Apparently, the Second Amendment isn’t the only part of the Bill of Rights the State of New York thinks should be subject to a prohibitive amount of red tape. Now, as to a group of anti-war protestors, Mayor Bloomberg’s henchmen appear to be taking a similar approach to the First Amendment, by stalling the permit process until after the march is scheduled to take place. Worse yet, the New York Sun apparently agrees with this sleazy tactic. If you believe in freedom of expression, as I do, you might want to consider signing this petition. I don’t know how seriously politicians take these things, but it’s quick and easy to do, so why not?

I was a bit disappointed to see that most of the signatories who added comments took an anti-war position, as opposed to supporting the First Amendment per se. One person even suggested that we “impeach bush for treasom!” as if George Bush had anything to do with New York City government anyway. On the other hand, I have read some more eloquent statements in other fora, such as this article by Eugene Volokh. A well-written article in the National Review will probably reach more people than any online petition ever will.

I think I may owe an apology to the person I mocked for recommending Bush be impeached for “treasom.” As this letter to the Orange County Register will indicate (scroll down to the second letter), I’m a fine one to talk about people making up nonexistent words. My guess is that this letter was the first time (and, with any luck, the last) that any newspaper will ever print such a horrible non-word as “schmimminent.”

If you’ve bought at least one new CD retail in the USA between 1/1/1995 and 12/22/00 and haven’t yet submitted a claim, you have until March 3, 2003 to do it.

Upon encountering this article in yesterday’s L.A. Times (requires free registration), my first instinct was to fisk it to death. After all, it repeated almost all of the standard lies, half-truths, and other fallacies that typify gun control arguments, so it provided plenty of fodder for that. Examples:

• The under-motivated criminal. In this case, we are asked to believe that a deranged woman, who was not deterred by laws against murder, would somehow have been (1) deterred by a law against private ownership of handguns, and (2) too stupid to think of any lawful alternatives to a handgun (e.g., a long gun).
• Slanted terminology. The article makes frequent references to the “gun lobby.” Suppose I submitted an op-ed piece to the Daily MonopolyLos Angeles Times decrying the excesses of the “abortion lobby” or the “speech lobby.” What are the chance that they’d publish that?
• The “weapon of choice.” Usually the so-called “weapon of choice” is a “Saturday Night Special,” an “assault” weapon, or some other made-up category the anti-gun-owner lobby is trying to demonize to pit one law-abiding gun owner against another. This time, it’s a basic caliber, 9 millimeter, that gets this dubious honor. What will they go after next? Pepper spray? Every other legal product that has ever been used to commit an illegal act?
• Substitution of irrelevant details for any potentially useful facts. “I cannot tell you where this brutality came from … but I can tell you where the gun came from.” Neato. Perhaps you can also tell us the exact price paid for the gun, how much the state vs. county collected in sales tax, what particular alloy was used in manufacturing it, or what possessed this incredibly stupid killer to purchase her gun through a legitimate source rather than obtain something much cheaper, with no waiting period or sales tax, through the black market, as any other self-respecting criminal would.
• Ignoring the obvious. Price writes that “[g]un deaths account for 65% of homicides nationally, and more than 70% in California.” IOW, California, a state that severely restricts firearm ownership, not only has a higher overall murder rate, it even has a higher rate among those particular murders that are committed with the very firearms our legislature seems so intent on protecting us from. Oops! How bad does this number have to get before anyone will recognize that California’s gun laws may actually be contributing to the problem they were supposed to solve? Or are we to assume that every failure of gun control merely proves the need for more gun control?
• Completely ignoring one side of the equation. Price goes on and on about how many murders are committed with guns, how easily she thinks all those legally owned guns can be confiscated, yadda yadda yadda. Completely absent from the analysis is how many new crimes are frustrated by armed citizens, which would necessarily be enabled if everyone’s guns were taken away. The best estimates (Kleck, Lott, and countless others) suggest that somewhere between 1 million and 2.5 million potential crimes are prevented by armed citizens in the United States every year. The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report yields a substantially lower figure, but one that is nevertheless substantially higher than any credible estimate of the number of crimes committed with guns. But Price doesn’t get into this issue; instead, she simply wishes it away and argues her position as though that number were zero.

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