Quick Links: Guns and Crime and Cops

Some of these links come from the Ace of Spades blog's post linked below. In no particular order. First, Maetenloch has a takedown-summary of the Ms. Magazine propaganda-piece against guns. Frankly, the woman who did this is guilty of a few crimes of negligence already (most states make it a crime to leave an unattended and unlocked firearm where it can be accessed by children, as this woman repeatedly did), though she'll probably never face any real consequences from this. Not much of a fisking or takedown, but this line pretty much encapsulates the right attitude towards propaganda pieces like the Ms. article: "And of course she found the gun dangerous - mostly because she refused to learn anything about the weapon and also because she did willfully dumb and dangerous things like this."

While we're on the topic, it turns out that at the same time that the NYPD refuses to allow civilians (whatever happened to responsible citizens?) to carry weapons in general and guns in particular, they also refuse to protect those same civilians when said civilians are under attack from somebody who is breaking the law and carrying a weapon. To be fair, the crime rate has fallen a bit in New York (as compared to other cities like Chicago with equally draconian no-guns policies), but still: there were two cops on-site during this attack who locked themselves in a car nearby and just watched. Apparently, they were afraid that the attacker had a gun and not just a knife (which make me feel a whole lot better about NYPD), thereby allowing a knifeman (who had been n a spree of sorts) to stab an innocent civilian who himself had nothing but his bare hands and his wits to protect himself. And the victim in question is now told that he cannot sue the police for failing to intervene, that the police had no duty to intervene here.

Speaking of utterly worthless police, in Detroit the police will rob you. I guess they've decided that if you can't beat 'em then you can join 'em, but when the cops are crooks and criminals and the civilians aren't allowed anything with which to defend themselves, we get a police state without any actual security. I guess that Benjamin Franklin was right. Perhaps this is why Detroit is one of the most violent cities in the country (beat out only by another town in Michigan).