March 31, 2003
Night of the Short Knives
Terry Egan passes this along to me; lunacy from the European Union:
The Adam Smith Institute has denounced the latest batch of EU regulations as yet another example of economic illiteracy. It singles out the new requirement, imposed by EU Safety Commissioner Senator Fapirollo, that the maximum length of knife blades permitted within the EU after 1 January 2004 will be 10cm (approx 4 inches).
Even Stalin and Hitler hadn't thought of that little gem of legislation.
Whoraldo Rivera must go
I'm getting really sick of Geraldo/Jerry Rivera/Rivers/Rambo. Looks like he finally screwed the pooch: the Pentagon has him under investigation for having "shared" maneuver plans for the 101st Airborne on air. Ooops.
It'll be good to see the whore get kicked off the Fox Network. I'll bet his cohorts on Fox, who are already going to great lengths to say that Rivers is "...with the 101st but not officially embedded with the armed forces".
A few weeks ago I saw this moron sign off on a live report from Afghanistan, handing off to Fox's Orlando Salinas, saying "gracias, Amigo!". Salinas, a real Latino, was visibly taken aback, but managed to maintain his gentlemanly composure.
Moron. Hope he gets the boot soon. Can't happen fast enough for me.
NRA weighs in on the Ronald Dixon case
A reader, Roger Bjerke, sent me email today with a record of his interaction with the national NRA vis-a-vis the Ronald Dixon case on which I've commented a couple of times here, here, and here. Reprinted below with Roger's permission.
Here is an email I sent to the DA, which I cc'ed to the NRA, and the NRA's response. Looks like they are ready to help, if asked.Mr. Hynes,
Just what is going on in that part of the country? Has Hillary's influence clouded common sense? Ronald Dixon should be honored by the city for protecting his family, not persecuted and prosecuted. Whenever I think I've read it all, I come across something so utterly ridiculous that it is on the verge of lunacy. This is one such case.Roger
North DakotaDear Roger,
Thank you for contacting us. We are aware of Mr. Dixon's situation and we offered our help. We will follow the case very closely as it is of great interest to the NRA and to the firearms community. In the mean time, we would gladly consider any requests from either Mr. Dixon or his legal representation, but we would not wish to insert ourselves into his personal situation uninvited. Thank you very much for your support and please feel free to contact us if you ever need anything else!
Best regards,
Don [last name not given]
NRA Member Communications
11250 Waples Mill Rd.
Fairfax, VA 22030
Quote of the day
Dogs could not be used in the streets in the manner many Jews were treated. One circumstance among others put an end to the ill-usage of the Jews. About the year 1787 Daniel Mendoza, a Jew, became a celebrated boxer and set up a school to teach the art of boxing as a science. The art soon spread among young Jews and they became generally expert at it. The consequence was in a very few years seen and felt too. It was no longer safe to insult a Jew unless he was an old man and alone. But even if the Jews were unable to defend themselves, the few who would now be disposed to insult them merely because they are Jews, would be in danger of chastisement from the passers-by and of punishment from the police.
Francis Place, Improvement of the Working Classes (1834) as quoted in Robert Kiefer Webb, Modern England: From the 18th Century to the Present (1970).
March 30, 2003
(Another) Quote of the day
Intellectuals can tell themselves anything, sell themselves any bill of goods, which is why they were so often patsies for the ruling classes in nineteenth-century France and England, or twentieth-century Russia and America.
Quote of the day
The New Age? It's just the old age stuck in a microwave oven for fifteen seconds.
James Randi
March 29, 2003
Quote of the day
The ultimate in disposing one's troops is to be without ascertainable shape. Then the most penetrating spies cannot pry in nor can the wise lay plans against you.
Sun Tzu
The Art of War, p100
March 28, 2003
Quote of the day
On March 28, 1797 Nathaniel Briggs patented a rotary clothes washing machine, thereby doing more for female liberation than any bunch of screeching, anti-male, feminist harpies you could name.
March 27, 2003
Quote of the day
It's important to note that Lincoln didn't free a single slave. They didn't tell you this in grade school, but the Emancipation Proclamation didn't apply to the northern states, where there were plenty of slaves. (Slaves were kept busy rebuilding the Capitol dome all throughout the war.) Nor did it apply to the border states; Lincoln exempted them because they might have been offended by it and joined the Rebellion. It only "applied" to those states Lincoln didn't control.
March 26, 2003
Geoff Metcalf on the Michael Dresser show today 1700 PST
Teri Seago has just now alerted friends that mutual friend Geoff Metcalf will be speaking today on the Michael Dresser radio show from 5pm Pacific time. This will be interested for a number of reasons, one of which (I've just discovered) is that Michael Dresser runs his show from Fairbanks, Alaska, broadcast on local station KFAR AM 660. From what I can tell, a large proportion of his audience is composed of those of us in other locales, listened via streaming audio.
Quote of the day
If the officers spend their shifts in fear that the average middle-aged motorist is hoping for a chance to pull out a little .25 and plug them, why did they volunteer for this line of work? None of them were drafted.
Or why don't they at least lobby heavily (don't tell me they don't lobby the legislatures; they do it all the time) to end the War on Drugs and the War on Guns and all these revenue-seeking traffic stops, whereupon they could simply go back to answering emergency calls and chasing violent felons?
March 25, 2003
Losing her Bloginity: Claire Wolfe joins the blogosphere
A big welcome to Claire Wolfe! Took her long enough.
Quote of the day
O'Neill: "Alright, basic survival training. We know what we have, what do we need?"
Teal'c: "We have the Stargate. We need the Dial Home Device."
O'Neill: "Thank you, Teal'c."
Stargate SG-1
"Torment of Tantalus"
March 24, 2003
Quote of the day
It is a long time now since Lon Horiuchi shot Vicky Weaver in the face while she was holding her child in her arms, but that is something most people would like to forget. Horiuchi still walks free with that on his conscience. The law cannot reach him, but there are many who do not forget.
March 23, 2003
M-16/AR-15 KB ("ka-boom"): learn the signs
Thanks to Steve Pegram for passing along this tale of an M-16 kb. Learn the signs!
This is eerily familiar to my experience with S&B ammo in a Glock 23 a few months ago.
Quote of the day
...after a few years of this, I learned to question their authority. When I finally asked why I should bother to show up, I was told that if I didn't attend my mother would be put in jail, I would be put into foster care, and I'd be in reform school anyway. This did wonders for my motivation to cooperate, instilling a passive-aggressive capability and instinctive resistance to arbitrary rules. It also completely removed the velvet glove of "education" that cloaks their gauntlets of iron and lead.
At 12, I passed the highschool graduation tests. Again I asked why I should bother to continue to attend, and was told that I would not be allowed to get my diploma or GED until after "my" class graduated. Until then, the same laws applied. Another veil of illusion lifted, I was in prison for no other reason than that I was young.
March 22, 2003
MOOREWATCH - Watching Michael Moore's every move
Someone's finally done it: a site dedicated to watchdogging that noxious pile of festering Oscar-nominee-waste-of-protoplasm, "documentarian" Michael Moore:
MOOREWATCH is dedicated to unearthing the truth behind the doublespeak and falsehood that spews from the mouth (and keyboard) of Michael Moore on a regular basis. Moore is a disingenuous danger to this country, and his assumptions and assertions should not go unchallenged. The collective expertise and research abilities of the entire Internet are more than enough to debunk most of the nonsense Moore regularly puts forth as fact, and we at MOOREWATCH hope to be the clearinghouse for this information.
One to watch; thanks to Ian Hamet.
Der Schokoladen Flieger
Here's a great little vignette: the story of retired USAF Col. Gail Halvorsen, AKA "The Candy Bomber", the most famous pilot of the Berlin Airlift.
Quote of the day
Whatever the more nihilistic historians may claim, history does reveal certain regularities in our behaviour. One of these is that, whenever large numbers of intelligent people agree that it can only get better, the world takes a turn decidedly for the worse. The poets of the Augustan age saw that the present was better than the past, and thought the good times would continue. Instead, the Roman world got Tiberius, Caligula, Nero and Domitian. When Constantine became a Christian, Eusebius insisted this would herald an age of peace and justice. Within a century, Augustine was having to write at immense length to show how this had only apparently not happened. The Enlightenment is famous for its optimism, and we all know it ended with the Terror and a quarter century of bloodletting across Europe. The Victorian belief in progress was knocked on the head at the Somme and Passchendael, and quietly expired in the extermination camps and the Gulag.
...unlike spots and bad breath, high civilisation is not something that comes about naturally for us. It is a product of depressingly unusual circumstances. These circumstances cannot be created by act of human will, though they can be destroyed; and they cannot be called back once they have gone.
March 21, 2003
The Horror of Blimps
Thanks to Steve Pegram for passing on this dire warning. I needed the lift, so to speak...
Quote of the day
'Nature rejects the monarch, not the man;
The subject, not the citizen; for kings
And subjects, mutual foes, forever play
A losing game into each other's hands,
Whose stakes are vice and misery. The man
Of virtuous soul commands not, nor obeys.
Power, like a desolating pestilence,
Pollutes whate'er it touches; and obedience,
Bane of all genius, virtue, freedom, truth,
Makes slaves of men, and of the human frame
A mechanized automaton.'
Percey Shelley
Queen Mab
March 20, 2003
Quote of the day
As for sneering at the bourgeoisie, it is a sophomoric grab at status with no claim to moral or political virtue. The fact is that the values of the middle class - personal responsibility, devotion to family and neighborhood, avoidance of macho violence, respect for liberal democracy - are good things, not bad things. Most of the world wants to join the bourgeoisie, and most artists are members in good standing who adopted a few bohemian affectations. Given the history of the twentieth century, the reluctance of the bourgeoisie to join mass utopian uprisings can hardly be held against them.
Steven Pinker, via Brian Micklethwait
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
March 19, 2003
Quote of the day
A typical scene in an American McDojo: a man in fighting pajamas stands in a deep front stance and stares stoically ahead. His arms are chambered down near his waist to ensure that they won't get in the way of anyone attempting to hit his face. Suddenly, he emits a sharp barking sound, lunges forward, and strikes the air in front of him with lightning speed and questionable hand positioning. To the untrained eye, it looks like he has perhaps executed some sort of hugely impractical block or strike. To the learned observer, he has in fact ripped out his opponent's throat, shattered his knee, and smashed him into the pavement. This interpretive exercise is known as "bunkai", which can be remembered as being derived from the root word "bunk".
March 18, 2003
Pic from recent Bill Atkins seminar
Thanks to Michael Duey for sending me this digipic he captured at a recent training event with Bujinkan shihan Bill Atkins.
I've cropped the face of my victim training partner per request of He Who Must Not Be Named (AKA "Robert"), who's tangled in my training kyoketsu shoge ("ring & dagger"), a most amusing weapon system.
Quote of the day
The entry level for the second-oldest of all professions is often the municipal government. To a lot of people, running for Congress, the Senate, or the Presidency may seem a bit ambitious, even arrogant—like deciding to become a novelist. But the idea of your next door neighbor the shoe salesman running for city council seems as American as pizza or burritos. You can't imagine anybody voting for him, but before you know it, you find yourself down at City Hall in the council chambers, begging this cretin not to tax your windows by the square inch.
Meanwhile, the cretins who got in before him are already telling you how often to cut your lawn, when to run your fireplace, how long you can park your car in front of your own house, and what you can do in your backyard behind a six-foot wooden fence. Fail to comply, they show up bright and early on your doorstep with a summons and a nasty little cop, her elbows just quivering to snatch that 9mm Glock 17 out of her racing holster, fill you with tiny holes, reload, and do it all again.
March 17, 2003
Mariko Kage's review of "The Hunted"
[This is new contributor Mariko Kage's first blog post. Welcome! - Ed.]
I just went to watch "The Hunted", which opened Friday night. I highly recommend it.
The Fandango movie synopsis says: "The Hunted is a suspense-thriller about a deep woods tracker (Tommy Lee Jones) who teams up with a female FBI agent (Connie Nielsen) to hunt down a trained assassin (Benicio Del Toro). The killer remains one step ahead, and escapes into the city."
Tommy Lee Jones plays L.T. Bonham, a Tom Brown-like character and Benicio Del Toro is Aaron Hallam, a former soldier tormented by his experiences in Kosovo where he was an eyewitness to genocide. L.T., a tracker in British Columbia, once trained soldiers like Aaron for secret ops in the U.S. military. He explains to the FBI agent played by Nielsen, who is investigating the murder of hunters: "I trained him to survive, I trained him to kill." The movie is partially based on the life of Tom Brown, who has trained, among others, Richard Marcinko and SEAL Team Six.
One of the tracking scenes take place in Oregon's Cascade mountains, where Aaron hunts deer hunters, armed with only a knife. By the way, he uses a TOPS knife custom-designed by Tom Brown and prominently featured in the movie several times (see cover story in April issue of Blade magazine). I have been told that all the knife throwing in the movie was done by Tom Brown himself (with whom I recently trained).
Those who have trained at his Tracker School would appreciate the shots of Benicio using the hand drill, creating a tinder bundle, forging a knife, camouflaging in wilderness and in urban environments, and the attention paid to the art of tracking in general as well as several scenes of knife fighting. I read a terrible review by the L.A. Times this morning... they just don't get it. I say it's definitely a movie worth seeing again and learning from.
Welcome to new contributor Mariko Kage
I'd like to extend a warm welcome to new contributor Mariko Kage, whose interests in martial arts, firearms, medicine, and fieldcraft parallel my own. Mariko was born in Japan, and has lived in the U.S. for most of her life.
Ms. Kage recently attended Tom Brown's 1-week (Standard Class) Tracker School, and will be writing a review for this site.
Thanks to Ken Lunde for the books!
Dr. Ken Lunde of Adobe Systems (author of CJKV Information Processing) surprised me a few days ago by sending me a large gift box of O'Reilly & Associates books, including half a dozen titles I'd actually queued in my "buy when I find my next job" list I carry in my Sony Clie:
Essential Blogging
Java Swing, Second Edition
Programming Jakarta Struts
Java Performance Tuning
NetBeans: The Definitive Guide
JDBC Pocket Reference
I can't adequately express how much I appreciate this gift. I'd mentioned in an earlier post that I'm retooling for a new career (I'm in school again, and looking for work), and these books are exactly the types of mindfeed I need right now. Again, thanks!
Tom Burroughes sends his wishes to U.S., British and Australian armed forces
Well, it looks as if there is going to be a war in Iraq. While I think libertarian-inclined folk are, and should be rightly hostile to the idea of war - given the wreckage inflicted on life and liberty - it would be wrong for me to let this momentous time in history to pass without wishing a "good luck" to the U.S., British and Australian armed forces and their allies in the drive to deal with Saddam's vile regime. I have two relatives, one British, one American, both of whom serve in these nations' air forces. Come back safe guys.
FuturePundit: future technological trends and their likely effects on human society, politics and evolution
This is a great resource: "FuturePundit: future technological trends and their likely effects on human society, politics and evolution". This is one of the incredibly productive Randall Parker's 4 well-separated specialist blogs, and I plan to refer to it often.
Miss Liberty's Film & TV Update (weekly)
I've been on the "Miss Liberty's Film & TV Update" weekly mailing list for a couple of months, and recommend it. Sample pointer:
TUESDAY (3/18)9:30PM~COM~ South Park ~ "Two Guys Naked in a Hot Tub. In a Waco-like incident, the ATF kills a bunch of innocent partygoers because it mistakes them for religious fanatics."
I also recommend Jon Osborne's book "Miss Liberty's Guide to Film and Video: Movies for the Libertarian Millennium".
Quote of the day
In the Militia Act of 1792, the second Congress defined militia of the United States to include almost every free adult male in the United States. These persons were obligated by law to possess a [military style] firearm and a minimum supply of ammunition and military equipment…There can be little doubt from this that when the Congress and the people spoke of the militia, they had reference to the traditional concept of the entire populace capable of bearing arms, and not to any formal group such as what is today called the National Guard.
Report by the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on the Constitution 1982
March 16, 2003
Quote of the day
Slavery in the modern world implies the absolute deprivation of the individual’s liberty, while possession of weapons and mastery of their use are means to the individual’s liberation. We do not perceive how a man may be armed and at the same time bereft of his freedom.
John Keegan
March 15, 2003
Eat a Commie for Mommy
Toren Smith points out that today is "Eat an Animal for PETA Day!"
I've been on a high-protein kick for a long time; looks like I'll be upping my intake today. Hmm... does this make me a "political eater", akin to a "political smoker"?
"It's the biology, stupid"
School has consumed me the last few months, since the dot.com bust interrupted several years of I/S programming career arc. I've been spending some time evaluating my work future, trying to determine the best ways to combine at least a couple of my passions into a revised career path.
One of those passions is biology, ranging from Darwinian evolutionary theory, physical anthropology, and evolutionary psychology (AKA the oft-misunderstood "sociobiology"), to Dawkinsian "selfish gene" theory, to Drexlerian nanomedicine.
As both an experienced information processing guy, and a biology watcher, I've been looking into the field of bioinformatics for clues in that search. I just now ran across a transcript of a talk given at an O'Reilly conference by Lincoln Stein, "Bioinformatics: Gone in 2012", in which he gives bioinformatics "10 years to live".
Quote of the day
The sitting around is the hardest part. They may sit for a year, and then be called to five minutes of all-out action of deadly importance. But they have to be instantly ready for that five minutes the whole year. Quite a strain. I much prefer attack to defense.
Lois McMaster Bujold
Barrayar, pg. 32, 1991
(courtesy of Curt Howland)
March 14, 2003
Australian Libertarian Society
David Carr of Samizdata directs us to a "fair dinkum" blog for the Australian Libertarian Society.
Quote of the day
But slavery is another matter -- the most vicious habit humans fall into and the hardest to break. It starts up in every new land and it's terribly hard to root out. After a culture falls ill of it, it gets rooted in the economic system and laws, in men's habits and attitudes. You abolish it; you drive it underground -- there it lurks, ready to spring up again, in the minds of people who think it is their 'natural' right to own other people. You can't reason with them; you can kill them but you can't change their minds.
Robert A. Heinlein
Citizen of the Galaxy
March 13, 2003
Looks like fun
I'd pretty much ignored some fun pop culture in the last few years, including Tremors, one of those "cult movie" things I'd wrongly disdained. I saw a few of the original Tremors movies some weeks back (see my Burt Gummer QOTD post of a few weeks ago), and am now looking forward to the new Sci-Fi Channel series. This Burt Gummer profile is pretty amusing and insightful. Tremors is in my PVR queue now.
I usually hate "Cop TV", but...
I hate "reality TV", and relatedly hate "Jackboot TV" (TM: just made it up, I think), but I admit to really enjoying CSI. After having spent the day in school (laid-off software engineer & experienced manager: hire me!), I watched a new episode, "Crash and Burn", which had some superb, non-trivial references (about 5 minutes of dialogue) to the life of Isaac Asimov, whose work I digested en masse in my teenage years before my conversion to the works of Robert Heinlein. Great stuff.
Quote of the day
...once the kind of folks who think of themselves as "the government" have had a couple of generations to get used to their monopoly on armed force and coercion, they quickly tire of pretending to act as our "servants." They start to assume the attitude of thugs, bullies, street criminals and condottieri. Their first instinct is to do what they want and take what they want at gunpoint, using the "command voice."
Watch a cop disarm a peaceful and compliant driver who has a permit to carry a concealed weapon, before writing him a traffic ticket. Wouldn't it be more appropriate for our "servant" the policeman to take off his gun, unload it, and lay it on the hood of the car, "for the driver's safety," until he had concluded his business with his servant and master, the taxpayer/voter? After all, his quick computer background check has already revealed this driver to be one of the safest and most law-abiding and best-trained citizens out there -- those "pistol permits" don't come in Cracker Jack boxes, you know.
Only when they come up against equal or nearly equal force do these thugs back down, reconsider and try "negotiation."
March 12, 2003
Differences in preparedness thinking between Britons and Americans
When I attended the Front Sight firearms academy in Nevada last September, I was struck by the sheer range of what Ignatius Piazza's firm is offering: not just teaching on firearms, but everything about personal safety, right down to avoiding car accidents. What struck me was that in the States, there is more awareness among Joe Public about the need to take responsibility for one's own safety, and this doesn't just include learning how to use a firearm. Even the recent drive by the government to get folk to stock up on duct tape and water, even though it was mocked in certain quarters, bespoke of a certain attitude in the American culture - "We can get through this".
What bothers me is how different this is in Britain. I admit my views are impressionistic and not based on loads of facts, but I just don't get the feeling that learning about survival really bothers the average Briton. Call it our traditional reserve, coolness in the face of danger, or whatever. Even if those cliches about Britons are true (and I have my doubts) I think there is a much greater willingness on the part of Britons to think that well, safety is the State's job, not mine. Maybe 60 years of the Welfare State have contributed to this weakening of civic responsibility.
Of course, I may be proven gloriously wrong if disaster does strike this little island. I hope so.
Quote of the day
Gun control is the idea that Nicole Simpson lying dead in a pool of her own blood is better than Nicole or Ron Goldman explaining to the police how O. J. Simpson got all those nasty holes in his anatomy.
Anonymous
March 11, 2003
Quote of the day
The Meiji Restoration had not really changed the feudal status quo, it had only "repainted the signs", as the Japanese put it. An elite addicted to wealth and status was afraid to give ordinary Japanese more than cosmetic democracy. For a thousand years, it was the policy of emperors and shoguns to keep people ignorant, and to keep taxes high enough so families had to struggle to survive, because this kept them fully occupied and harmless.
The Yamato Dynasty, p149
Sterling and Peggy Seagrave
March 10, 2003
"The definitive (short) article on the duct tape thing"
Jack W. Boone has some interesting things to say about personal responsibility and survival:
The overseers won't protect us. They never could, they never will. Whether the problem is earthquake, flood, tornado, hurricane, volcanic eruption, or terrorist attack, we are, and must be, responsible for our own survival. I find the popular TV show "Law and Order" instructive. It almost always begins with the discovery of a dead body, after which the overseers find and punish the perpetrator(s). Great, but it doesn't do me much good if I represent the "body".So everyone is, in the long run, responsible for his own (and his family's) life. Dial 911 and your death will be professionally investigated, when they get time.
I'm really in the mood to think about these things recently, especially after having attended an Alcor Life Extension Foundation Northern California meeting yesterday...
Quote of the day
I personally, then, had decided that cryonics is worth the gamble. I could spend the time collecting stamps, yes, but I doubt if I am going to find a stamp as interesting as an endeavor that may be one of the greatest adventures that human beings have ever undertaken. After all, who knows? If we - the first and second generation of cryonicists - succeed in our efforts, some of us may well end up on stamps ourselves one day. And if that happens, consider; we'll be the only people on U.S. stamps to ever be able to take pride in being there.
Steven B. Harris, M.D./PhD
May 1989
March 9, 2003
Another pic from Dale Seago's "Guns 'N Blades" seminar
Thanks to "Buyu Kurt" for posting some photos of Dale Seago's "Guns 'N Blades" seminar to the clubbuyu mailing list.
That's Dale Seago on the left dumping me on the right.
Quote of the day
First, it should be noted that Ms. Fisher attended a government school - not a private one. It should also be pointed out that her public "government" school - like any other institution - instilled politically-correct, abject, and complacent values - values devoid of any personal morality and ethics and the ability to think for oneself - into her mind, including her peers. In addition, thanks to the compulsory attendance and truancy laws, she, like many of her peers, was forced to attend classes and was treated like a "juvenile" in the eyes of the collectivist personnel and bureaucrats. If she did not agree to assimilate the ideas and beliefs promulgated by the system or if she questioned the stagnant learning environment, her collectivist instructors and faculty members would deem it necessary to consign her to a special classroom for "detention." ("Detention" is a long-lasting buzzword for punishment administered to government schoolchildren who naturally reject the idea that they must conform to the rigid, perverse values and beliefs and the politically-correct brand of mind control measures that have become a part of the daily education establishment.)
March 8, 2003
Quote of the day
Lately some literary critics have been condemning my stories as being "elitist" and concerned only with superior people--instead of the little people, the common people, the born losers. Those critics are correct: the sort of hero I like to write about is a boy from a broken home and a poverty stricken background who pulls himself up by his bootstraps...
Robert A. Heinlein
Personal communication to a reader, letter of 15 June 1981
March 7, 2003
Quote of the day
"When fascism comes to America, it will come in the form of a white coat and a stethoscope."
An unidentified New Yorker filmed on Penn & Teller's "Bullshit!", Second Hand Smoke/Baby Bullshit episode
March 6, 2003
Dr. Edgar Suter's letter regarding Coben & Steiner's "Hospitalization for firearm-related injuries"
31 January 2003
Letters to the Editor
American Journal of Preventive Medicine
K. Patrick, MD, MS
San Diego State University
5500 Campanile Drive
San Diego, CA 92182-4710
619-594-7344
619-594-5613
Submitted By E-mail Only: ajpm@mail.sdsu.edu
Re: Coben JH, Steiner CA. Hospitalization for firearm-related injuries in the United States, 1997. Am J Prev Med (2003 Jan) 24(1):1-8
Dear Editor:
We wryly recall the late Sen. Edward Everett Dirksen's "pretty soon we'd be talking about big money" quip as we note that the much-vaunted $802 million estimate of 1997's gun injury medical costs represents 0.064% of America's $1.25 trillion in annual total medical costs. Apparently, neither the authors nor the peer reviewers noticed that this already minuscule fraction represents a 60% decrease from the last published estimate of gun injury medical costs. [1]
That minuscule percentage highlights another conceptual flaw in Coben's methodology. Where in medicine would we settle for a risk-without-benefit analysis? Doctors have themselves estimated that we kill 180,000 people each year (five times annual gun deaths, the equivalent of three jumbo-jet crashes every two days).[2] Would we leave the analysis of American physicians at that sensational factoid without considering the benefits physicians provide? We think not. When we last visited this issue,[3] we noted, with detail and citation, that every one of the relevant 15 studies found that annually 400,000 to 4 million Americans use guns to defend themselves. Using the methodology of gun ban advocates Max[1] and Nieto,[4] we calculated that the economic benefits of defensive gun usage was potentially $4.5 billion annually. Lives saved, injuries prevented, property protected, and medical costs averted are the benefits from guns far outweighing the purported detriment.
Another factor is invariably overlooked in tallying the benefits of gun ownership. As many as one-third of a billion people died at the hands of government in the twentieth century,[5] dwarfing all tallies of private crime. We doubt that anyone can convincingly refute that America's high rate of individual gun ownership has played a fundamental role in protecting Americans from deadly genocidal tyranny and planned wartime invasions. What is that worth in lives and money?
Finally, for the last 10 years as the proportion of the crime-prone 15-25 age cohort has fallen in the US population, so too has violent crime fallen (yet gun sales have skyrocketed). Medicine's gun ban polemicists have been silent about this news, but we expect that when violent crime parallels the anticipated increase in the crime-prone age cohort, we will once again hear Chicken Little in white coat and stethoscope shriek that "the sky is falling"; and, of course, that will certainly be "due to guns."
Yours,
Edgar A. Suter MD
Chair, Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research Inc.
[1] Max W and Rice DP. Shooting in the dark: estimating the cost of firearm injuries. Health Affairs. 1993; 12(4): 171-85.
[2] Leape LL. Error in medicine. JAMA. 1994; 272(23): 1851-57.
[3] Suter EA Waters WC 4th Murray GB Hopkins CB Asiaf J Moore JB Fackler M Cowan DN Eckenhoff RG Singer TR et al. Violence in America. Effective solutions J Med Assoc Georgia (1995 Jun) 84(6):253-63.
[4] Nieto M, Dunstan R, and Koehler GA. Firearm-related violence in California: incidence and economic costs. Sacramento CA: California Research Bureau, California State Library. October 1994.
[5] Rummel RJ. Death by Government. London: Transaction Publishers. 1994. p. 9.
Quote of the day
Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.
G. K. Chesterton
March 5, 2003
Quote of the day
Michael Moore is just like P. J. O'Rourke, only without the wit, the humour and the insight.
March 4, 2003
Konjou: Fighting Spirit
Another interesting Japanese term I discovered today, which I've posted to my language blog.
Quote of the day
I would like a legislature composed of a Jefferson, a Washington, a Henry, a Hamilton, an Adams, etc., all arguing about the correct course for our country. Not one a gang member. But when I look at the requirements to even be on a ballot in 2003 or beyond, membership in some gang is required. It appears that Libertarians have a hard time creating a successful gang, and when they try, they often meet the same problems which affect other gangs, like dissention among gang members, and members who want to use the gang for their own economic advantage.
March 3, 2003
Quote of the day
To stay young requires unceasing cultivation of the ability to unlearn old falsehoods.
Lazarus Long
Time Enough for Love, by Robert A. Heinlein
March 2, 2003
Quote of the day
Money, first and foremost, is a medium of communication, conveying the information we call "price". Government control of the money supply is censorship, a violation of the First Amendment. Inflation is a lie.
L. Neil Smith
Tactical Reflections
March 1, 2003
The Racist Origins of US Gun Control
Thanks to the Liberty Belles for the image above. Relatedly, read "The Racist Origins of US Gun Control" by Steve Ekwall, as well as Tim O'Brien's shorter piece.
The Creative Foot Dragger: strategies for restless slaves
Jack W. Boone has started his first blog: The Creative Foot Dragger: strategies for restless slaves. Besides being an apparently good guy who understands the real deal behind the Boot On Your Neck (BOYN) party, he's also the father of Daniel J. Boone, the outlawyer blogmeister of Nolo Consentire. Welcome to the blogosphere!
Quote of the day
Manned spaceflight versus robotics? Let's see ... on your wedding night, would you be satisfied to send in a remote, and receive telemetered progress reports?
L. Neil Smith
Tactical Reflections
