Furious Seasons

April 09, 2009

Tim Egan Calls For Assault Weapons Ban, Using Distortions, Errors To Make His Case

Hi readers. This is one of my occasional pieces on this site dealing with matters political. I'll get back to my usual stuff tomorrow.

As most of you know, there's been an awful spate of mass shootings in America over the last few weeks. Eight dead in Alabama, 13 dead in New York, four cops dead in California, three cops dead in Pennsylvania, five kids murdered by their own father about an hour south of Seattle. I've been waiting for the round of inevitable newspaper editorials and op-eds on all of this, the ones written by gun control advocates and their mouthpieces on various newspaper staffs that use such shootings to call for bans on gun ownership and so on.

Well, one of those sorts of pieces is on the New York Times' website today (not sure if it ran in the paper as well), authored by Tim Egan. I don't know if Egan is still on staff at the paper anymore, as he's a big shot book author now (and winner of a National Book Award), but he does pump out a once-a-week blog for the paper's website. as a rule, I generally admire Egan's work, but this piece shows just how out of control some otherwise-fine writers get when writing about guns. His piece is filled with usual pro forma hand-wringing over guns ("the cancer at the core of our democracy"), especially so-called assault rifles, and as usual with such pieces, it's filled with errors, omissions and exaggerations, all in an attempt to get guns of some kind, any kind, banned. You know where Egan is headed--right to a so-called ban on so-called assault rifles.

"In the aftermath of one of these atrocities, nothing is more chilling than a gun advocate racing before a camera to embrace a lunatic’s right to carry and kill."

And nothing is more frightening and embarrassing to me as a journalist than a knee-jerk liberal writing a column, going through the usual stations of the argumentative cross and calling for a ban on weapons while lecturing other Americans on what they should and shouldn't be allowed to own. That's because there's not a single gun advocate I know of who defends a lunatic's right to own a gun. That's why the gun laws in most, if not all, states have a provision banning convicted felons and "mental defectives"--meaning people with mental retardation or serious mental illnesses that required hospitalization--from owning a gun of any kind. Gun groups I know of (the Second Amendment Foundation for one) have worked with law enforcement and legislators to get such provisions in place.

"All a citizen can do is ask for some common sense around the Second Amendment. The assault weapons ban, outlawing 19 military style guns that no hunter with sense of fair play would ever use, should be reinstated. President Bush and Congress let it expire in 2004, even though it was a godsend for police officers and supported by a majority of gun owners.
"To the senators who back assault rifles while speaking of the 'sacred part of being a Montanan,' you don’t want this kind of heritage. It demeans you as Westerners to allow easy access to weapons that kill innocents, and it does a disservice to history."

You just have to sigh when reading something like this because what Egan and gun ban backers don't understand is that the 1994 assault weapons ban didn't outlaw AR-15s. What it did was limit their configuration and magazine capacity. It was a complicated law but the basic thrust of it was, in the case of AR-15s and AK-47s, that the guns couldn't have magazines containing more than 10 rounds and couldn't have flash suppressors, barrel shrouds and pistol grips (plus a bunch of other technical things). All of those came back onto the market in 2004 when the 1994 law expired, except in California, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut where it's effectively still in place (due to those states' weak Constitutions on gun rights).

The 1994 "ban" effectively made the AR-15 a less-easy-to-handle weapon with a smaller capacity. That was about it. (It also banned or limited a bunch of other guns and you can read about the 1994 AWB, as it's known, here.) Other than their assault rifle moniker and semi-auto capabilities, they weren't much different from more common rifles which handle six to 10 rounds, in some configurations, and fire a round at a time. I can assure you from personal experience that you can blast off those six to 10 rounds pretty quickly one shot at a time, as did Lee Harvey Oswald.

You have to sigh, too, when urbanistas such as Egan tell folks in rural areas what heritage they ought to want. It's the kind of arrogance that may play out nicely in the Times and among prog-libs in Seattle, but it bespeaks the kind of liberalism that gives liberalism a bad name. What's next? Is Egan going to suggest how many horses and of what breed folks in Montana should own in order to keep with a heritage Egan thinks he understands sitting at his desk in a big city? Egan lives in Seattle and Seattle has about as much to do with the heritage of the rural West as I do with communism. Egan ought to keep his mouth shut about Western heritage. Doubly so, because the vast majority of murders in this country happen Back East not out West. And Egan has got to know that about half of the murders in Seattle each year (we have about 30 a year, give or take) involve gang members offing rivals. In addition, I cannot think of a single murder I've read of or covered in my seven years in this city (or state) that involved a semi-auto assault rifle. Handguns are the weapon of choice. (I used to cover cops and crime back when, and still read just about every news account of just about every murder in my area. Oh, and for the record, my family roots are pioneer rancher-farmer stuff from Arizona in the 1860s.)

What's more, the vast majority of shootings in this country do not involve so-called assault rifles. Go ahead and scan your local paper. What you'll find are folks shooting other people with handguns and single-shot rifles. Even more to the point, the sorts of mass killings that have gone on the last few weeks are statistically rare and, in my experience, don't typically involve semi-auto rifles. Kyle Huff, who murdered six people at a party in my neighborhood in 2006, used a pistol and a shotgun. The recent Binghamtom, New York killings: handguns. North Carolina: rifle. Alabama: rifle.

"Still, nearly 17,000 Americans are murdered each year — about 70 percent by guns — and 594,276 lost their lives betweens 1976 and 2005."

Does Egan say what percentage of these homicides by gun are committed by criminals offing other criminals (my loose guess is that about half of all murders are criminal on criminal), folks who legally can't even own guns? Does he explain that a huge number of these murders have come as a direct result of the drug trade in this country? Does he offer a guess as to how much of this can be tied to semi-auto rifles? No, of course not. It's his mission and the mission of the New York Times to create a certain level of hysteria in the public's mind that innocent people are going to be gunned down the moment they walk off to the market in Seattle (and NYC) with their earth-friendly canvas bags to buy organic produce.

To be clear, under the Second Amendment you cannot ban weapons of any kind and under last year's US Supreme Court ruling in the Heller case, you cannot ban handguns, rifles and shotguns. The ruling is, going by memory here (and, yes, I've read the case), open to the idea of restrictions on certain super weapons, a reference to what I'm not sure since the court didn't specify what super weapons it meant.

So at the end of the day, you've got Egan calling for a ban that wouldn't much change things and would likely have very little impact on the murder rate in the US. But like a lot of opinionistas, he wants something to show for all his hand-wringing, a scalp of some kind, and there seems to be some sentiment for a gun ban, or restriction of some kind, in Congress and Attorney General Eric Holder has called for re-enactment of the 1994 AWB (it's not clear to me where President Obama is on the matter). Yet the reality is that the Democrats in Congress simply don't want the political fight that will erupt, even inside their own party, should they seek to reimpose the 1994 AWB. They'll spend so much political capital and piss off so many centrist voters like myself that November 2010 will be a very rocky month for them.

And just to make it clear again, their ban would do very little to effect the murder rate in this country. I can't think of a single piece of evidence pointing to a sudden and dramatic drop in the murder rate in the US following enactment of the 1994 AWB.

Anyway, Egan also commits some serious errors in his piece where he writes:

"The recent twists involve Mexican drug cartels, who get their firepower from American retailers, and the mass killings this spring by shooters who appear to have acquired their weapons legally. Assault rifles figured prominently in the murders of seven police officers."

The Mexican cartel line of reasoning is a load of BS or a complete exaggeration or liberal mythologizing (take your pick), because it's a false claim, as Fox News found out when they recently poked around the claim that's been made all over the media that 90 percent of the cartel's weapons are coming from the US. Their reporting found that only 17 percent of the Mexican cartel's weaponry could be traced to the US, so presumably the rest is coming from somewhere else (um, like the deeply-corrupt Mexican Army).

Yes, assault rifles did figure in the deaths of cops in California and Pennsylvania, but Egan is wrong when he says it was seven cops. The three police officers in Pittsburgh, Penn. were indeed killed by an idiot shooting off an assault rifle. But in Oakland, Calif. two of the four cops murdered there by a wanted felon (who flat out shouldn't have had even an air pistol as he was on parole) were killed by said felon shooting a pistol. So when Egan writes "their lives ended by a convict with an assault rifle," he's being inaccurate. Two of the four were, but not all four. Egan doesn't even point out that the Oakland cop killer was a convicted felon and on parole, facts that raise more questions about California's parole system and how parolees are monitored than they do about anything to do with assault rifles.

BTW, it's worth noting that the Oakland murderer would likely have been using a semi-auto rifle that was either manufactured under the 1994 AWB or is a California-legal gun (meaning a 10 round only clip), so, as odd as it sounds, the felon killed two cops with probably the same exact type of gun which gun control advocates have found an acceptable compromise in the past. (Unless it was a pre-94 gun or something he'd gotten from a state without restrictions on semi-autos after 2004.)

I hope Egan corrects his errors and distortions.

Full disclosure: I've actually shot so-called assault rifles several times in my life, all of them AR-15s, the civilian semi-automatic riff on the military's M-16.

Posted by Philip Dawdy at April 9, 2009 12:46 PM

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Comments

There a cute quiz on should there be new gun laws
Answers
A) Yes, it is a good idea!
B) No, it is a bad idea!
C) Not Sure.
D) Why? It Already Exists!
To any of the following

Do you think a law should be enacted making it illegal to transfer new machineguns to private citizens?

Do you think a law should be enacted making it illegal for individuals to sell firearms across state lines?

Do you think a law should be enacted requiring that all firearms dealers perform a federal background check on potential purchasers?

Do you think a law should be enacted making it illegal for a child to purchase a handgun at a pawn shop?

Do you think a law should be enacted which severely restricts possession and ownership of sawed-off shotguns?

Do you think a law should be enacted which makes it illegal for felons and domestic abusers to own firearms?

Do you think a law should be enacted which makes it illegal for mentally unsound individuals and drug users to own firearms?

Do you think a law should be enacted that makes it a illegal to sell a firearm to a felon?

Do you think a law should be enacted that outlaws armor-piercing handgun ammunition?

Do you think a law should be enacted that outlaws guns which can pass undetected through metal detectors?

Do you think a law should be enacted that makes it a crime for anyone other than a police officer to possess a gun inside of a school without specific approval?

Do you think a law should be enacted that outlaws the importation of non-sporting firearms?

Do you think a law should be enacted that requires every new firearm sold in the United States be marked with a unique serial number for tracing purposes?

Do you think a law should be enacted that requires a nation-wide background check be performed for every retail purchase of a firearm?

Do you think a law should be enacted that allows the local chief law enforcement officer to deny an individual the ability to purchase a silencer?

Do you think a law should be enacted requiring dealers selling guns at gun shows to run background checks on buyers?

Do you think there should be a law restricting grenades?

If you answered yes to any of the questions, sit back and relax they're already on the books. Nothing to request to be written. If you're upset because they aren't being enforced, then look for the problem as to why?

Is creating paranoia in a crowd who own guns that wise? Do you really want this group to form an "us and them" mentality with law enforcement and legal citizens?

Gun prices($100 rifle selling out at $400.00+) and ammo prices(10 cent a rd to 60 cents rd) have gone insane. The recreational and self defense person is getting squeezed out the market. If you're willing to pay these higher prices, you are in a fear driven state of hoarding. Prices have increased 300-600%+ and what's worse is dealers can't keep it on the shelves at those high absurd prices.

This anti-gun crowd is the same crowd who cried there would be massive shoot out like O.K. Koral if concealed carried guns were allowed. Hasn't happened yet. They parade every body around to farther their agenda and the newscasters eyes almost light up with glee with each tragedy...

Posted by: My pew pew at April 9, 2009 03:07 PM

In my opinion the Right to Keep and Bear Arms should not be infringed upon by Prozac/SSRIs.

I really believe this country needs to decide between SSRIs, SNRIs and guns. When you add the total of murder-suicides, murders, attempted murders, attempted murder-suicides, school shootings, workplace violence, mass killings, etc. on www.SSRIstories.com, there are close to 2,000 of these cases. The other 1,000 cases are e.g. woman school teachers having affairs with their minor male students, soldiers and veterans killing themselves, stockbrokers & bankers high on Prozac riding the market to the zenith, etc.

Tonight on CBS National news Katie Couric did a story on the soldier suicides - highest number ever in the history of wartime. In fact last year and projected figures fo this year place the number of suicides among soldiers as being higher than the number of soldiers killed in military combat.

Yes, there have been a lot of shootings lately but the media is really hush hush on what, if anything, these people were taking. However out of North Carolina, the shooter in the killing of 7 residents of a nursing home and one nurse, we do have the following story [posted in part].

First paragraph reads "The man accused of killing eight people in a Carthage nursing home last week said after the shootings that he had taken six “nerve pills” and didn't remember anything, according to a search warrant made public Tuesday."

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/local/story/650820.html

Police: Slayings suspect talked of pills
Man charged in the killings of 8 people in a Carthage nursing home said he took ‘nerve pills,' warrant says.

By Jay Price
jay.price@newsobserver.com

Posted: Wednesday, Apr. 08, 2009

The man accused of killing eight people in a Carthage nursing home last week said after the shootings that he had taken six “nerve pills” and didn't remember anything, according to a search warrant made public Tuesday.

Robert K. Stewart, 45, of Moore County was charged with eight counts of murder following the deaths of seven elderly residents of the home and a nurse.

Posted by: Rosie at April 9, 2009 04:49 PM

"You have to sigh, too, when urbanistas such as Egan tell folks in rural areas what heritage they ought to want. It's the kind of arrogance that may play out nicely in the Times and among prog-libs in Seattle, but it bespeaks the kind of liberalism that gives liberalism a bad name."

So only people who are part of any given subculture can offer a perspective on that culture that might challenge it? If not they should just keep their mouth shut? Wow, that's kind of strange coming from a journalist, Philip. I'd think rather than trying to bully people and telling them to shut up because of where they live and what kind of circles they travel in you'd just evaluate their statements as being true or false.

I'm glad the Freedom Riders didn't follow these kinds of rules otherwise they'd think that as urban types from the city their point of view on segregation wasn't valid and they should just shut up.

Posted by: David at April 9, 2009 04:58 PM

Y'know, as I keep reminding people, the framers of the Constitution could be pretty smart about some things. The Second Amendment, which many people like to argue has been superseded by a standing military, also provided the ability for the people to keep and maintain arms in the event that it was ever necessary to once again cast out a parasitic, cancerous ruler. When the Revolutionary War occurred, EVERY weapon was an assault weapon. The framers didn't distinguish between barrel lengths, magazine capacity (there wasn't any), etc. They simply said we have a right to own guns.

And IMO, as long as someone has not been convicted of a felony and does not have a record of, for example, hospitalization for mental disorders, there should be nothing standing in the way of them owning any damn firearm they choose. Me? I wouldn't mind a PSG or a Barrett .50 cal. :)

Posted by: Puckett at April 9, 2009 08:06 PM

Thank you for your support, Philip!

Signed,

A bitter bible and gun clinger in the Midwest.

Posted by: Stiff Man at April 10, 2009 01:43 AM

nothing is more chilling than a gun advocate racing before a camera to embrace a lunatic’s right to carry and kill

He lost me with his choice to use the rhetoric of disabilism.. A fair, rational discussion is not possible with just such a person..

Cyber hugs from Talking Rock..

Posted by: Cindy Sue Causey at April 10, 2009 04:47 AM

http://massmurders.blogspot.com/ seems like a good blog site to keep up with all of the killings.

Posted by: Jim at April 10, 2009 04:53 AM

What if the person with mental health psychiatric hospitalizations was involuntarily committed, lost their right to gun ownership and/or a permit if already had one--and they disagreed with their involuntary committment?

One loses the right to have a gun or permit for ownership in King Co WA state if involuntarily committed they can only get it back if a judge deems them able.

Isn't that a loss of a civil liberty and discrimination? (twice? the against will commitment and the consequent removal of right to bear arms?)

(My comment is based on fact of a family member this happened to)

Do we assume ALL people with a mental health hospital record are dangerous? isn't that what meds are for? (sarcastically speaking)to "prevent" violence in mentally ill people?

I find the discrimination intolerable. Anyone here ever been committed against their will? does the Constitution say ppl who were locked up in a psych ward can't bear arms?

Philip Dawdy responds: stephany, these questions are complex. my understanding of the law in washington state is that anyone in a psych unit for more than 14 days loses their gun rights, which can be later restored by a judge. i know it all sounds discriminatory as hell especially in an imperfect system, but there's got to be some kind of way to filter out people who are too sick to possess a gun.

Posted by: Stephany at April 10, 2009 09:06 AM

"So only people who are part of any given subculture can offer a perspective on that culture that might challenge it? If not they should just keep their mouth shut? Wow, that's kind of strange coming from a journalist, Philip."

But it's not so strange coming from Philip. I've browsed through quite a bit of this site. I came here originally to find information on Seroquel. Unfortunately the "information" it pretty one-sided here. Bullying and banning seem to be standard practice rather than rational discourse.

His, "I don't know if Egan is still on staff at the paper anymore, as he's a big shot book author now (and winner of a National Book Award), but he does pump out a once-a-week blog for the paper's website," is classic. There's more than a little undercurrent of bitterness on this blog.

Posted by: David B. at April 10, 2009 09:45 AM

Perhaps we can come up with a new slogan along the lines of...Guns don't kill people. Antidepressants do...?

Posted by: Lilly NC at April 10, 2009 09:59 AM

Do you actually read what you write? You try to defend the right to own automatic weapons by giving dozens of examples of murder by firearms -- most by little bitty wimpy weapons. After reading this, a prudent person would be scared to venture outside at all.

It's clear that the stubborness of weapons owners will continue along with their infatuation with automatic guns. Obviously the slaughter will continue too.

Hey but we don't want people messing with 'Western' ideals of how many horses to won, or how many deadly assault weapons to pack in the saddle.

Most you so called 'Westerners' couldn't survive overnight in a Motel 6 in Wyoming...

Philip Dawdy responds: and most guys like you in big colleges (yeah i checked his ip) are too scared to use your real names in comments. as it stands the piece is about semi auto rifles and keep in mind many pistols are semi auto (ie any 1911 design). gonna ban those too? i doubt it. it would be unconstitutional.

Posted by: vr at April 10, 2009 12:47 PM

I would have to voice an opinion similar to Puckett: except until he gets to the part about hospitalized for Mental Illness.

Who do you want deciding your constitutional rights? Do you want the likes of Biederman, Nemeroff, Goodwin, Pharma, the FDA, NAMI, and like leaning thinkers to decide your right the bare arms or taking it to the next step in the logical progression; who you can vote for as well?

This is a very dangerous and slippery slope we have headed down in this so called progressive society and government.

Heck, if you want to believe those pill toting liberalism of psychiatry hell bend on medicating every Tom, Dick, and Harry in our country.

Then you would have say at least 50% of the population could have at least one psychiatric label or another. So we are going to have psychiatrist and the DSM trump our constitutional rights?

This is absolutely damn right silly, and an act of blatant discrimination against those that fall prey to modern psychiatry. Talk about a grand power grab and a big brother mentality.

I know there are lots of people out there scared to death of guns and those that own them. But I'm not saying you have to carry or own a gun. The constitution gives us a choice and then we create laws to govern acts outside the realm of law.

Last time I checked the label illness or so called "mental illness" was not a felony in America.

So called "Mental Illness" does not make anyone more or less violent than your average Joe having a bad day at work, a fight with their wife/husband, and just maybe a drink or three to many.

The overall statistics don't show much of a rational different in violent tendencies between those labeled with a mental illness and those that are not.

Of course once someone commits a crime we as a society are quick to pin a mental health label on them as soon as they possibly can to add validity to the removal of rights from others that are totally and completely innocent.

This is how power grabs are accomplished; through taking power away from a determined sub-class of citizens that have committed no crime.

This opens the door wide for everyone to have those same rights vanish through a simple label be branded upon them.

Does this ring a bell of how other totalitarian governments subverted rebellion and ruled with absolute sovernity over people through out our bleak history of being so called civilized human beings.

If someone commits a violent felony; then they lose their rights under our laws. Let's stick to the Constitution and the rule of law first, foremost, and stop another injustice from happening in the name of paranoid psychiatry power mongers.

They (psychiatry and a government not governing under and by our constitution principles} will pry my guns from my cold dead hands.

So please be my guest and come on over to get them government and psychiatry! Maybe you'll find out freedom and power actually comes with a heavy price and some sacrifice.

end of rant.

Posted by: Gun Toting Red Neck at April 10, 2009 03:44 PM

Dear Mr. F. Seasons,

You refer to Egan as a "mouthpiece" and interpret his piece to be "filled with usual pro forma hand-wringing over guns". You take a favourite quote out of context, and therefore dismiss - by suggestion - any and all arguments hinting toward gun control. Very little substance in your reaction, and a whole lot of ad hominem and nifty non-sequiturs. I expect more from an investigative, intrepid mind like yours.

You don't think the NRA lobby headed by the likes of mouthpieces such as Ted Nugent offer up the exact same sort of pro forma hand-wringing over guns? Of course they do. The trick is to rise above that nonsense and construct a logical argument.

Moreover, I'm always a tad suspicious of reductionist arguments, such citing one opinion piece by an author, to dismiss any and all arguments on the very complex gun issue continuum. I know it's easy and emotionally powerful to issue "over my dead body" appeals, but it does virtually nothing for the argument you want to make.

Otherwise, love your blog. :)

Posted by: The Skeptic at April 11, 2009 03:00 AM

I have told,explained, begged people to look at the SSRI stories blog, told the story of the man who just killed x no. of people who had "nerve" pills and honest injun.....people cannot believe that a drug can cause this to happen even though the classes of drugs in question have SUICIDE/HOMICIDE black box warnings on them (over the "dead bodies" of many psychiatrists who have had to now flop their "patients" over to the lethal sholls of the atypicals.

Hardly ever read about the "taking prescription drugs" part in any of the mass shooting stories in the MSM. Could this possible be because pharma ad money is keeping MSM on lifelines?

No, the subject always zeroes back in on guns...yes/no, right/wrong, urban/rural culture w/ guns guns guns. Meanwhile one of the most profitable industries in the country just sits back counting its profits, knowing the truth but only caring about their greed.

Posted by: Anon. at April 12, 2009 07:48 PM