It’s Thursday, December 20th, 2012….and FYI, the world ends tomorrow.  So if you have any last-minute Christmas shopping to do….

Now, here’s The Gouge!

First up, courtesy of Bill Meisen and NRO, John Fund offers….

The Facts about Mass Shootings

It’s time to address mental health and gun-free zones.

 

A few things you won’t hear about from the saturation coverage of the Newtown, Conn., school massacre:

– Mass shootings are no more common than they have been in past decades, despite the impression given by the media.

– In fact, the high point for mass killings in the U.S. was 1929, according to criminologist Grant Duwe of the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

– Incidents of mass murder in the U.S. declined from 42 in the 1990s to 26 in the first decade of this century.

– The chances of being killed in a mass shooting are about what they are for being struck by lightning.

– Until the Newtown horror, the three worst K–12 school shootings ever had taken place in either Britain or Germany.

Almost all of the public-policy discussion about Newtown has focused on a debate over the need for more gun control. In reality, gun control in a country that already has 200 million privately owned firearms is likely to do little to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals. We would be better off debating two taboo subjects — the laws that make it difficult to control people with mental illness and the growing body of evidence that “gun-free” zones, which ban the carrying of firearms by law-abiding individuals, don’t work.

First, the mental-health issue. A lengthy study by Mother Jones magazine found that at least 38 of the 61 mass shooters in the past three decades “displayed signs of mental health problems prior to the killings.” New York Times columnist David Brooks and Cornell Law School professor William Jacobson have both suggested that the ACLU-inspired laws that make it so difficult to intervene and identify potentially dangerous people should be loosened. “Will we address mental-health and educational-privacy laws, which instill fear of legal liability for reporting potentially violent mentally ill people to law enforcement?” asks Professor Jacobson. “I doubt it.”

Gun-free zones have been the most popular response to previous mass killings. But many law-enforcement officials say they are actually counterproductive. “Guns are already banned in schools.That is why the shootings happen in schools. A school is a ‘helpless-victim zone,’” says Richard Mack, a former Arizona sheriff. “Preventing any adult at a school from having access to a firearm eliminates any chance the killer can be stopped in time to prevent a rampage,” Jim Kouri, the public-information officer of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told me earlier this year at the time of the Aurora, Colo., Batman-movie shooting. Indeed, there have been many instances — from the high-school shooting by Luke Woodham in Mississippi, to the New Life Church shooting in Colorado Springs, Colo. — where a killer has been stopped after someone got a gun from a parked car or elsewhere and confronted the shooter.

Economists John Lott and William Landes conducted a groundbreaking study in 1999, and found that a common theme of mass shootings is that they occur in places where guns are banned and killers know everyone will be unarmed, such as shopping malls and schools.

I spoke with Lott after the Newtown shooting, and he confirmed that nothing has changed to alter his findings. He noted that the Aurora shooter, who killed twelve people earlier this year, had a choice of seven movie theaters that were showing the Batman movie he was obsessed with. All were within a 20-minute drive of his home. The Cinemark Theater the killer ultimately chose wasn’t the closest, but it was the only one that posted signs saying it banned concealed handguns carried by law-abiding individuals. All of the other theaters allowed the approximately 4 percent of Colorado adults who have a concealed-handgun permit to enter with their weapons.

“Disarming law-abiding citizens leaves them as sitting ducks,” Lott told me. “A couple hundred people were in the Cinemark Theater when the killer arrived. There is an extremely high probability that one or more of them would have had a legal concealed handgun with him if they had not been banned.”

Lott offers a final damning statistic: “With just one single exception, the attack on congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011, every public shooting since at least 1950 in the U.S. in which more than three people have been killed has taken place where citizens are not allowed to carry guns.”

There is no evidence that private holders of concealed-carry permits (which are either easy to obtain or not even required in more than 40 states) are any more irresponsible with firearms than the police. According to a 2005 to 2007 study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and Bowling Green State University, police nationwide were convicted of firearms violations at least at a 0.002 percent annual rate. That’s about the same rate as holders of carry permits in the states with “shall issue” laws.

Despite all of this evidence, the magical thinking behind gun-free zones is unlikely to be questioned in the wake of the Newtown killings. Having such zones gives people a false sense of security, and woe to the politician or business owner who now suggests that a “gun-free zone” revert back to what critics would characterize as “a wild, wild West” status. Indeed, shortly after the Cinemark attack in Colorado, the manager of the nearby Northfield Theaters changed its policy and began banning concealed handguns.

In all of the fevered commentary over the Newtown killings, you will hear little discussion of the fact that we may be making our families and neighbors less safe by expanding the places where guns aren’t allowed. But that is precisely what we may be doing. Both criminals and the criminally insane have shown time and time again that those laws are the least of the problems they face as they carry out their evil deeds.

As this forward from Balls Cotton puts it:

Speaking of those we don’t trust, Katie Pavlich, writing at Townhall.com, reports on the latest pronouncement from the Big Apple’s leading hypocrite:

Bloomberg on Unarmed Sandy Hook Principal: “I Don’t Know What A Gun Would Have Done”

 

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who politicized the Sandy Hook tragedy within hours last Friday, just wrapped up a press conference announcing new plans to fight gun violence and to counter the National Rifle Association with his own Super PAC. Bloomberg was asked by a reporter to respond to Rep. Louie Gohmert’s comments over the weekend that he wished the principal of the school, who died trying to take down shooter Adam Lanza, had a gun. Bloomberg responded by saying, “There are dumb statements and then there are stupid statements…..I don’t know what the gun would have done.”

With this logic, I’m sure Bloomberg feels the same way about his armed body guards; that the guns they carry to protect him “do nothing.” If sane and trained people with guns are capable of “doing nothing,” then why do police and security guards carry them? Why do thousands of people a year save their own lives or the lives of others protecting themselves with guns?

It’s as we’ve often said, facts to Liberals are like….

And in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre, they’ve proved they’re nothing if not consistent.  We played golf today with a hopelessly-Liberal friend who spent his career in education.   When the subject of conversation turned to gun-control, he offered, without a single fact in evidence, any “reasonable person” had to conclude a ban on “assault weapons” was a necessity.

 

Facts and statistics, which we quoted him repeatedly, didn’t faze him.  He felt, therefore he knew.  And that, friends, constitutes the sum total of the evidence Liberals possess in support of another gun ban.

And since we’re on the subject of the horrendously hypocritical, here’s the latest on….

Fast and Furious Gun Found at Murder Scene Was Purchased By Embattled ATF Supervisor

 

A Fast and Furious gun found at the murder scene of Mexican beauty queen Maria Susana Flores, appears to have been purchased by embattled ATF supervisor George Gillett. Flores was used as a human shield before she was shot and killed by Mexican cartels during a shootout with the Mexican military.

According to documents obtained by Senator Chuck Grassley, it appears Gillett purchased a number of different firearms at a gun dealership in Phoenix as part of Operation Fast and Furious. It also appears Gillett lied on 4473 forms by using an address that does not lead to his residence, which is a felony.

Grassley has sent a letter to the Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz asking for further investigation. From the letter:

Documentation appears to indicate that during Operation Fast and Furious, Mr. Gillett made multiple firearm purchases at a Federal Firearm Licensee (FFL) in Phoenix.  According to the forms, Mr. Gillett appears to have purchased weapons on December 15, 2009,[2] January 5, 2010,[3] and January 7, 2010.[4]  Documents show the residence listed on the Firearms Transaction Record (Form 4473) for two of the gun purchases was the local Phoenix ATF office.  For the third purchase, Gillett listed a commercial shopping center in Phoenix as his residence.[5]  Clearly, the addresses on the forms do not accurately and truthfully reflect Gillett’s actual residence in Phoenix.

Lying on a Form 4473 is a felony and can be punished by up to five years in prison, in addition to fines.  Many individuals who were arrested in Fast and Furious were charged for lying on the Form 4473.  Jaime Avila, Jr. recently plead guilty to a variety of charges, including making false statements in connection with the acquisition of a firearm, and his initial arrest just after Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s murder was for giving a false address on Form 4473.

One of the most troubling aspects of this new information is that one of the weapons listed as having been purchased by Gillett was recently recovered in Sinaloa, Mexico, the same weekend and in the same area as a shootout between the Mexican military and drug cartel members in Sinaloa, Mexico.

The January 7, 2010, purchase included an FN Herstal 57 Caliber pistol.  According to documents, this weapon was recently recovered in an attempted homicide in between Caitime and Mocorito in the Guamuchil area of Sinaloa, Mexico.[6]  Mexico’s CENAPI requested the trace from ATF’s National Tracing Center on November 29, 2012, and an initial trace was completed on December 4, 2012.[7]  Another trace on the weapon was completed on December 10, 2012, indicating that the purchaser of the weapon was the former ASAC of ATF’s office in Phoenix, George Gillett.[8]

During his OIG investigation of Operation Fast and Furious, Horowitz found Gillett’s judgement and management seriously deficient.

An assessment which is truly applicable to the entire Obama Administration.  Like Benghazigate, nothing to see here folks….

….move along!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, at least one member of The Gang That Still Can’t Shoot Straight has decided to the needs of the country outweigh the importance of her personal political career:

Scott’s Progress

The Senate’s only African-American will be a Republican.

 

Liberals tend to overemphasize racial diversity, especially in politics, but the diversity lobby was notably missing in action Monday after South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s announcement that she chose Tim Scott to replace departing Senator Jim DeMint. It is a striking moment nonetheless.

A Republican Governor who is the daughter of immigrants from India appointed a Republican who will become the only sitting African-American Senator in the 113th Congress. Mr. Scott, who was born in 1965, the year the Voting Rights Act passed, defeated the son of the late Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond in a GOP primary for a House seat in 2010. The former businessman represents Charleston, where the Confederacy fired the first rounds of the Civil War, and he will be the first black Senator from the Deep South since Reconstruction.

Mr. Scott’s appointment requires him to stand for a special election in 2014, though he has a record as a House conservative in sync with Palmetto State values and emerged with the Tea Party. It’s also worth noting that the movement deplored by liberals as retrogressive has done more than anything in years to increase diversity in politics—and not merely of thought. Think Marco Rubio of Florida, Ted Cruz of Texas, Susana Martinez of New Mexico, Brian Sandoval of Nevada, Ms. Haley herself.

The best news is that Senator-designate Scott’s story isn’t about racial grievance and preference. It’s a measure of personal achievement, political conviction and the opportunities available in modern American politics.

Nikki Haley’s popularity in South Carolina has suffered of late, and some had speculated she might name herself to DeMint’s seat in an effort to recuscitate her career.  We’re glad to see she’s possessed of a longer view….and that she’ll still be available to run against Lindsey Grahamnesty in 2014.

Speaking of the Diversity Lobby’s response, it’s the subject of today’s installment of Tales From the Darkside, courtesy of John Steele Gordon writing at Commentary Magazine:

Racism at the Times

 

Adolph Reed: the real face of racism in America

There is a New York Times op-ed this morning that is somewhere beyond appalling. It is by Adolph L. Reed Jr., a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Reed writes about the appointment of Rep. Tim Scott to replace the retiring Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina. Scott, in Reed’s view, is essentially an Uncle Tom because he does not agree with the politics of most black Americans:

. . . his politics, like those of the archconservative Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas, are utterly at odds with the preferences of most black Americans. Mr. Scott has been staunchly anti-tax, anti-union and anti-abortion.

Of course, Tim Scott will not be representing black Americans in the Senate, he will be representing South Carolinians, who are, overwhelmingly, staunchly anti-tax, anti-union and anti-abortion. So it would seem that while white people can be liberals or conservatives according to the dictates of their thinking, blacks cannot. If you’re black but not liberal, in Professor Reed’s worldview, then you’re not really black.

He notes that, “All four black Republicans who have served in the House since the Reagan era — Gary A. Franks in Connecticut, J. C. Watts in Oklahoma, Allen B. West in Florida and Mr. Scott — were elected from majority-white districts.” So? All that proves is that the voters of these districts elected people according to their political positions and not the color of their skins, which is all Professor Reed seems to care about.

He can’t even get skin color right, however. He writes:

Mrs. Haley — a daughter of Sikh immigrants from Punjab, India — is the first female and first nonwhite governor of South Carolina, the home to white supremacists like John C. Calhoun, Preston S. Brooks, Ben Tillman and Strom Thurmond.

Whites don’t all come from northwestern Europe, Professor Reed. Sikhs are overwhelmingly Punjabi. Punjabi is an Indo-European language and its speakers are, to use a 19th century term, Caucasians, i.e., white. It might be pointed out that Calhoun died in 1850, Brooks in 1857, and Tillman in 1918. Strom Thurmond died in 2003 at the age of 100 and had long since abandoned his racist ideas, just as Justice Hugo Black and Senator Robert Byrd, two other Southern politicians of his generation, had abandoned their memberships in the KKK. Of course Black and Byrd were liberals in their later careers, so … Oh, look, a squirrel.

Professor Brooks writes, “Redistricting and gerrymandering have produced ‘safe’ seats for black politicians across the South but have also concentrated black votes in black districts, giving white Republicans a lock.” Well, whose idea was that? It’s a liberal one and not a very bright one at that, as concentrating black votes in certain districts necessarily drains them away from the other districts, making those districts more conservative. And it is based on the thoroughly racist idea that only black districts will elect blacks to Congress. Frank, Watts, West, and Scott prove that idea wrong.

Professor Reed calls his piece “The Puzzle of Black Republicans.” But the puzzle is easily solved. Tim Scott is not a black Republican. He’s a Republican who happens to be black. Professor Reed sees racism in everything. But if he’d like to see a real racist, he needs only to look in a mirror.

On the Lighter Side….

Then there’s these two timely tidbits from Joe Flood….

….and our old buddy Bruce Knapp, who sent us the weather report for Friday:

And in News of the Bizarre, a titillating story from the Land Down Undah:

Australian woman gets workers’ comp for sex-related injury during business trip

 

An Australian court has ruled that a bureaucrat who was injured while having sex on a business trip is eligible for workers’ compensation benefits. The Full Bench of the Federal Court ruled Dec. 13 in favor of the woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, and rejecting the appeal of the federal government’s insurer, ending a five-year legal battle.

The woman was hospitalized after being injured in 2007 during sex with a male friend while staying in a motel in the town of Nowra, 100 miles south of her hometown of Sydney. During the sex, a glass light fitting was torn from its mount above the bed and landed on her face, injuring her nose and mouth. She later suffered depression and was unable to continue working for the government.

Her claim for workers’ compensation for her physical and psychological injuries was initially approved by government insurer Comcare, then rejected after further investigation. An administrative tribunal agreed with Comcare that her injuries were not suffered in the course of her employment, saying the government had not induced or encouraged the woman’s sexual conduct. The tribunal also found the sex was “not an ordinary incident of an overnight stay” such as showering, sleeping and eating.

That ruling was overturned in the Federal Court in 2012, when Judge John Nicholas rejected the tribunal’s findings that the sex had to be condoned by the government if she were to qualify for compensation. “If the applicant had been injured while playing a game of cards in her motel room, she would be entitled to compensation even though it could not be said that her employer induced her to engage in such activity,” Nicholas wrote in his judgment in favor of the woman receiving compensation.

Finally, in a related item, we’ll wrap things up the “Love Conquers All” segment, courtesy of Bill Meisen and an aggresively amorous young Californiacator:

Woman’s Oral Sex Act Reveals Workers’ Comp Fraud

 

A sex romp at a public park helped prosecutors convict a California woman of faking an ankle injury to collect workers’ compensation payments, authorities said. Modupe Adunni Martin, 29, was sentenced to nine months in jail on Thursday in San Mateo County after pleading no contest in October to felony workers compensation fraud.

Martin was caught on videotape in August 2009 throwing her crutches into a car and running in high heels to meet her boyfriend at a public park, where she took part in a sex act that doctors concluded she couldn’t have done with an injured ankle, District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said. She was arrested and charged with 10 counts of insurance fraud.

“I guess love just helps one get over injuries,” Wagstaffe said in a phone interview on Friday.

Uh….yeah.

Magoo