David Kopel peddles the Kool-Aid from abroad, pointing out at this late date (hat tip: Daniel Weintraub) the same weaknesses of Arnold’s gun control platform that I raised two weeks ago and Luis Tolley, California’s top gun-grabber, raised earlier still. before. All four stem from Arnold’s August 27 interview with Sean Hannity (audio link). To recap:

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Now that Peter “Miguel” Camejo and Annoyingarianna are thinking of withdrawing from the race [UPDATE: Annoyingarianna's out], and all Republicans except a few hard-core Tomikazes are lining up against [ouch!] behind Ahnold, it now appears likely that the Governator will get more votes than Gray-Out Davis will in next week’s election. Even if that doesn’t happen, it’s almost certain that the combined Republican votes for Schwarzenegger and McClintock will dwarf Davis’s “mandate,” which in turn will also dwarf Bustamecha’s.

For this reason, I think now is an excellent time to begin publicly mocking the Taxpayers

Here’s another reason to always read the news defensively. The front-page description of an article on health insurance in today’s SF Chronicle tells the reader that “huge numbers” were uncovered showing that California “leads the nation” in residents without health insurance. Similarly, the article itself carries this headline:

State No. 1 in lack of health coverage

More uninsured — 6.4 million — than any other state

Hmm, I wonder what that is. Could it be that California has more uninsured poeple than any other state, for the same reason that it also has more SUV owners, gun owners, teachers, cops, drug dealers, doctors, lawyers and prostitutes than any other state?

The real news of the article is that California’s uninsured rate is 18.2%, which is somewhat higher than the national rate of 15.2%, assuming that the national and state numbers were computed using identical methodology. Data on other states is not included, so there’s no way to know for sure if California’s uninsured rate actually “leads the nation” in any meaninful sense. In fact, it’s not even clear from the article that our state is worse than the national average; illegal immigration alone could account for a difference of well over 3%.