"Let the Good Times Roll!"

Last year, Bobby Jindal, Gov. of LA, signed six gun bills into law. He wrote, “We’re not just signing a few bills.... we’re also celebrating the Sportsman’s Paradise and American values...” One of the six bills that Jindal signed allows the state’s citizens to apply for concealed carry handgun permits that will last their entire lifetimes. Louisiana also has an “open carry” law, which permits citizens to walk around and openly carry their guns with no need for a permit. It wasn't one of the new laws, but just so you know, a permit is not required to purchase a handgun in Louisiana. 

Then, in May of this year, Jindal singed another five gun bills into law. One of these bills modified the state's stolen firearms code to reduce the penalty for possessing a stolen weapon if you simply say you didn’t know it was stolen. But the worst of all was the law allowing loaded weapons to be carried into bars and restaurants that serve alcohol. You can imagine what was bound to happen once that bill became law (I will get to that in a moment).

On June 18, 2014, about a month after Gov. Jindal signed the law allowing people to carry loaded weapons in bars, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention published statistics that revealed:

• Guns kill more people per capita in Louisiana than in any other state.
• High rates of gun deaths in Louisiana and other states correlate with weak gun protection laws and high gun ownership.

In other words, states with lax gun control laws have more gun deaths than do states with stricter gun control laws. Why is this correlation so hard for some people to understand?

Now, allowing drunks to carry loaded weapons is a really bad idea. Any person, even the Governor of Louisiana, should have known that something bad was bound to happen. Well, that bad something happened this past weekend in New Orleans (NOL). The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported that at approximately 2:45AM on June 29, 2014 (you know nothing good is going to happen at that time of day), two men, after leaving a bar, got into a gunfight with each other on the French Quarters’ famous Bourbon Street. I can't help but picture the scene near the end of the movie, “High Noon,” when the Sheriff, Gary Cooper, and the bad guy, Lee Van Cleef, face-off against each other in the middle of the street. But they hadn’t been drinking, it was a respectable hour of the day, and all of the town folks were hiding behind closed doors. On Bourbon Street it was two drunks and a lot of people still out partying at an ungodly hour. Of course, drinking until almost 3:00 in the morning is bound to throw off one’s aim. As a result, the many bystanders were sent diving into open and still-bustling bars and nightclubs for cover.

After the smoke cleared on Bourbon Street, nine of the bystanders (they must have been the slowest of the group) lay wounded in the street. The two shooters were nowhere to be found. Of the nine injured, two are listed in critical condition.

When asked to comment on the Bourbon St. shooting (the NRA would rather the media not use the word "shooting" because it implies that a gun was used. Duh, that's why they are called shootings!), Louisiana’s Lt. Gov., Jay Dardenne, said, “I don’t believe this one incident will keep people from coming to the city of New Orleans.” Dardenne went on to say that New Orleans' worst crimes were usually outside the French Quarter, but “This is obviously a glaring exception.” No shit, Sherlock! The crimes outside the French Quarter must be some really hellacious ones because the French Quarter is definitely not a “low crime” area. The Lt. Governor must not have seen the NOL Crime Map for the week 6/24/14 to 7/1/14 (one week). I’ve stuck in a copy below this paragraph.

 

Where the action is!

You can’t actually see the French Quarter on the map because it's covered with those little icons representing locations where crimes were committed during the week (please note that the map’s legend indicates that I did not select any "victimless" crimes to be displayed). The map looks like someone fenced all of the criminals up insinde the French Quarter to keep crime from spilling out into the rest of the city.

Here is another map showing areas where NOL murders (NOT just homicides) are “clustered.”

Most likely places to get murdered in NOL

Once called “America’s Murder Capital,” New Orleans has seen the murder rate decrease from 63.6 murders per 100,000 people in 2008 down to 42 murders per 100,000 people in 2013. Chicago’s murder rate in 2013 was only 15.2 murders per 100,000. That makes Chicago safer than New Orleans when considering the odds of getting murdered (NOTE: Chicago had more murders than NOL but Chicago has a lot more people; about 9.5 million in the Chicago metro area vs. 1.2 million in the NOL metro area).

Louisiana has more gun violence per capita than any other state in the nation. Based on data from the Center for American Progress, the FBI's Uniform Crime Report, and various news outlets (with state gun laws compiled by the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action) the ten states having the most gun violence are Louisiana, Alaska, Alabama, Arizona, Mississippi, South Carolina, New Mexico, Missouri, Arkansas, and Georgia (in that order). Did you notice the number of Southern states? Seven if you count Missouri, six if you don't. Do you know why? Yes, because it is hot in those states (Alaska must be an outlier)! Not to mention that they have very lax gun laws and a whole bunch of guns per capita. In fact, none of the ten states require permits to purchase handguns. It's a recipe for violence.

So, if anyone is considering a little vacation in NOL, please don't venture from the “safety” of the French Quarter. Oh, and while celebrating in the French Quarter you may want to consider wearing ballistic (bullet-proof) clothing.

Where's the Anger?

To paraphrase Mario Piperni (www.mariopiperni.com):

(mariopiperni.com)

Statistic #1:  Since the beginning of the Iraq/Afghanistan wars on 3/19/03 (almost 11 years now), there have been 6,618 Americans killed in those wars.

Statistic #2:  In the year 2011 (1 year), there were 8,583 Americans killed by firearms in the US.

Question:  Why are we not AT LEAST as outraged by the second statistic as we are by the first?

Guns May Not Kill People, But People WITH Guns Certainly Do!

In a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school this morning, 27 26 innocent people, 18 20 of them children, were shot and killed.  An unknown number were wounded.  Apparently there were two adult shooters, one of which is dead and a manhunt is on for a second shooter.

This was a most horrible and cowardly act.  It was not the first mass murder of school children nor was it the worst to have happened in the history of this country.   There have actually been 128 school shootings/bombings recorded in the past 150 years.  

On May 18, 1927 in Bath Township, Michigan a disgruntled school board treasurer set off 3 bombs in the Bath Elementary School.  There were 45 people killed, including the bomber himself.  At least 58 people were injured and 38 of the dead were elementary school children.  This was the deadliest mass murder in a school in U.S. history.

The Virginia Tech massacre on April 16, 2007, was the second largest school shooting with 32 killed and 17 wounded.  It is the deadliest shooting incident by a SINGLE shooter in U.S. history.  The Columbine High School massacre of April 20, 1999, in Littleton, Colorado involved 2 shooters who killed 12 students and 1 teacher.  An additional 21 students were wounded.

The best records of school-involved killings worldwide show that 77 such incidents have taken place since the year 1966.  Of these 77 school murders, three-quarters (58) of them have taken place in the U.S.  The weapons of choice most often (approximately 75% of the time) have been semi-automatic handguns and assault weapons.  Revolvers and shotguns makeup the remaining approximately 25%.

The killings are not limited to our schools.  But, hopefully, today’s tragedy will give one pause to think about how the US has become such a shooting gallery.  Why are Americans so quick to pull the trigger on fellow Americans?  If this question could be answered, perhaps a solution could be found.

The United States does not have the worst homicide rate in the world, far from it actually.  However, if one only considers the “first world” countries, which we tend to regard as modern and civilized, the US homicide rate is 3 to 4 times that of the other “first world" countries.  Here are some examples as reported by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC):

Homicides per 100,000 population from 1960 to present:

US                  4.2

Canada           1.6

UK                 1.2

France             1.1

Australia         1.0

China              1.0

Italy                 0.9

Germany         0.8

Spain               0.8

Switzerland     0.7

Austria            0.6

Japan              0.3

It is impossible not to bring up the topic of Gun Control in this discussion.   There is actually less gun control now than in the past.  In the past four years, across 37 states, 99 laws have been placed on the books making guns actually easier to own, carry in public, and harder for the government to track.  These laws have caused dramatic changes.  Here are some examples:

Concealed carry is now permitted in 49 of the 50 states.  That in it self is not so terribly bad.  It’s the conditions under which one may or may not carry a weapon which seem to have gone too far.

Although 21 states have an outright ban on concealed weapons on campuses, there are 7 states that allow concealed weapons on college campuses.  These states are Colorado, Mississippi, Oregon, Utah, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Virginia.

The other 21 states have taken the easy way out by leaving the question of concealed carry on campus up to the individual universities and colleges to decide.

In addition to college campuses, some states even allow concealed carry in bars and restaurants serving alcohol. 

In Missouri, a “law-abiding” citizen can even carry a gun while intoxicated and can even fire it if “acting in self-defense”.

In Kansas, permit holders can carry concealed weapons inside K-12 schools and at school-sponsored functions.

In Utah, a person under felony indictment can buy a gun, and a person charged with a violent crime may be allowed to retain his concealed weapon permit.

In Louisiana and 19 other states, permit holders are allowed to carry concealed weapons inside houses of worship.

Virginia law states that weapons are allowed in churches unless a service is taking place, in which case they are only allowed if there is “good and sufficient reason.” The law does not go on to list possible reasons a gun might be needed during a church service.

Virginia has also repealed a law that required handgun vendors to submit sales records.  In addition, the state also ordered the destruction of all such previous records.

More than a dozen states now allow people to bring their guns to work, however, usually on the condition that they remain stored in their vehicle.  The Governor of Indiana signed a law that bans employers from telling their employees they can’t have guns in their cars on the job only two weeks after an Indiana employee was given fifteen years in prison for attempting (and failing) to shoot his boss after a meeting concerning his subpar performance.

There are nearly 300,000,000 (300 MILLION) firearms in the US.  At 88.8 firearms per 100 people, the US has the highest rate of gun ownership by civilians than any other country in the world.  Second place is held by Yemen, with 54.8 per 100 people.  Then there is Switzerland with 45.7 and Finland with 45.3.  No other country has a rate above 40 firearms per 100 people.

We love our guns.  We enjoy shooting our guns.  But should we have so many?  Especially the semi-automatics and assault weapons?  How do we keep Americans from shooting and killing other Americans in such alarming numbers?  I think these questions must be seriously considered by civilized people if we are to remain a civilized people.