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Yesterday, the dew point was 74 degreesF here in Central Florida. This morning, it is 51 degrees. Fall is here, finally.

The media has been running and re-running an article about the odds of an American being killed by “gun violence.” Business insider posted the story not once, not twice, but three times last year. This headline, along with the statistical math that supposedly supports the article, is complete tripe.

The article claims that the average American stands a 1 in 315 chance of being killed by “gun violence.” This is a misstatement of statistical analysis. In order to take the number of “gun deaths” each year and divide that into the total population of the country to arrive at a “chance of being killed by gun violence” statistic, each American in the total population must be equally likely of being the victim of one of these events. In other words, the events must occur randomly.

That cannot be the case. Each year, about 60% of all deaths involving a firearm are suicide. If you do not commit suicide, your chances of dying from “gun violence” were just cut in half. More than half of all homicides in the nation were committed in a city that has a population of greater than 100,000. Nearly ten percent of firearm homicides were legal shootings by police and private citizens employing firearms in self defense.

What all of this means is that if you are not in a gang, are not dealing drugs or otherwise involved in a criminal enterprise, not suicidal, and live in a city of less than 100,000 people, you are about one 50th as likely to be involved in a “gun death.”

The goal here is that the press want suburban moms to be afraid of guns. In order to do that, they HAVE to lie, because telly Suzie Soccermom that gang members living in inner city Chicago are dying over drug sales turf wars doesn’t generate the fear they need in order to sway her opinion.

Liberals in Florida have put a minimum wage increase to $15 an hour on the ballot. In a news article on that topic, I posted a comment:

Now the left is claiming that they can predict mass shootings based upon the social media posts of individuals- even when those posts are not considered threatening. It seems that they are matching speech patterns of people to see if they match speech patterns of mass shooters. Right now, police are arresting people for saying things like:

3 more days of probation left then I get my AR-15 back. Don’t go to Walmart next week

Which most people recognize as being a real and immediate threat. However, they are proposing that the use of phrases like: “I,” “me,” and “mine.” indicates a person who is more likely to do violence than a person who uses words like: “great,” “happy,” and “amazing.” They go on to claim that a person can be diagnosed with personality disorders or depression, based on nothing more than their social media posts. They claim that that people who become violent are more likely to use emotionally laden words like “shit,” “hate,” “you” and “they.” while being less likely to use words about the external world, such as “people,” “world,” “state” and “time.”

This is pure pseudoscience, of course. Using this hypothesis, a person would be considered unlikely to commit violence if they said something like: “The people of the world would be happier if we took time to make the state safer by executing everyone who owns weapons of war. Wouldn’t that be amazing?” While the person who replies with: “I think your idea of killing people is bullshit. I hate it. You have no right to take my guns, they are mine.” would be considered a killer in waiting.

The scary part is in the last paragraph:

we are optimistic that these words can offer a window—and a warning—about individuals’ intentions. This work is by no means a standalone solution to gun violence or terrorism, but it might help, even as predicting and preventing these sorts of attacks remains incredibly difficult.

Gun bloggers and social media posters beware: Your words will soon be used against you.

During a “well being check” that may well have been a SWATing, the police broke into a home without a warrant, woke up a sleeping woman, then shot her, because a woman asleep in her bed at night is a threat.

Now she is being charged with three counts of attempted murder of a LEO. But red flag laws won’t ever be abused.

When the Democrat mandatory buyback goes into effect, it will be done without any money being paid to the owners of their formerly legal weapons. This court case will be used as the precedent.

People like you claim that gun laws wouldn’t work because criminals don’t obey the laws. Criminals don’t obey the laws in other similar countries that have gun control, but they have significantly fewer murders (see eg UK). The reason? Most illegal guns in the USA start as legal guns – they are stolen, sold, etc and end up in the hands of criminals. Since there are so few LEGAL guns in the UK, its very very difficult to obtain illegal weapons (that’s why the 3 terrorists in the London Bridge attack used a van and knives – as a result the 3 of them only managed to kill 7 people – a single mass shooter in the USA can easily kill 10, and the record is 59).
In fact, gun control works in the USA too. The AR15 is the weapon of choice of the mass shooter, despite the military M16 being a more deadly weapon (and hence preferred by the military). Why would a mass-shooter opt for the less deadly AR15? Because its very difficult to obtain the M16, as its illegal in most states. The fact that law abiding citizens can’t obtain the weapon makes it virtually impossible for criminals to obtain it.
Anyone who thinks gun control doesn’t work hasn’t looked elsewhere. The UK is so safe that most police officers aren’t armed. In the USA there are calls to arm school teachers! People scratch their heads and pretend they don’t know what can be done about these regular school shootings – even more guns perhaps? The last school shooting in the UK was in 1996. Gun control does work.

1 Yes, MOST guns in the US start off as legal guns. Most liquor starts off as legally consumed, but then a person uses it in a criminally negligent manner. It isn’t whether or not an object starts off being legally purchased, because it isn’t the object that commits the crime, but the person using it.

2 Using one single crime (the London Bridge attack) to “prove” that criminals can’t get guns is misleading. 23 people were killed in the bombing of the Ariana Grande concert, even though bombs are illegal in the UK.

3 The AR15 is not the weapon of choice of mass shooters. Let’s use ABC’s list of 21 mass shootings in the US this year. Only 4 of the shootings listed were carried out by a person armed with a rifle, and only two of those were AR clones (Odessa and Dayton). Overwhelmingly, criminals favor handguns, for the simple reason that carrying around a rifle makes one stand out.

4 That is the same reason why the M16 isn’t used by criminals. It is difficult to hide a full sized machine gun. The vast majority of crimes committed by criminals armed with firearms is committed by handguns.

5 There aren’t calls to arm teachers. The call is for people to stop believing that creating zones where a shooter can depend on his intended victims being disarmed. We are simply asking you to stop disarming teachers, which is totally different from actively arming them.

6 UK police are armed. 

7 Gun control doesn’t work to stop crime, but it does work in creating people who can be easily controlled.