Cassy Fiano notes a trend:
Preliminary statistics released by the FBI for the first half of 2009 show that violent crime continues a downward trend that began in 2006 (ed: Another problem inherited from the Bush years). The figures show crime falling in all categories–robbery, aggravated assault, motor vehicle thefts, etc.–with murders down a remarkable 10 percent from the previous year.
The FBI statistics undermine a favorite argument of anti-gun groups and some mainstream media that “more guns equal more crime,” especially when you consider that the decrease in violent crime from late 2008 through the first half of 2009 occurred at the same time that firearm sales were surging.
The most popular firearms selling at that time were handguns and modern sporting rifles (AR-style rifles)–two types of firearms that anti-gunners never miss an opportunity to demonize.
Doesn’t necessarily prove that increased gun ownership leads to reductions in crime, but it’s a lot more plausible than some of the theories being foisted on us these days, and the data are fiercely resistant to “value added” types of manipulation.
We could run a test to attempt to disprove the null hypothesis.
Oh, wait: We already did.
Scott Ott has already written how Obama has blamed Bush for this:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/White-House-inadvertently-blames-Bush-for-drop-in-crime-8672080-79852142.html
You’re preaching to the choir, Cap’n.
Those who didn’t already know this are still standing with their fingers in their ears shouting “LALALALALALA GUNS ARE BAD LALALALA”
Well, I am about to buy 3 evil black guns, a SIG 522, a Smith & Wesson M&P 15, and a Colt 9mm AR. But Badgers are known to be unreasonable about that sort of thing, just read any of Brian Jacques’ Redwall novels.
Must . . . fight . . . jealousy . . .
Oh baby. The SIG 520 makes my mouth water, personally. Got an AR-15, with a healthy dose of 30 round clips, about a year ago and haven’t regretted it a single bit either. Definitely wouldn’t mind a H&K G3 with wide handguard and built-in bipod, and a springfield M1 to round off the list.
I bought a COLT AR-15 Match Rifle back in 2000, when I was going through the police academy. While it has served me well for almost 10 years, it has become an expensive beast to shoot. That is why in Sept. I bought a S&W M&P 15-22, to give me an affordable way to keep my AR skills up. The M&P is such a nice rifle, that I have decided to get a .223 one as well. I am coming into some money through an inheritance, so I am getting things I would otherwise be unable to, books, firearms, and other toys. The 552 is something I just wanted, a cool looking 22lr, and the 9mm AR is the same way.
Back when the Bundeswher replaced the G-3 with the G36, a company in Minneapolis bought a large number of them, removed the fun parts, and then sold them, making them, I suppose, actually a form of HK91. Mine has the narrow forend, alas. Nice rifle, wieghs a ton, so there is almost no felt recoil. Sure does fling the brass.
I hear ya. G3’s not being available much anymore there’s a clone called PTR-91 (no idea if it’s any good though) and you can buy an after-market wide handguard kit for it and put it on yourself. That projects on the way backburner for now though. As for the AR-15, yeah the ammo cost is a bit of an issue. Probably should get a 22 long rifle something or another, God knows they make enough 22LR versions of pretty much everything so I could get something cool looking as well as fun. Truth be told new guns are low on the list, and practicality would require me to get a revolver first, but the big scary black guns certainly swirl around in my head. Happy hunting.
FWIW, gents, HK & FN both have been fielding the 416/417 and FS2000 variants. What with various US manufacturers like POF and LWRC going strong, I’d say a body’s got a lot of nice choices out there right now. Now, lack of availability due to back order might keep you from your prize for a while. So, it’s “Patience, my Precious. Patience. We hates them nasty Orkses what spoils our fresh meat, we does.”
I love the T-shirt I saw this week in San Antonio: “In Texas we don’t dial 911 (picture of Colt revolver)”
“We call 1911 instead”
Both CDC, in its’ MMWR 3 Oct. of 2003, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5214a2.htm and the NAS in a study commissioned under Clinton and released in late 2004 found that there is no evidence that any of the anti-civil rights laws have any effect on violent crime. They did both say “Give us more money to study this some more, and maybe we will come up with something to prove gunz-r-bad.”
and from the MMWR:
I like that “just because we studied it to death and couldn’t find that anti-gun laws work, that doesn’t mean they don’t” reasoning.
The folks in Kennesaw, Georgia, don’t need no more stinkin’ testes…the results speak for themselves.
What’s worse than a 155gr 10mm slug skittering along at 1,400fps and delivering 675ft/lb of thwack? Not a whole damn lot…
Of course, Joe’s prolly got some durned hog leg that’ll knock a Kodiak back on his haunches…
Pretty conventional there. Taurus in .357, Beretta in 9 x 17, and a Remington New Model Army, 1858 replica 30 grains of FFFg topped with a .451 roundball.
Oh, and a .45 single shot, double balled, and 50 gr. FFFg.
Got sumpthin within reach at all times an’ yano what?
No crime here Boss.
‘Course if we was libs, an’ had a ‘Bama sticker on the back, we’d prolly look like an easy mark ’cause they only have whistles an’ cel phones.
Lex,
Check your email comments please.
Subsunk
Had a neighbor defend the lives of his wife and kids about 18 months ago. Seems one daughter married a guy who had some chemical instability in his grey matter. Decided to quit taking the meds. Started talking to leprechaun’s and other assorted Imaginary Friends Not of a Spiritual Nature. Daughter moved back home, with her newborn.
You can see where this is going. As a neighbor I was warned of the problem, younger daughter told to run to my home in case of an emergency. One night I’m holding my kid, rocking her to sleep, and hear three shots. Two high-pitched, one low and loud. Didn’t think anything of it. About 40 minutes later I’m doing chores and see the sheriff’s car coming up, lights on. A short time later the phone rings, another neighbor a few miles away tells me the ambulance passed her place, turned towards mine, where is it headed?
Got that sinking feeling. But the ambulance had its lights out, I told her the location and to say a prayer. Fixed a pot of coffee and some sandwiches, found a few thermos’ for the deputies, it was going to be a long night. Delivered same and offered to let the kids sleep at my place were it convenient.
Self-defense, it was ruled. Newspaper man in my face the next morning wanting to know what I thought, what I’d heard or seen. Informed him that out here we look out for each other, we’re self-sufficient and that includes being able to respond to people shooting at our homes and loved ones, and we hear gunshots all the time so no I didn’t bother to report it. Now get off my lawn, you’ll find no background to the story here.
The youngest came over a few weeks later, claimed computer problems she needed my help to fix. Nothing wrong with the laptop, really, she wanted to ask questions about the events of that night. Questions of morality, really, the taking of a life to protect another, that sort of thing. Traumatic thing to put a kid through, of course, but not near as traumatic as being shot by a crazy uncle. She seemed to have her questions answered, but I’m no priest or counselor, all I know is in defense of me and mine I’ll do anything and do it until there’s nothing that threatens left.
If you can kill a human being without remorse you’re a sociopath. If you can kill a human being to protect your family, you’re a parent.
I still leave the keys in my car and the front door unlocked, but I keep a pistol and shotgun a little more handy now than I did before, out of reach of little fingers but within reach of mine. Not that I expect anything, but that I’ve so much more to protect.
40 minutes for cops to arrive. See that? We do not intend to have to wait for their help.
Note to self: my boy is due in February. I need to get another gun safe and populate it with a Ruger 10/22 and perhaps a Winchester commemorative edition made the same year he was. Oh, and a shotgun. He’ll need a rifle in 30-cal for youth deer hunting, and they’re not getting cheaper so to buy now is actually saving money in the long run… A Remington 870 ought to do the trick, along with a Winchester Model 70…
Little did the wife know that a happy event like the birth of a child could turn into an excuse to buy even more guns.
I fear she will understand even less.
– Max
He’ll need an AR, everybody needs an AR. Get him an M&P 15-22, that will take care of both the AR, and the .22lr departments. Mine is crazy accurate, better than a 10/22.
It’s good that you watch out for each other. In my county, we have unincorperated hamlets 60 miles apart, and sometimes there is only deputy on the road, so help can be 45 minutes away at 80 mph red and blues and siren blareing.
I can tell that I am a smalll town boy, sometimes, when I go to Madison. I will come beck to the truck and find the windows down, and the keys in it. So far, the truck and everything in it has still ben there, when I get back!
Take Care, Max, and Mele Kalikimaha,as you say in the Dakotas.
Max, for a youth rifle, consider something in 7 x 57 Mauser. Or 6.5 x 55 Mauser. Both have mild recoil, but enough umph on the downstream side to take just about anything in North America.
For his 16th, get him something modern from this site: http://www.shilohrifle.com/
look at the 1874s for the modern stuff.
Dang! I clicked on “comments” while thinking “I’ll say something about “preaching to the choir”", and then what did I see as the first comment?
Great minds think alike.
JTG/
Appro pos of your comments, I was going to say: “Yeah, as if we needed a study by Lott to tell us what was intuitively obvious.” But then, of course such things are unfortunately demonstrably NOT intuitively obvious to certain of our more “progressive” fellow citizens, so such studies are needed for the sort of people who believe that one has to fly to the surface of the sun to know/prove that it’s hot.
Reminds me of an old college professor of mine who used to point out that there were two ways to prove that the avg sane person has enough sense to come in out of the rain if lacking umbrella or raincoat: 1) You can spend millions on multi-cultural, inter-continental, multi-year longitudinal studies, or, 2) you can intuit/posit from general life experience that such will be the case. “Either way,” he said, “You’re going to arrive at the same answer.” LOL.
It is always great sport to sharp-shoot and cherry pick existing data – be it gun-control or climate data – while ignoring the vast remainder of data. Most all of us do it, yes including me. In that vein, I offer this tiny data point:
Western and Central Europe homicide rate = only 1.5 per 100,000 people.
Canada is 1.85 per 100,000.
USA is 6.1 per 100,000 people!
Yikes! We seem to be big time killers here in the USA. Why?
The
link attributes this to handgun restrictions in Europe. But I am not buying that.
For a highly advanced society in one of the most advanced countries in the world, with the world’s highest GDP, we have an inordinately high murder and crime rate, even if it is somewhat mildly decreasing. We also have the highest prison population per capita in the world – mostly related to drugs.
For some reason, we are a very violent society in this country. I believe it has a lot less to do with guns, than many other factors. Guns are tools; not reasons. Nor do I accept the responses that may say “family” or “schools” or “ethnicity” or any other axe to grind are the cause. But I really cannot explain why we are so relatively violent to the more civilized [ha! and perceived by many here, "socialist" (which they really aren't)] countries of the world.
I have ideas…. but alas, no good data to cherry pick.
Oh I dunno Flit. Maybe we’re no more violent. Maybe when it comes to killin’ time we’re just better at gettin’ ‘er done. ;^) That whole Scot-Irish thing…
My guess is that culture plays a huge part of it. Most of the American crime, from what I understand, is in the inner cities, and then a large portion of it is black on black. I know, I’m a racist, and a sexist, and evil, and late for my Klan meeting, blah, blah, blah . . . but look at who’s been running the inner cities for the past 50 years and the culture that that’s produced. Politics and culture have consequences. Plus, Europe’s generally more homogenous societies probably has some effect. I’ve never seen but would be interested in a comparison of American inner city crime rates with the crime rates of the un-assimilated ethic ghettoes of Paris, Brussels, etc.
P-AMDO/
I would agree with you and liz, but with the modifier that while culture in general is a contributing cause I would insist that the political culture is dominant–at least here in the US. It is not solely a “black-white” inner city racial thing either. Practically every major city east of the Mississippi has seen the control of City Hall and the School Board in the hands of the Democrats almost exclusively with but few occasional short-lived interludes for the last 60 yrs–the 1st 30 by whites, the last 30 by blacks. The independent variable here being the Democratic party and it’s ideology. New Orleans is the classic example with both the mayor’s office and the school board having been held by Democrats since reconstruction let alone since WWII. Change THAT variable and chances are good that a statistical sea-change will follow.
And while it is true that the inner cities face many social pathologies now so entrenched as to be highly resistant to ANY approach to treatment that either party might take, the experience of NYC and the “broken window” approach to law enforcement shows that progress IS possible–as opposed to impossible
until all other social ills are remedied as many claim. It’s the old “when the water pipe has broken and the living room is flooded the first order of business is NOT to contemplate on what color and design the new replacement carpet should be.”
Virg
You know, read an interesting and what should have been obvious to me (but I’m a slow learner) concept today from “Democratic Capitalism and Its Discontents” by Brian Anderson. (Shameless book plug, it’s pretty good so far.) That concept is that determinism and morality are completely incompatible. Morality’s essence is choosing the right/better course of action in your life, whereas determinism as a social philosophy (whether its inspiration is economic determinism as in communism or “biological” as in evolution – there is NO morality in evolution/natural world) divorces you from the responsibility of your choices; you were bound to do that anyway. That nihilism and moral collapse result from a sense of determinism should be no surprise to those that have more than just a superficial belief in God.
While your point is taken about the inner cities in general, sadly I think there is a particularly virulent strain to the black community. From slavery to Jim Crow to liberal pandering blacks have definitely had a tough time of it if you ask me. While slavery and Jim Crow are obvious to our popular culture and don’t need any further exposition, what liberals have done to the black community since the civil rights movement is tell them incessantly and constantly that they are not at fault for the problems of their community. That white racism and the economic unfairness of capitalism have caused those problems. Culturally divorcing them from the responsibilities for their actions has caused even more havoc, as the rising black crime and illegitimacy rates have shown since the civil rights era. A few black leaders (too few) like Bill Cosby have been screaming the solution from the rooftops, blacks as a community have to see themselves as responsible for their own fates and not “victims” of institutional racism, economics, the “man” or whatever. This can work like it has in other successful minority communities. But this to date has tragically been drowned out by the chorus from the left of you are not responsible, there’s a comforting scapegoat for all your disappointments, and here’s a handout to make you feel better. So, line up for more “Obama Money.” I’m sure this time it’ll work.
Prowler wrote:
Not only have the social engineers preached the Gospel of Victimhood, but also the the idea that blacks can’t compete with whites on an even footing. That for some reason blacks needs special help – in job placement, admissions to universities, finances, you name it. Is it any wonder, with all that, that there are problems?
Well, the gun-free UK has a murder rate of about 4.5/100k. Figure I saw for the dripping-with-guns US, 2007, was about 5.5/100k. Not very different. Even if we take Flit’s 6.1/100k, it is not a huge difference, especially considering the very restrictive gun laws in the UK.
Now, the rate of violent crime is much higher in the UK and most of Europe. Over 25% of them can expect to be the victim of violent crime, as opposed to about 20% of Americans.
Flit pointed out Canada – keep in mind that Canada has a population less than that of California spread over a land area of a bit more that that of the US. That may have something to do with it.
Not on guns but AGW – Copenhagen may, in historical context, be the start of the official unravelling as described in the linked article. But, I expect the theory of AGW, like flat earth, phlogiston and communism is best for ensuring equality and prosperity, to last a good long while. Long enough for those who really just want to hold the steering wheel to further screw up the capitalist western economy, supported by their true believers. May the scales fall from their eyes one day – the sooner the better.
George V.
“Van Duyne”
Ah, a good Italian name, I see.
Fliterman,
Homicide rates are higher here than most of western Europe (if you include eastern Europe, however, the difference is miniscule). Guns are much more efficient weapons for killing if a person is so inclined. However, the rates of violent assault, burglary, robbery (unless the criteria is ‘armed robbery’ only) are lower here than most countries in Europe. So I don’t think it’s accurate that we are so more violent.
More food for thought (from an amicus brief filed by Criminologists, Social Scientists, [and] Other Distinguished scholars: Scholarshttp://www.abanet.org/publiced/preview/briefs/pdfs/07-08/07-290_RespondentAmCuCrimSocSciScholarnew.pdf
“A 2007 study compared gun ownership and murder in every European nation on which the data could be found. Again, nations with more guns did not exhibit higher murder rates. Indeed, the tendency is generally the opposite: murder rates for the seven nations having 16,000+ guns average out to 1.2 per 100,000 population while the murder rates for the nine nations having just 5,000 or fewer guns is well over three times higher, at 4.4 per 100,000. These national comparisons suggest that the determinants of murder are factors such as basic socio-economic and cultural factors, and not the mere availability of guns. Leading gun control advocates have admitted that “Israel and Switzerland [have] rates of homicide [that] are low despite rates of home firearm ownership that are at least as high as those noted in the U.S.” To the same effect, within Canada, “England, America and Switzerland, [the areas] with the highest rates of gun ownership are in fact those with the lowest rates of violence.”
Thought I’d add: The US also has fewer assault victims, as a percentage of the population, than France, the UK, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, or Canada. Nationmaster is a good reference for these things. Example here: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_ass_vic-crime-assault-victims
Liz – You tend to support my point that I posted above – “It is always great sport to sharp-shoot and cherry pick existing data – be it gun-control or climate data – while ignoring the vast remainder of data.” … as you did referencing nationmaster.
This shows that even when referencing the same source, one can indeed cherry pick, to cause two completely opposite conclusions. To wit:
Your link shows that the US has fewer assault victims than those other countries you list. But the nationmaster site also shows elsewhere that, while the US may have had fewer assault victims, the US paradoxically had more assaults per capita than all those countries you list. LINK This combined data gives a very different and conflicting picture, compared to cherry picked data, doesn’t it?
Okay, we have two sets of data. One assault victims lower here. The other, number of assaults, higher here. That would indicate that although the assault rate is higher there are fewer victims, correct? So the violence is concentrated in violent areas in the US rather than as widespread. Countering your claims.
Did you happen to see the values for burglary per capita? Robberies per capita? The real indicator is perception of safety walking at night. Look at that one. Interesting we feel so safe if it’s so “very very violent here”, per your claims, eh?
I think you’re hitting the nail on the head. Violence in America is very concentrated in certain areas and more widespread in Europe. Overall it’s higher in America but only because of these statistical “outlier” areas in the inner cities usually.
P-AMDO/
Only partly taking myself away from my Irish Coffee this Christmas morn, I thought you might like to hear a “cheery” (hah) story about such highly concentrated crime areas–or “no go” zones as they are called in Europe & the UK–from a few years ago pre-Katrina in New Orleans, and what it says for the overall tone of our modern-day culture:
One summer morn I was just leaving one of my favorite restaurants having just had breakfast when I encountered two bicyclists from NZ doing a city tour–male & female–who stopped me to ask for directions. For reference they hauled out their cycling maps prepared for them by their travel agents in NZ (or somewhere) with the various routes highlighted in red, marker etc. INSTANTLY as I first glanced them my heart sank to my stomach and a feeling of gloom and despair came over me with deja vue flashbacks. The maps looked in a way EXACTLY
like our Vietnam combat mission knee clip-board fold outs for a trip up North–only instead of the SAM and AAA batteries and their lethal radii being circled in colored markers, and other no-fly hot spots and hospitals, etc., crosshatched out, with the in-bound and egress routs marked with the IP, etc., their maps had the various housing projects and other “dangerous” parts of the city outlined in green with black cross-hatchings as “no-go” zones, etc. Their highlighted bike routes with near-by hospitals along the way encircled looking nothing so much as penetration and egress routes through deadly enemy territory that would enable them to safely wend their way through the “flak” of inner-city crime to safely visit the city’s cultural and recreational highlights (the targets.) I can’t begin to tell you what a disheartening, stomach-churning sight that was.. “So its come to this,” I glumly thought, “So its come to this…”
So with that little bit of Christmas cheer I’ll continue to go about putting lumps of coal in the stockings of all the kids still asleep….
Virg
Haha. Actually I’m imbibing in Irish Coffee right now too. Great minds and all. I guess that’s why I can laugh even though that’s a bit of a sad story. From growing up in LA I can tell you there are certainly no-go zones there too. It was a big deal locally but apparently not nationally since no one else in the Navy raised outside of LA seems to have heard about it, but the Ramparts division here awhile back started doing “street justice” to gang members who were either judged innocent by weak judges or whom they knew were guilty but knew they didn’t have enough for the local liberal judges. Illegal, yes, troubling as well. But for the year or two they were getting away with it it was actually working . . . life gives you tough choices it seems.
Anyway, today’s not the day to make them. Merry Christmas to all!
P.S. And in a weird coincidence my sister just got huge props, her Christmas gift to me was a 750 mL bottle of Hendrick’s Gin. Since I’m normally a Bombay Sapphire guy, that cherry will be popped later tonight and I’ll see if our gracious host is actually on to something.
Happy New Year’s too!
P-AMDO/
Bushmills or John Jameson? I’m a John J. guy myself (although I wouldn’t exactly spit out Mr. Bushmills if forced down my.., er, offered a drink.
)
Virgil
Bushmill’s actually, I’ll have to try to the John J. Hendrick’s, by the way, gets the seal of approval. A bit sweet relative to most gins, so I think for the martini I’ll stick with Bombay, but for a Gin and Tonic Hendrick’s definitely has the edge.
Look at manslaughters per capita. Don’t tell me none of this surprises you after what you wrote.
As Flit recognizes, it is intellectually lazy to compare Western European homicide rates to the US (thereby implicating gun ownership as the sole causal factor).
Just as important are immigration patterns, because immigrants arrive with their homicidal tendencies intact. Immigration to Western Europe is overwhelmingly legal, as it is almost impossible to find employment without resident status, tightly controlled. Contrast that with immigration to the US, and the high level of illegal immigration, much of it from countries with astronomical homicide rates. Let MS13 start immigrating to France, and see what happens to their homicide rates. Once Western Europe starts sharing a continent with countries like most of Central America, with homicide rates around 50/100K population, and almost no barriers to immigration, then I will listen to comparisons. For now, I’ll trust S&W instead of agenda driven political scientists.
Another item – there is also some evidence that, at least in the UK, there has been deliberate under-reporting of violent crime, especially in immigrant communities.
Scott
I think you’re also on to something. However I’m not sure that all immigration into European countries is legal. The extremely high muslim unemployment rates throughout most of Europe is highly linked to those communities brining in people from the home country illegally who then can’t get a job other than in the black economy. The European unassimilated ghettoes are also relatively violent and dang near unpoliced (same as many American inner cities unfortunately.) Sometimes the “civil society” of those communities includes de facto Sharia Law that the host country has just decided to live with. They are practically exclaves of the immigrant culture with little or no host country day to day government (sure the roads may get paved but that’s about it.) I wouldn’t be surprised if crime is under-reported there.
Actually, the banlieus around Paris that are so much of the problem, are mainly populated by third and fourth generation Franco-Maghrebis — offspring of legal immigrants from France’s former colonies in North Africa during the seventies. The French are serious about ending illegal immigration — they just enacted a law permitting the jailing of illegals up to eighteen months. And the illegal immigrants they do have — mainly from non-EU European states (Romania, Bulgaria, etc.) don’t come with the propensity for homicide that we get with our illegals from Central America.
Scott
Yeah, actually you are right. In retrospect that’s one of the scarier things about the internal rot of Western Civilization, that in Europe it’s the third and fourth generations which tend to provide more recruits for the radicals.
Flit seems to be engaging in the typical “blame the tool, not the person” game, injecting animistic or shamanistic religious beliefs into a civil rights discussion. Somehow it isn’t the person that is responsible for violence, it is always the tool, especially if it is a firearm. This is not anything new, it has been going on for centuries (blaming the tool). I believe it was Lucius Annaeus Seneca who said something like ‘A sword does not commit murder, it is only a tool in the hands of the man who does.’
Then we have
The point isn’t which nations are .004% higher or lower in what sort of crime. The point is what violence is NEVER the fault of the tool used. And, we see over and over that preventing honest citizens from exercising their natural right of survival (self defense) with the most effective means they have at their disposal, results in more violent crime. Again, nothing new. See the words of Cesare Beccaria:
We have seen that in the past century in the UK. The first anti-gun laws were put in in the 1920s (to prevent murders by the IRA). Didn’t work. And by increments, the laws in the UK have gotten more and more restrictive, until they effectively have a national gun ban. Yet, in spite of all the bans, violence there continues to increase. Why? The common line, that removing guns will cause significant decreases in violent crime, seems to not have worked in the UK. Nor has it worked in Australia, where violent crime has seen huge increases, even though, again, guns are pretty effectively banned for most citizens.
Of course the anti-civil rights lobby cries “But the thugs still have guns!” Well,yeah, they do. Criminals kind of by definition ignore the law, as Mr. Beccaria noted so well in the mid-1700s. Only the honest citizens comply with those criminal-empowerment laws, leaving them open to predation by the thugs.
But wine does make you drunk! And a spoon made Rosie O’Donnell fat!
(Wow, Irish coffee is great stuff isn’t it? Cheers!)
The wine gets drunk and you get drunker.
Take a look at the crime rate in the People’s Republic of Vermont here in New England. They allow concealed carry without a permit, and have the 49th lowest crime rate of the 50 states. Who would commit a robbery when almost anyone might be armed?
BATFE puts out a booklet with all the state firearms laws. The laws of VT take up about a page and a half, some of which replicates Federal law. The state laws there pretty much boil down to “Don’t use a firearm to aid in the commission of a crime. Don’t be stupid with them either.” And it works just fine.
Ever so enlightened California has, as of the 2005 version, 46 or 48 pages in the publication. Even our state DOJ can’t figure them out. One guy I know wrote to the CADOJ to ask about a certain AR varient he wanted to buy, it used an off-list lower. The letter he got back was a beauty. Said that as far as the STATE was concerned, yes, it was perfectly legal, go for it. BUT..,maybe check with your County District Attorney, as some of them may say that it is not legal to own. So…not only do we have the CA law to worry about, we have the laws in 58 counties, which may or may not be the same. What point of having a state law on it then?