COMMENTARY – GUNS AND GREENS
Many gun owners wonder about “the big three” and ask if there is a place for gun owners in the Green Party.
That’s a two-step question best answered by both Green Party policy and party leader Elizabeth May.
First, the new Green Party policy says this.
Green Party MPs will:
1. Put strict measures in place for those who attempt to cross the Canada/U.S. border with illegal firearms;
2. Fulfill Canada’s obligation under international agreements (United Nations Firearms Protocol and the Organization of American States Firearms Convention) to mark all imported firearms, as recommended by the Canadian Association of Police Boards and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police;
3. Ensure that gun crime charges are not dropped to facilitate convictions on lesser charges;
4. Review the registry for restricted firearms in consultation with First Nations, and with gun sports and hunter organizations. We will ensure law-abiding citizens do not have their firearms unreasonably confiscated; and
5. Work with target shooting organizations to establish safe and protected locations where target shooting can be practiced.
First off, we already have strict measures in place at our borders. What exactly does she propose we do?
Second, all firearms imported into Canada already have a unique identifier. It’s called a serial number. This renders the United Nations’ marking scheme redundant. While the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police might like that needless bureaucratic waste, its impact on the firearms community is catastrophic.
The (1997) OAS convention (INTER-AMERICAN CONVENTION AGAINST THE ILLICIT MANUFACTURING OF AND TRAFFICKING IN FIREARMS, AMMUNITION, EXPLOSIVES, AND OTHER RELATED MATERIALS) was never ratified by the Canadian government, yet virtually all of the provisions contained in it already have been implemented by the bureaucracy.
Third, we must be careful about what we call “gun crime charges.” We are all for violent criminals being prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but we do not want to see ordinary Canadians sent to prison because their firearms license expired. That is absurd and does nothing to stop violence in our society.
Fourth, we’re thoroughly unsure of what reviewing the restricted firearms registry will accomplish, unless the goal is like Justin Trudeau: to “review” responsible firearm ownership out of existence. It’s impossible to know since the policy statement makes little sense.
Fifth, we already have “safe and protected locations where target shooting can be practiced.” They are called shooting ranges, and they dot the landscape from sea to shining sea. Is it Elizabeth May’s intention to stop people from shooting on Crown land? And if she’s willing to go that far, does she want to ban hunting too?
Most importantly, however, are Elizabeth May’s own words. “But the more that we restrict access to handguns, long guns, the better.” The Torontoist, Sept. 28, 2006
While Green Party policy may be a little wishy-washy on the subject, it seems Elizabeth May is not.
Like both Thomas Mulcair and Justin Trudeau, Green Party leader Elizabeth May would strip us of our firearms the first chance she gets.
DID YOU KNOW YOU CAN VOTE EARLY?
As this vote is so critical to the survival of firearms ownership in Canada, we strongly encourage you to cast your ballot as soon as possible. You can vote at any Elections Canada office across Canada.
Offices are open Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Bring your proof of identity and address, like a driver’s license. You can find the nearest Elections Canada office at the URL below.
Visit: http://www.elections.ca/scripts/vis/FindED?L=e&PAGEID=20
“Allan Rock said he came to Ottawa with the belief that only the police and military should have firearms. I believe that firearms ownership is a right, but a right that comes with responsibilities.” – The Honourable Steven Blaney, Minister of Public Safety
HELP SUPPORT THE GREAT WORK THE CSSA DOES TO PROTECT YOUR RIGHTS. DONATE HERE
MARKHAM GUN SHOW | SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 20 | 7:30 A.M. TO 1 P.M. Location: Markham Fairgrounds, 10801 McCowan Road. Lots of free parking. For more information, please call Allan at 416-579-4944.
In case you haven’t seen this …
A site for Canadian gun owners to find out where to support those who support us, and turf those who stand against us
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A Call to action for Canadian Gun Owners!
In 2011, gun owners contributed to the defeat of Mark Holland, the Liberal candidate in Ajax Pickering, and Public Safety Critic who had worked hard to block the repeal of the LGR, and repeatedly displayed arrogance and indifference to Canada’s law abiding gun owners. We donated money and offered our shoe-leather for the opposing candidate, Chris Alexander, and Holland was turfed despite being a 3-time incumbent.
Now Mark Holland is running again. Let’s NOT let him back into Parliament!
Operation: Turf Mark Hollard, 2015 version, is now online.
And let’s expand the fight, going after other candidates who misrepresent gun owners and attack the community, while supporting those candidates who have shown affinity for our cause.
In this website you will find links to candidates that have been selected for this purpose – links to where you can donate, and contacts for those who wish to volunteer locally. Money is great, but your physical presence is greater – if you are near one of these ridings and candidates please offer your support in person, and let them know why you are supporting. Nothing will leave a greater impact.
It’s time for Canadian gun owners to “show up” and fight for their rights as law-abiding citizens who own firearms and enjoy them as a sport, hobby, family activity or sustenance. There are more than 2 million of us in Canada, and our voice must be heard in the coming election.
In case you missed it …
IN BATTLEGROUND AJAX, TWO BOY-WONDER GLADIATORS FACE OFF
IMMIGRATION MINISTER CHRIS ALEXANDER IS UP AGAINST HIS ARCH-ENEMY MARK HOLLAND. IT’S A FIGHT EVERYONE’S WATCHING. (By John Geddes | Macleans | August 24, 2015)
Despite everything, Chris Alexander still looks the part of the political golden boy. At the official launch of his re-election bid last Saturday afternoon, Alexander stood near the back of his storefront campaign headquarters in a strip mall in Ajax, Ont., a trim 46-year-old in an open-necked white shirt, with a pale Tory-blue check, his three-year-old daughter, Elisabeth, sporting a pink backpack, in one arm. She stayed put while he rallied a roomful of volunteers with a speech that deftly mixed the lofty and the local. As a former diplomat now serving as citizenship and immigration minister, he touted Stephen Harper’s record on global security as highly principled. But, as MP for this bedroom community just east of Toronto, he talked up millions in old-fashioned federal spending on local infrastructure, including a big new pool complex.
For all Alexander’s poise, though, it wasn’t hard to detect a certain tension in the chatter among his supporters. Back in 2011, when he came to them as a star Conservative recruit, he was admired all over as an Oxford-educated paragon of foreign-service polish, following a stint as Canada’s extraordinarily young ambassador to Afghanistan—just 34 when he was appointed in 2003 to that challenging post. Now, less than five years after winning his seat in the House, he’s earned a very different sort of reputation as a partisan brawler. His opponents loathe him and some pundits have sharply criticized him. As recently as June, for instance, Alexander lashed out at the Liberals in an angry question period exchange as “the racist party in this Parliament over decades.” He supported the incendiary charge by casting back to former Liberal prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King’s restrictions on Asian immigrants, and also cited immigration backlogs under Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chrétien.
So, when Liberals muse about unseating Alexander, a hungry gleam comes into their eyes. It was the other way around in the last campaign. In 2011, the incumbent in Ajax (then called Ajax–Pickering, before riding boundary revisions) was Liberal Mark Holland, who was something of a boy wonder himself when he was first elected MP at just 29 in 2004. Holland held the riding when Harper’s Conservatives won the 2006 election, throwing himself into the role of opposition attack dog. Liberals called him a rising star for the way he got under the skin of senior Tories; Conservatives designated him the Grit they most wanted to send packing. Alexander did just that in 2011, beating Holland by a six per cent edge in the local vote—a solid victory, but much closer than the 19 per cent margin by which the Conservatives bettered the Michael Ignatieff-led Liberals in Ontario as a whole.
The grudge rematch between Alexander and Holland is sparking intense interest among party insiders. (In this seat, the NDP, which is in the thick of the fight elsewhere in Ontario, isn’t seen as seriously contending; the New Democrat candidate took less than 15 per cent of the 2011 vote. ) Signs of national attention are already unmistakable. On Monday of this week alone, Holland stood just behind Justin Trudeau during a morning news conference in an Ajax backyard, and Alexander walked with Harper into a rally that evening at a Toronto Hindu temple.
It’s more than a matter of Harper shoring up one impact player while Trudeau tries to return another to Ottawa. No matter who was runnning, Ajax would represent a particularly prized sort of constituency—a classic suburban seat. About three dozen ridings are at stake in the sprawl around the country’s biggest city, not counting the 11 in central Toronto. Last time out, the Liberals were decimated in both zones, as the NDP made breakthroughs downtown and the Conservatives cleaned up in the burbs. All three of the major parties must view Ontario’s 121 ridings, especially those clustered around Toronto, as essential to their chances of success on Oct. 19.
And winning immigrant support is key to capturing many of those seats, including Ajax. Organizers for Alexander and Holland tend to divide the riding roughly in two, with Canadian-born voters concentrated in longer-established neighbourhoods south of Highway 401, toward Lake Ontario, and immigrant families in tracts of newer housing north of the highway. Since Harper appointed him immigration minister in the summer of 2013, Alexander has become the Prime Minister’s point man on hot-button issues among newcomers. That includes the Citizenship Act passed last year, which requires those seeking to become Canadians to show they’ve lived here longer, met language requirements, and passed a test proving knowledge of Canadian society. Controversially, the act also gave the government the power to revoke the citizenship of dual nationals convicted of serious crimes such as terrorism.
Holland says a “huge piece” of his motivation for attempting a comeback is Alexander’s policy record. “I’m sure Chris is a wonderful person as a human being,” Holland says. “[But] I think he’s been a horrific immigration minister.” Holland singles out the Harper government’s move—vigorously advocated by Alexander—to strictly limit federally funded health services available to refugee claimants, as they wait to see if they will be allowed to stay in Canada. He also points to Alexander’s outspoken defence of the Tory policy against allowing a woman to wear a veil while taking the citizenship oath. Both policies are the subject of court battles. “I think the positions he’s taken are indefensible,” Holland says.
Not surprisingly, Alexander isn’t backing down on any of the positions he’s staked out on Harper’s front bench. Still, he doesn’t see them as key local election issues. He says the Citizenship Act, for instance, rarely comes up on the doorstep. In fact, he doesn’t list any of his own files among the top reasons he expects to hold the seat. Instead, he points to infrastructure spending in the riding, such as the $5 million Ottawa put into refurbishing an Ajax ballpark for the recent Pan Am Games, and tough-on-crime laws that result in longer prison sentences, which he says are popular “virtually as a matter of consensus” throughout the riding. Even more, however, he regards the tax cuts and child benefit increases Harper announced last fall as vote-winners. He hears about them often when he goes door-to-door. “When the undecided voter is saying, ‘I’m ready [to vote Tory],’ the family tax cut is probably the decisive factor,” Alexander says.
He’s referring to the tax credit Harper announced last year that lets the higher-earning spouse in a couple with kids to transfer up to $50,000 of taxable income to the lower earner, so that income is taxed in the lower bracket, up to a saving of $2,000. The Liberals would get rid of income splitting for parents, but Trudeau promises to trim the tax rate on income between $44,700 and $89,401 to 20 per cent from 22.5 per cent, cutting taxes collected on earnings in that range by about $3 billion, and paying for it by hiking the rate on Canadians making more than $200,000.
Competing tax and benefits platforms may go a long way to determining the election outcome, not only in Ajax, but in dozens of other suburban ridings where the votes of budget-conscious parents matter most. Alexander says pocketbook issues resonate far more than his own changed image. He shrugs off negative reaction from some columnists and editorial writers over comments such as his charge that Liberal immigration policy was historically racist, or his provocative observation, in an interview about those more stringent citizenship rules, that Canadians “don’t want their co-citizens to be terrorists.” He dismisses any criticism as being less about him than a symptom of bias against his party. “I have never had a stronger sense that mainstream media, national media, were predisposed against our message,” he says.
How fairly journalists cover parties is debatable. What isn’t in doubt, though, is that reporters being fed a steady diet of predigested sound bites by the national campaigns relish the unpredictability of two excitable scrappers going at each other locally. Expect to see Ajax much in the spotlight until election day.
See the story: http://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/in-battleground-ajax-two-boy-wonder-gladiators-face-off/
And more about two arch-enemies of lawful firearms owners …
LOCAL POLLS ARE BAD NEWS FOR LIBERALS NATIONALLY – (BY ANTHONY FUREY, POSTMEDIA NETWORK, September 16, 2015)
They’re two different cases of a canary in the coal mine. But they’re both bad indicators for the federal Liberals.
In a poll exclusive to Postmedia Network, Mainstreet Technologies recently looked at two important ridings for the Liberals: Ajax and Spadina-Fort York. The Liberals are behind in both.
Ajax is where Citizenship and Immigration Minister Chris Alexander is running. He was supposed to be a pariah after the refugee crisis surged in the news. On Sept. 3 he announced he was temporarily suspending his campaign to focus on his ministerial duties.
However a phone poll of 690 residents taken on Sept. 14 shows the Conservatives are slightly leading with 33% of the vote compared to 31% for the Liberals.
The Liberal candidate, Mark Holland was the MP for Ajax-Pickering from 2004 to 2011.
The poll compiling website ThreeHundredEight.com, which doesn’t factor in this latest poll, currently gives the Liberals a healthy lead.
“This riding remained Liberal in the 2014 provincial election and Liberal hopes are high for the rematch,” Mainstreet president Quito Maggi noted.
The new numbers are even more of an upset when you factor in how firmly voters are sticking to their party of choice. According to the poll numbers, 80% of Alexander’s voters are “strong” Conservatives supporters, whereas only 52% of Holland backers are loyal to the Liberal brand.
Only 16% of Conservative voters indicated they “might change” their vote. But 40% of NDP support and 37% of the Liberal vote is soft.
When it comes to Spadina-Fort York, it looks like Liberal MP Adam Vaughan, who was previously considered a name candidate, may have only been keeping NDP candidate Olivia Chow’s seat warm.
After Chow stepped down as a Toronto MP to unsuccessfully run for mayor, a byelection to replace her was called last June and Adam Vaughan beat the NDP candidate by a wide margin.
But while Chow failed to resonate with the broader city, she’s still popular in her old stomping grounds.
Mainstreet’s phone poll of 671 residents taken Sept. 14 has her at 34% to Vaughan’s 30% (the margin of error is 3.72%).
At Wednesday night’s all-candidates debate they’ll work to woo the 23% of undecided voters. These are likely progressives caught between their old favourite choice, the NDP, and the “real change” promised by Justin Trudeau’s Liberals.
But the very fact that these two ridings are now too close to call is itself noteworthy. While not considered safe Liberal ridings, they were supposed to be ideal places for Justin Trudeau’s party to flourish.
There was supposed to be momentum and excitement behind the new leader. The leader’s youthful energy and progressive views were to appeal to urban ridings. And the campaign’s wooing of the middle class was designed to win back all those previously Liberal suburban ridings that former leader Michael Ignatieff lost in 2011.
Looks like two of the biggest positive narratives behind Trudeau’s leadership are failing to deliver. Candidates who were hoping to ride the Trudeau wave are likely now learning that at best it’s a minor ripple.
CANADA IN THE ROUGH – RAINFOREST GHOSTS
Kevin Beasley is hunting on British Columbia’s Queen Charlotte Islands. He will be hunting Sitka blacktail deer – known as the ‘Pacific Ghost’ as they are hard to spot in the thick rainforest that the islands have to offer. This is a deer hunt you will not want to miss as the deer come to a call like Kevin has never seen before!
See the teaser: http://www.canadaintherough.com/rainforest-ghosts/
Canada in the Rough can be found on OLN, WILD TV, and CHEX. For a full schedule, visit: http://www.canadaintherough.com/schedules/
LOOKING FOR UPCOMING GUN SHOWS AND MATCHES? Visit our website at:
https://cssa-cila.org/upcoming-events-matches/
NATIONAL JOURNAL “STUDY” PROMOTING GUN CONTROL: “F” STANDS FOR FAIL (NRA-ILA | NationalJournal.com | September 4, 2015)
A recent report from NationalJournal.com demonstrates why increasingly frequent “studies” from media organizations, claiming to validate one or another anti-gun viewpoint, should be recognized for the agenda-driven pablum that they are.
On August 28, the website published an article by graphic artist Libby Isenstein, the thesis of which is evident in its title, The States With The Most Gun Laws See The Fewest Gun-Related Deaths.
Isenstein set the tone of her article at the outset, repeating an anti-gun website’s claim that there have been “more than 200 mass shootings in 2015.” In doing so, however, Isenstein forfeited any credibility she might otherwise have been assumed to possess. With a few seconds of research, she could have determined that only 14 percent of the firearm-related incidents currently cited by the website were “mass shootings,” traditionally defined as murders, with a firearm, of four or more victims, in a single incident, in close geographical proximity. Thirty-seven percent of the incidents had no fatal victims whatsoever. She could have also found leading criminologist James Alan Fox’s recent assessment, following a review of the most comprehensive study of mass shootings to date, that the report “should calm the fears that many people have that these numbers are out of control” and that “No matter how you cut it, there’s no epidemic.”
Isenstein confined the rest of her article to comparing gun control and firearm-related deaths, but she made so many mistakes that we feel we should apologize in advance for the length of our response, which follows.
1. Mere correlation, even if one existed, wouldn’t necessarily mean causation. Isenstein claimed that there is a “correlation” between gun control laws and firearm-related death rates. However, even if there were such a correlation, it wouldn’t necessarily mean that gun control reduces deaths. If it were that simple, it could be claimed that roosters crowing at dawn proves that crowing causes the sun to rise.
2. In looking for a correlation, Isenstein didn’t consider any other factors that might affect a state’s level of firearm-related deaths. Common sense notwithstanding, had she performed even a modicum of research, she would have found that gun control isn’t on the FBI’s list of 13 factors that affect crime rates. Furthermore, since she was able to locate data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), including data for suicides, she might also have stumbled upon the CDC’s list of 15 “risk factors for suicide.” Indeed, one of those 15 risk factors is “easy access to lethal methods.” However, half of suicides are committed without firearms, and from 1981 through 2013—all years of data available on the CDC’s website and a period during which the number of firearms owned per capita increased over 60 percent—the firearm suicide rate decreased five percent, while the non-firearm suicide rate increased 27 percent.
3. Isenstein failed to note that self-defense homicides are included in the CDC’s count of firearm homicides. Even the FBI’s far more reliable data (published in FBI Violent Crime Table 4 and Table 20, and Expanded Homicide Data Table 8) unavoidably include defensive homicides. Highly-regarded Florida State University criminologist Gray Kleck has written, “[f]or a variety of reasons, the FBI counts of civilian justifiable homicides represent only a minority of all civilian legal defensive homicides.” Perhaps such concern was inconsequential to Isenstein because gun control supporters see no distinction between defensive homicides and the criminal variety.
4. Isenstein included “Legal Intervention” shootings by law enforcement officers in her count of states’ firearm-related deaths. Such counts should have been excluded on the grounds that law enforcement officers’ acquisition, possession and use of guns is largely exempt from gun control laws.
5. Isenstein incorrectly categorized 13 states relative to Stand Your Ground laws. In attempting to compare the states’ firearm homicide rates on the basis of whether they have Stand Your Ground laws or impose a “duty to retreat” before defending yourself, Isenstein incorrectly categorized Arkansas, Missouri, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wyoming as Stand Your Ground states, and incorrectly categorized California, Illinois, New Mexico, Oregon, Vermont, Virginia and Washington as “duty to retreat” states.
Even with the states properly categorized, no comparison involving the numbers of homicides taking place in Stand Your Ground states would have value unless defensive homicides were counted separately from the criminal variety and, among a statistically valid sample of defensive and criminal homicides in Stand Your Ground states, it were determined whether the persons who committed the homicides claimed to have done so under the protection of Stand Your Ground laws.
6. Isenstein incorrectly categorized 12 states relative to background check laws. She failed to distinguish that Iowa, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Michigan and Maryland impose their background check requirements only on purchasers of handguns. Furthermore, for purposes of comparing the states’ firearm homicide rates in 2013, Isenstein incorrectly counted, as expanded background check states, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware and New York, which expanded their background check requirements to include all guns during 2013, and Oregon, which didn’t expand its background check law to include all guns until 2015. She also failed to include, in the background check group, Minnesota, which requires a background check for certain firearms if the buyer doesn’t have a permit.
Isenstein also incorrectly characterized as a “loophole” the absence of a background check requirement on private transfers of firearms. Had she researched the matter, she would have learned that the federal Gun Control Act of 1968 imposed recordkeeping and similar requirements upon firearm dealers, and extended that requirement to background checks beginning in 1994, but has never imposed such requirements upon private individuals. In proposing background checks on private firearm transfers, gun control supporters aren’t trying to “close a loophole,” they’re trying to create, at the federal level and in many states, an entirely new form of regulation and data-keeping on gun buyers where none existed before.
Furthermore, Isenstein claimed that “an estimated 40 percent of gun sales in this country are made via unlicensed sellers.” This suggests that Isenstein should spend more time reading the news than trying to create it, because the “40 percent” claim has been discredited by the Washington Post here, by the Richmond Times-Dispatch here, and by FactCheck.org here, over a period of several years, and it has been disavowed by the authors of the study on which gun control supporters nevertheless continue to pretend their bogus claim is based.
Isenstein also parroted gun control supporters’ misleading claim that background checks aren’t required on people who purchase guns “online.” As we have said many times, federal law, 18 U.S.C. 922(a)(3) and (5), prohibits a person who is not a licensed dealer from providing a gun to a non-dealer resident of another state, and prohibits a person who resides in one state from receiving a firearm from a non-dealer who resides in another state, unless the transaction goes through a dealer, at which point a background check will transpire.
Isenstein also mentioned gun shows and in this instance we have to give credit where credit is due. Whereas gun control supporters claim that background checks aren’t currently required on any firearm sales at gun shows, Isenstein correctly made clear that firearm dealers are already required to conduct checks at shows.
7. Isenstein incorrectly categorized two states relative to Right-to-Carry laws. She miscounted Connecticut as a restrictive carry permit state (it has had a fairly-administered discretionary-issue law since 1949) and miscounted Illinois as having a Right-to-Carry law in 2013 (Illinois adopted an RTC law in 2013, but it didn’t take effect until 2014).
8. Isenstein used only a single year of CDC data. This can present two problems. First, in any low population state that has relatively few deaths, a very small increase or decrease in the number of deaths estimated by CDC from one year to another translates into a large increase or decrease in the state’s per capita rate of those deaths. Second, in any given year, the number of firearm homicides in such a state can be so small that the CDC will not estimate a number. In 2013, the year of data Isenstein used, that was the case for 11 states.
9. Isenstein’s use of only 2013 data favored states that have more gun control. Based upon the second problem described in the preceding paragraph, Isenstein entirely excluded from her comparison the 11 states for which the CDC didn’t report firearm homicide data in 2013, all of which have historically had relatively low populations, relatively low firearm homicide rates, and relatively little gun control. To wit, nine of the 11 that she excluded have Right-to-Carry laws (versus two that don’t), nine don’t impose an expanded background check requirement (versus two that do), and six have Stand Your Ground laws (versus five that have “duty to retreat” laws).
10. There is no correlation between states’ firearm carry laws and their firearm homicide rates. Counting only 32 of the 42 Right-to-Carry states, Isenstein used CDC data to calculate that Right-to-Carry states have the same firearm homicide rate as the restrictive states and the District of Columbia, on average.
We categorized the states correctly and, to get hard numbers for every state for 2013 (rather than excluding 11 states, as Isenstein did), we performed calculations using superior data published by the FBI. In doing so, we found that in 2013, Right-to-Carry states had a 20 percent lower total murder rate. We also ranked the states and the District in terms of their murder rates, and found that those with restrictive firearm carry laws had among the highest and lowest, and had some in the middle of the ranking. Where the restrictive group is concerned, the District had the highest rate and, among the states, Maryland ranked 4th, Illinois 11th, California 21st, New Jersey 22nd, Delaware 24th, New York 30th, Rhode Island 33rd, Massachusetts 42nd, and Hawaii 49th.
We also found that Right-to-Carry states had a 29 percent lower firearm murder rate, as compared to the restrictive group. We should note, the second calculation was slightly problematic, in that in 2013, Alabama reported the weapon used in only a very small percentage of its murders and Florida reported the weapon for none. For those states, we assumed that 69 percent of each state’s murders involved firearms, based upon the FBI’s reporting of that figure nationally for 2013. For any other states that reported less than 100 percent, we used simple projections based upon the reports they submitted.
Again the restrictive group ranked high, in the middle, and low. The District again ranked highest and, among the states, Illinois ranked 5th, Maryland 6th, Delaware 12th, New Jersey 19th, California 22nd, New York 30th, Rhode Island 33rd, Massachusetts 39th and Hawaii 43rd.
11. There is also no correlation between states’ background check laws and their firearm homicide rates. As before, Isenstein’s comparison of the states’ firearm homicide rates was skewed by her exclusion of 11 low-population states that have too few firearm homicides to be reported by the CDC and she didn’t categorize the states correctly.
We categorized the states correctly and recalculated, using the FBI’s firearm murder data. We found that the average total murder rate of the states that haven’t imposed expanded background checks on handgun purchasers was seven percent lower than that of the background check group. Among the background check group, the District again ranked highest, and among the states Maryland was 4th, Michigan 5th, Illinois 11th, North Carolina 18th, Pennsylvania 19th, California 21st, New Jersey 22nd, New York 30th, Nebraska 32nd, Rhode Island 33rd, Connecticut 36th, Minnesota 41st, Massachusetts 42nd, Hawaii 49th, and Iowa 50th.
We also found that the average firearm murder rate of the less restrictive states was 14 percent lower. The District again ranked highest and, among the states, Illinois was 5th, Maryland 6th, Michigan 8th, Pennsylvania 13th, North Carolina 18ths, New Jersey 19th, California 22nd, Nebraska 28th, New York 30th, Rhode Island 33rd, Connecticut 35th, Massachusetts 39th, Minnesota 40th, Hawaii 43rd, and Iowa 48th.
In the future, we hope everyone will take as critical a look at anti-gun “studies” as we have with this one. Doing so would ultimately save a lot of Americans’ time and energy, currently being wasted and distracted by anti-gun culture warriors masquerading as investigative journalists.
See the story: https://www.nraila.org/articles/20150904/national-journal-study-promoting-gun-control-f-stands-for-fail
MEXICAN GOVERNMENT PRAISES GUN CONTROL EFFORTS BY CONGRESSIONAL DEMOCRATS, URGES MORE
(By AWR Hawkins | Breitbart Newsletter | September 11, 2015)
On September 8, Mexican Diplomat Alejandro Estivill sent a letter to Representative Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) (D-Md-7th) expressing the Government of Mexico’s appreciation of recent gun control efforts by the Democrat Party. He also urged a stronger gun control push.
The letter comes three weeks after White House officials reportedly attended a conference on the implementation of international gun control via the UN’s Arm Trade Treaty (ATT).
Breitbart News previously reported that the ATT’s ubiquitous focus is guns crossing borders, but its actual results will be an international gun registry and subjugation of the Second Amendment to an international body.
In the letter to Representative Cummings, obtained by Guns.com, Estivill expresses the Government of Mexico’s “commitment to [the] shared border region” between the US and Mexico and says the Mexican government “has been working and collaborating with US agencies in this and many other issues of mutual interest.” The letter says the “Government of Mexico truly appreciates the efforts that [Cummings and his fellow Democrats] have been doing in this issue” and urges continued efforts at gun control in the border region.
On September 9–the day after receiving the letter–Reps. Cummings, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) (D-NY-12th), Rep. Robin Kelly (D-IL) (D-Illinois-2nd), and Rep. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) (D-Illinois-8th), were joined by Reps. Peter T. King (R-NY-2nd), Mike Fitzpatrick (R-PA-8th), Patrick Meehan (R-PA-7th), and Dan Donovan (R-NY-11th) to put forward the Gun Trafficking Prevention Act of 2015. The bill addresses straw purchases, gun trafficking, border violence, and the number of guns that made it into Mexico from the US between 2009 and 2014. But rather than mention or focus on the ATF/DOJ-sponsored operation Fast and Furious–which, by design, resulted in straw purchasers buying firearms and smuggling them across the border–the Gun Trafficking Prevent Act focuses on the flow of guns in the abstract, pledging safety in exchange for more government oversight.
Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
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