed that part of the training but you have to admit those SS uniforms look sharp.
The only reason moonshine was “bad” is the government didn’t get to tax it. Losing tax revenue really pisses off the feral government. You obviously haven’t tried it.
When legally armed citizens defend themselves that actually makes crime worse, who’d have thunk it! And everyone with a gun just shoots themselves or a family member anyway, so you would think we would be as extinct as dinosaurs by now.
Let’s drop you and me in a remote area. I get a gun and ammunition and you get a cell phone. Of course, there’s no cell reception way out in the redneck boonies. Who do you think is going to eat?
All right, now I know you’re taking the piss.
Willy, willy, Willy. I was chuckling as I saw a picture of you spewing out all this vomitus, without taking a breath, red faced, spittle flying, pounding a table until you passed out from lack of oxygen because you forgot to breath.
Now, take a deep breath. It will be OK. For the freedom loving. For those like yourself, frightened at the idea of a free people , as mature adults, taking responsibility for their own self-defense by carrying weapons, not so much.
Poor willy let me guess, your girlfriend is banging someone who isn’t afraid on an inanimate object. Thanks for the laugh.
Wow, not to hard to see who’s been drinking the Kool-Aid after that post.
Try this on for size. I spent a considerable number of years in the military and saw more than enough situations involving people who were left to the mercy of governments or worse. They did not have the means to fight their oppressors and as a result, they suffered greatly. Consider the inherent flaw in the argument you are making. The very thing you are against (common people being armed to resist oppression ) is exactly what Obbummer and co have been making happen in Syria, Libya, and other locations.
You use all the buzz insults, and all the talking points but, the reality is you are just the type of zealot that makes me even more determined to never see this country in the position of being subject to the whims of the mentally unbalanced.
IOW, if you really feel so strongly about all of this, why don’t you step up to the plate and be one of the asshats that tries to confiscate the guns. I doubt you have the intestinal fortitude but…….nah, no buts. I hit the nail on head.
Wow, Lunchmeat. You really don’t know the meaning of the word Fascist, do you? Fascism takes away your guns and uses the guns (along with clubs or whatever else they can find) of their lackeys to control people. Just the opposite of your theory. At least I think that is what you are saying. Pretty difficult to figure out exactly what you are saying. You may want to study history and also work on your literary skills so others can understand what the heck you are saying. Or, maybe lay off the drugs before you type something.
Willy’s incoherence might be a glimpse of the “thinking” of a murderer/mass shooter. Incorrectly viewing the NRA as a participant in fascism, when it is the pharmaceutical industry along with the AMA and insurance lobbies that are colluding with gov’t to suppress and extort, reveals his confusion.
http://www.ammoland.com/2013/04/every-mass-shooting-in-the-last-20-years-shares-psychotropic-drugs/
This is that dinosaur clown again.
I doubt it, he wasn’t really a troll, he was fanatical in his hatred of the state and those that serve it, also he could write coherently unlike willy here
Guys, don’t feed the troll.
The whole anti gun narrative ends with one question. Is its legal to deny lawful self defense? If the answer is yes then government is complicit in murder, rape, robbery and assault. If the answer is no, then anyone can use any means to protect themselves.
Someone is talking when they should be listening, and learning. Hello Dale.
Vince Vaughn is the man.
Was Texas University a gun free zone in 1966?
Yes. The law in effect in 1966, VATS art. 485, made it a crime to carry a firearm into a schoolroom or any other place where people are assembled for educational or scientific purposes. The same law applied to churches, any religious assembly, ballrooms, circuses, shows or public exhibitions of any kind, polling places, social gatherings, or “any other place where people may be assembled to muster to perform any other public duties.” Unconstitutionally vague? Probably, but that’s what it says.
Oh, and I forgive you for calling the University of Texas “Texas University.”
Little t little u would be the correct way of spelling that. Otherwise I saw nothing wrong with the name. Haha
Well, when I saw the headline I thought it was Dale Hansen, the terminally politically-correct sportscaster from WFAA in Dallas, and that he had finally gone full retard. But I see it is a different Dale Hansen, just with the same one-cell mental capacity.
6 Years at Norfolk… Ouch…. 🙂
Back in the early 90’s there wasn’t much fun to be had at “NoF*ck”, don’t know about these days.. Bruce is right of course, no guns are allowed on base.
GREAT post, I sure like hearing Gutfeld’s take (on a multitude of matters).
Thank you Bruce… Carry on Sailor!!!
1993 to 2015 = 22 years, not 12
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