The lingering reality of Saturday 13 July in Pennsylvania is not a nick of an ear. It is that yet another family has suffered at the bloody hand of the NRA. The tragic irony that like the rest of the Tr*mp-cult they probably support the guns-for-fools ethic.

You might want a little something for your kitbag when you next must discuss the subject with your crazy relative or friend.

Here are the top 25 countries ranked by homicide by firearm per 100,000 for the latest year reported. We're proudly at #9, having edged out Mexico (you know, the country with all the violent people) by a few hundredths of a killing per hundred thousand. Most of those ahead of us have been engaged in criminal, civil, racial or ethnic strife for decades. But hey: USA, USA, USA!

(1) El Salvador 78.52, (2) Venezuela 49.73, (3) Eswatini 37.16, (4) Jamaica 35.22, (5) Honduras 29.40, (6) Guatemala 25.48, (7) Brazil 23.93, (8) Colombia 20.38, (9) UNITED STATES 12.21, (10) Uruguay 11.67, (11) Mexico 11.55, (12) South Africa 10.47, (13) Panama 9.95, (14) Montenegro 8.68, (15) Philippines 7.72, (16) Costa Rica 7.59, (17) Barbados 7.36, (18) Nicaragua 7.09, (19) Paraguay 6.32, (20) Argentina 5.72, (21) Peru 3.72, (22) Serbia 3.23, (23) Albania 3.20, (24) Croatia 2.83, (25) Chile 2.79.

There are approximately 20 million AR-15 style rifles in private hands in the USA. Most are unsecured in closets and under beds along with enough ammunition to kill scores or hundreds.

Over 40,000 people are killed by firearms in the USA eveyr year. Only about 200 have allegedly been murdered by "illegal aliens" in the past eight years (that's the number of arrests, not convictions as reported by Customs & Border Protection), which averages about 16 per year. That means you're 2,500 times more likely to be killed by a relative, friend or neighbor than a non-citizen.

The real tough guys weren't at the Capitol on 6 January 2021. They were taking time to tell their truth about the gun violence that plagues the USA.

By Anonymous

In the aftermath of our recent national spate of gun-totin' insanity (Lewiston, ME, Oct. 2023) a friend has re-posted a meme on Facebook suggesting that "gun control" is rendered foolish by virtue of a comparison of crime rates in Chicago and Maine. Hmmmmm?

Apples and Oranges, I fear. Cannot let this one slide, especially this week.

Maine has a current population density of just 43.1 people per square mile, over an area consisting of 35,380 square miles, which makes it the least densely populated state in New England, the American northeast and the eastern seaboard, as well as all states with an Atlantic coastline and all of those states east of the Mississippi River. In short, at any given moment there's hardly anyone to shoot.

By comparison, almost a quarter of Illinois' population is living in Chicago due to the job opportunities there. The city's population density is 4,593 people per km2 (over 100 times that of Maine). In August, they're all riding the EL, smelling after a day's work and frustrated at every little thing, and they're inches apart.

Assume one person in ten thousand is angry or crazy enough to be homicidal. In Maine there would be 134 dangerous persons in 35,385 sq mi and in Chicago 269 in 234 sq mi.

In Maine the nearest dangerous person is thus occupying (35385/134) sq mi or about 11.5 million sq ft, or about 3,827 feet away (a mile is 5,280 feet).

In Chicago that person is standing in only 37,892 sqft or about 100 feet away, i.e., in your own back yard. If the population of dangerous people is five per ten thousand, one is sharing your bedroom.

Despite the obvious intent, the meme has nothing to do with the Second Amendment or personal liberty generally. When that was adopted in 1791, the nearest angry or crazy person (white, as nonwhites were not then counted in the census) was about 55 miles away and carrying a muzzle loading rifle that took two minutes to load and was about as likely to explode in his face as to launch a projectile.

How does gun control work? Japan — a country with which my family has proud connections — has a total homicide death rate of 0.02:100,000. It takes a long time and a lot of demonstrable training and paperwork to qualify to own a gun, and then never a handgun or semi-automatic anything. The US rate is 12.2:100,000, or SIX HUNDRED AND TEN TIMES AS HIGH. The difference is gun control.

LEWISTON, Maine, Oct 26 (Reuters) - Residents of Lewiston, a hard-bitten former mill town in central Maine, struggled on Thursday with a new reality: the scourge of American mass shootings had arrived.

Eighteen people were killed in gunfire in Maine’s second-largest city on Wednesday night, rocking a tightly knit community and shattering the state’s image as a haven from the types of violent crime seen elsewhere in the country.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Mike Asselin, 66, a lifelong resident of Lewiston, who was smoking outside of his home a few miles from the bowling alley where police say seven of the victims were shot dead.

Richard Valdmanis - Reuters

"JUST BECAUSE I'm paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get me" goes an old joke. But the concept drives many gun enthusiasts and hunters. Many truly believe that any regulation of weaponry is a move toward seizure.

In fact, the opposite "grab all guns" fringe is very, very small. Most citizens acknowledge the inevitability of firearms and simply favor common sense regulation of weapons, ammunition and access, not prohibition, never mind the assertions of the National Rifle Assn. (a lobbying organization of profit-driven public relations hacks masquerading as a civil liberties group).

In the 10 years since Sandy Hook, “good guys with guns” have been present or quickly arrived at the scene of nearly every major mass shooting and failed to stop the gunman before he was able to take multiple lives. “Good guys with guns don’t always win gunfights”

A Harvard University study that analyzed data from 2007 to 2011 found that of more than 14,000 crimes in which a victim was present, just under 1% involved a gun used in self defense. The Harvard Injury Control Research Center also found that self-defense gun use is “rare and not more effective at preventing injury than other protective actions.”

That has led many who have studied mass shootings to conclude that by the time someone with the intent to kill shows up at a school, or a supermarket, or a house or worship with a gun, it’s too late to stop bloodshed. “The best way to prevent problems is to go upstream and really try to prevent things rather than wait until they’re about to happen, ...There’s no reason why we need to have AR-15s or AK-47s in civilian hands. That’s sort of crazy.”

Sanya Mansoor — Time — 2022

To hear defenders of unrestricted gun possession and the inevitably resulting violence one would think it had always been true. 'Tain't necessarily so. Here's a sampling of research into those self-serving claims.

"'Tombstone had much more restrictive laws on carrying guns in public in the 1880s than it has today,' says Adam Winkler, a professor and specialist in American constitutional law at UCLA School of Law. 'Today, you're allowed to carry a gun without a license or permit on Tombstone streets. Back in the 1880s, you weren't.' Same goes for most of the New West, to varying degrees, in the once-rowdy frontier towns of Nevada, Kansas, Montana, and South Dakota."


"The Wild West wasn't exactly full of quick-draw shootouts, clean-shaven cowboys, and tumbleweed. Historically inaccurate Western movie tropes change how we view the bygone era, from erasing certain groups to promoting a fictional view of the frontier that distorts the truth. Most frontier towns followed strict gun control laws, for example, which banned open carrying. And men avoided duels on main street - instead, it was easier to ambush your enemies outside of town." (Gun-totin' "real men" haven't changed much, it appears. -Ed.)

This study demonstrated that black and white men were most impacted by firearm deaths, and that firearm homicide and suicide rates increased between 2019 and 2020 for nearly all racial groups. The authors suggest that prevention efforts should focus on specific demographic factors and articulate the urgency to mitigate firearm-related deaths in the US.

This study found a recent spike in firearm homicide death rates between 2019 and 2020, particularly affecting men and the black population. A national priority in dismantling structural racism is important to address disparities in firearm violence as indicated by our study. Disparities within the population were striking. Black men were 30 to 50 times more likely than white women to die from homicide by firearm. The authors suggest that only changes in social organization, coupled with reductions in available firearms, might have an effect on the rates of suicide and homicide.

Source article

Writing in Politico, Colin Woodard observes: "The reasons for these disparities go beyond modern policy differences and extend back to events that predate not only the American party system but the advent of shotguns, revolvers, ammunition cartridges, breach-loaded rifles and the American republic itself. The geography of gun violence — and public and elite ideas about how it should be addressed — is the result of differences at once regional, cultural and historical. Once you understand how the country was colonized — and by whom — a number of insights into the problem are revealed."

Absolutely worth your next 15 minutes.

—RC

Read on...

Where are the guns?

Secret arsenals allow the violent and the criminal among us to strike without warning. The simple ownership of a gun is not in itself a predictor of dangerous intent, but when multiple factors intersect, the probability of violence becomes palpable. In such cases, silence is itself criminal. Such factors include

• a history of violent behavior, publicly or domestically
• making verbal threats or engaging in threatening physical intimidation
• publication of hateful or threatening materials on line or in print
• assertion of the right to harm others to achieve some personal end or rectify some supposed wrong in lieu of pursuing normal legal remedies
• possession of ammunition beyond any reasonable purpose and/or capacity to employ such ammunition
• carrying weapons into tense situations
• et cetera

Wherever two or more of these factors intersect, families, friends, neighbors and citizens have a right to protect themselves, and the state should intervene to remove the potential for violence, including confiscation of weapons. Specifically, there should be No Secret Guns!

The other NRA must be saddened by its ubiquitous presence on the Web of this callous and unfair accusation reposted numerous times on Twitter or Facebook. Please, please don't repost elsewhere (or throw me into 'dat briar patch)!

In a copyrighted article by Carol D. Leonnig, the Washington Post reports that "The chief executive of the National Rifle Association and several top lieutenants engaged in a decades-long pattern of fraud to raid the coffers of the powerful gun rights group for personal gain, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by the New York attorney general, draining $64 million from the nonprofit in just three years.

"In her lawsuit, Attorney General Letitia James called for the dissolution of the NRA and the removal of CEO Wayne LaPierre from the leadership post he has held for the past 39 years, saying he and others used the group’s funds to finance a luxury lifestyle."

Read the story

The NRA has yet to comment on the most recent school shooting in California. The firearms lobbying group is generally expected to recommend thoughts and prayers in its usual way. Film at 11.