- Now this is something. Cracked, which is normally entertaining as all get out but relentlessly anti-gun, points out the five biggest reasons “gun control” in the U.S. is a lost cause. Decent points they make, too.
- Looks as if last Friday’s attempt to dump those FBI/Hillary documents invisibly before a holiday weekend is backfiring, reflecting even more on the fibbies than on Hillary. It’s clear that FBI agents were ordered to go incredibly easy on the crook. And Comey’s once sterling (though never deserved) reputation for being an honorable man has gone off the cliff it edged toward when he first announced (I paraphrase), “She’s guilty as sin but she’s a Clinton so she gets a pass.”
- Is it a sign of progress that the media now reports on an LP candidate’s gaffe with speculation about whether it will sink his obscure candidacy? It has certainly led to some great laughs in major media Gaffeland
- That’s it. We really have fallen down the rabbit hole into Wonderland. The American Legion — you know, all those uber-conservative old men and women — has called for the rescheduling of cannabis. Empathy for PTSD sufferers appears to be the quite sensible driver.
- SAF — and bless Alan Gura — announces announce a legal victory for gun owners (or would-be gunowners) with minor convictions on their records. Appeals-court level only, but hopeful.
- Companies are finally fighting back against interest-group shakedowns.
- Well, here’s a great big non-surprise for ya: Obamacare’s expansion of Medicaid shrank the economies of participating states. Oh, but surely it helped the health of the poor people in those states! Um … nope.
- True? John Lott, in his new book, says that over a 60-year period from 1950 to 2010 not a single mass shooting happened in a place where people could arm themselves. This definitely looks like a good book to read (everything by Lott is worth reading, but this one sounds like particularly good ammo for discussions with antis). But is that claim accurate? First thing that comes to my mind is the Texas tower massacre where armed civilians were certainly present (and one helped police stop the murderer). The bad guy there simply managed to grab extremely defensible high ground. I expect Lott deals with that case. And maybe our resident Texan gun guy will have better information than I do.
The majority of Whitman’s shooting occurred before the armed citizenry could respond. Many of those who responded came from home after hearing the news on the radio, or went home, got rifles, and responded to the area.
Whitman initially shot from over the parapet wall. Ground fire then had him try the rather-large drain holes at the base of the wall. A shift of ground fire then forced him away from them.
Best efforts were those from the south side of the Tower. They drove Whitman from use of that side, and the main result was that the two policeman and the Vet could safely exit the office onto the observation deck. Absent the ground fire, Whitman could have controlled that door.
Even law enforcement people used personal deer rifles. All that the Austin PD had were the old semi-autos in .30 Remington. Anybody closer to the Tower than some 300 to 400 yards were at a disadvantage because of the angle.
Sorta irrelevant, but his longest kill was at some 420 yards. I observed a near miss at around 550 yards. The 6mm Remington has longer legs than many imagine.
Gun control? How do you control this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umrUYRt6vJ0&feature=youtu.be
Well, you have to see how Lott defines “where people could arm themselves.”
During the tower shooting civilians on the ground retrieved rifles and fired back. They were credited for restricting the killer’s field of fire and saving lives. Also, one civilian with a rifle, Allen Crum, accompanied the officers and helped end the killing.
So people at the scene were able to arm themselves with rifles.
However, if you’re talking about self-defense handguns, Texas was a no-legal-carry-no-way state until the concealed handgun law allowed CHLs to carry. That was January 1, 1996, thirty years after the August 1, 1966, Tower shooting. It was also after the October 16, 1991, shooting in the Killeen Luby’s.
I also note that the Tower shooting is not the “first campus mass murder,” or even the first one that summer. Eight student nurses were stabbed and strangled in their dorm in Illinois (a state that remained “gun-free” until 2014) on July 15, 1966.
As far as I know the first campus mass murder in the US was also the worst–in Bath, Michigan in 1927. The killer used explosives.
Crum’s rifle was an M1 Carbine that one of the cops had taken away from a National Guard guy who’d brought it from home.
Dubya’s signing of the CHL bill was good. At long last, I was legal!
More on Clinton’s email: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/sep/6/the-302-makes-it-more-certain-hillary-clinton-isnt/
And a new meaning for religious freedom: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/sep/8/religious-freedom-religious-liberty-just-code-word/