Jon Caldara Tries To Use Skewed "Gun Math" To Defend AR-15s And Other Semi-Automatics

Jon Caldara is at it again, in his recent (Nov. 12) Denver Post op-ed ('The Assault Weapon Attack On Math') in which he attempts to diminish the impact of semi-automatic weapons based on the much more prolific stats of killings by other means.

He first cites the 374 "killed by rifle" last year -but points out it is only a small fraction of the 11,004 total killed by "firearms". In other words, 10, 630 were killed by handgun - not rifle So his argument is the media attention to semi-automatic weapons is skewed. He then goes on with:

"Shouldn’t there be over four times the media coverage on the 1,604 people killed with knives last year? Some 472 were killed with blunt instruments like clubs and hammers, some of which had polymer, not wood, handles. And nearly twice as many people were killed with hands, fists and feet?"

Err no, because you are mixing chalk and cheese. Human homicides - given the variety of circumstances (and potential weapons available)-  will always show a diversity of usage, of instrument. But that diversity of assorted killing instruments does not refute the fact that semi-automatic (and  automatic) rifles are an anomaly in terms of the Second Amendment.  By that I mean the authors could no more have imagined such weapons than they could imagine Space Shuttles.

The informal fallacy employed by Caldara is the ignoratio elenchi fallacy also known as irrelevant conclusion. This is the informal fallacy of presenting an argument that may or may not be logically valid, but fails nonetheless to address the issue in question. The issue in question here before us is whether semi-automatic or automatic rifles are truly allowed under the provisions of the 2nd amendment as originally interpreted.  More on this later.

Even on its own logical terms, Caldara's arguments can be challenged, say in terms of  "the proportion of the mode of killing dictates media and legal attention."  Hence, if the proportion of kills by an assault rifle is low - say compared to other modes of killing - it should receive less attention (including legal) and the others more. Never mind more people can be killed at one time, as we beheld in Vegas.  But if this argument were solid, then - in the arena of air accidents- the FAA would do little or nothing in the way of investigation after plane crashes in which 50 - 60 were killed (say matching the numbers mowed down in the Orlando and Las Vegas mass shootings.)  But the fact is they take such plane crashes very seriously and go over everything - including recovering black boxes. This despite the fact that in the tragic sphere of accidental deaths many more people (37,000) are killed in auto crashes each year., or lightning strikes - as Caldara references.

The takeaway is that single events in which many dozens of people are killed bespeak such anomaly that they cannot be ignored or minimized. This is even more crucial when human motivation is behind the mass killing, i.e. in the case of use of semi-automatic or automatic rifles -  weapons putatively allowed under the 2nd amendment. This is exactly why Australia, after its April 1996  Port Arthur, Tasmania massacre, bought and destroyed more than 600,000 civilian-owned firearms. This was in a scheme that cost half a billion dollars and was funded by raising Aussie taxes.  In other words,  they took this mass shooting deadly seriously. They didn't diminish its import by false analogy or conflating with other types of killing, e.g. by knives, fists, etc.

Recall that  FDR's Solicitor General framed the argument to the Supreme Court thusly:

"The Second Amendment grants people a right that is not one which may be utilized for private purposes but only exists where the arms are borne in a militia or some other military organization provided by law and intended for protection of the State."

The SC decision was unanimous in agreeing with that take..

While this sane interpretation prevailed for several more decades, it started to unravel by the 1970s. Then various Right wing groups coalesced to challenge gun control based on spurious "private gun ownership" interpretations, and successively overturned laws in state legislatures.  This despite the fact then Justice Warren Burger had clearly stated this later interpretation was "one of the greatest pieces of fraud on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime."

Well, it's good Justice Burger didn't live to see the arrival of semi-automatic weapons, bump stocks and the claim that the 2nd amendment provides for the ownership of those too! A cockeyed notion that has been pumped by the NRA ever since, more recently with the batshit crazy ad that "your man card is reissued". If you need an AR- 15 to be a man, then decidedly you've a long way to go to reach that phase.

Caldara also tries to muddy the waters regarding the use of semi-automatics vs. automatics  as when he writes:

"There’s no better example of the media’s ability to emotionally bait an issue out of all mathematical proportion than that of “assault rifles". Lett’s clarify again what most reporters don’t, likely since it runs counter to their anti-gun bias. Very, very few people own assault rifles. They are nearly impossible to get due to the limited supply and regulatory burden to get one. An assault weapon is capable of firing several rounds of ammunition with one pull of the trigger. What is falsely reported as an assault rifle is just an average semi-automatic rifle, where only one round is fired with every trigger pull. "

This bit of sophistry ignores a number of hard facts, and hence makes it easy for those not rifle savvy to gloss over his claims. For reference let me quote part of a WSJ article dealing with the AR-15 (Caldara's semi-automatic rifle) published on 12/9/15. It noted:

"The AR-15 re-cocks itself immediately after firing. The only thing keeping the gun from firing again on its own is a sear, a piece inserted in the gun that stops the cycle from continuing. By replacing the sear and a few other key components, an AR-15 can be made fully automatic."

Note then that although Caldara glosses over it, the AR-15 is not any old  single shot rifle, certainly not like the bolt action rifle I used to own and fire when I lived in New Orleans. In other words, it took time - measured in seconds - to work the bolt action to fire again, it did not "immediately re-cock itself after firing"  There IS a qualitative difference. My argument is that if any Founders could be brought back to inspect either type of rifle - and how it works - they'd more surely side with my old bolt action as the one allowed under their  2nd amendment, but not the AR-15.

In Murdock, FL, ca. May, 1986, with an AR-15. 

Once more I am not an anti-gun nut. I have owned and used rifles and fired off shotguns as well in target practice.  (Including in 1968 in New Orleans when testing the "jet effect" nonsense peddled by JFK conspiracy deniers). However, I've never owned anything semi-automatic, or with multi-capacity clips.  This is all by way of full disclosure.  My sticking point here is how the Founders themselves would have interpreted semi-automatics like the AR 15 under the 2nd amendment.

Unlike the whacko contingent of gun owners, I also don't believe the 2nd amendment gives people the "right" to own rocket propelled launchers, bazookas, .50 caliber anti-aircraft guns, or military assault type weapons - capable of mass slaughter. The Second Amendment authors - inhabiting a world where single load muskets were the rule - would have been flabbergasted to see the extent to which their amendment had been misconstrued today, such as by the NRA and their denizens.

As for Caldara's nitpicking about the difference between semi-automatics and automatics, let's just say it is tweedledum vs. tweedledee. As Stephen Paddock showed, one only needs to include a LEGAL bump stock to effectively transform a semi-automatic into a functional automatic. One doesn't  need to be a genius or legal guru to understand the enhanced efficiency and lethality when a bump stock is affixed to a normal semi-automatic.

The argument that the new high powered rifles - such as AR-15s, and Bushmaster .223s are entitled to be owned as a "right" is just plain bollocks. No, you can own a true single shot 30.06  bolt action as a right, because it's a legit rifle with which to go out hunting. You can own a .22  bolt action as a right, and it does a nice job of killing small game especially if you use hollow points.  But you don't need semi-automatic weapons, or AK 47s

Even  though I don't believe the 2nd justifies such powerful weapons, I do acknowledge our laws have been distorted over decades and realize that  - once the horse has escaped the barn- it is difficult if not impossible to get it back in. Thus, I am not for banning such guns, but properly regulating them, using a national registry system such as adopted in Australia and similar to what we already have for auto vehicle ownership. Thus you receive your gun owner ID with photo, and registration number (with serial nos., of all weapons) entered in a national (or state) database and computer -connected to the Homeland Security fusion centers across the country.

Once any mass shooting then occurs, the fusion centers will instantly be able to pick up on the serial number(s) of the weapon(s)  used, the perp and his background. No fuck ups as with the military not reporting certified psychos to the FBI for the current national database.  At that point of infraction in the new system,  the perp is facing justice - if not meted out at the scene - and his gun license permanently revoked.  I would also assert licenses need to be revoked for reckless actions, such as target practicing on trees  (near camp sites) as occurred near Pike National Forest several years ago.

That father, shot in the head, would still be alive today with his family had stringent registration requirements been in effect. Those would have deterred the gun crazy lunatics from firing their Bushmasters in a forest- near camping grounds.


See also: 'What Jon Caldara Gets Wrong About Assault Weapons':

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/17/what-jon-caldara-gets-wrong-about-assault-weapons/

It's Now Time To Expand The Definition of Terror To Include DOMESTIC Terror

Dotard yesterday barking about a 1990 "lottery" immigrant program and idiotically blaming Dems  when it was launched under the Bush Sr. Administration.

I really have had it with Donald Dotard and his selective attention to what constitutes a terror attack and what doesn't. In retrospect,  since the Vegas massacre, it all seems based on political expedience and artificiality. In NYC two days ago we had a lunatic  (Sayfullo Saipov) use a rental truck to mow down people on a bike path, killing 8 and leaving 11 injured. Trump has gone absolutely ape shit nuts in response - about fifty times more intense than after the Las Vegas mass slaughter. That was also done by a lone perp - but that guy (Stephen Paddock) was white, elderly and with no Isis links  like Saipov seems to have.

So what is the result? The NYC truck incident is hyped as a "terror attack" despite leaving eight dead compared with the FIFTY EIGHT - and hundreds wounded - in Vegas.  There seems to be a double standard here, and a cowardly and  calculated reluctance to call the Vegas massacre what it was: domestic terror.

But because so many Reepos have their balls in a vice - reluctant to offend their true masters, the NRA -  they won't go there because it's "politicizing the incident"  Well, just ask all those hundreds wounded in Vegas, including many who will never work again and steeped in hospital bills,  how they feel about that codswallop.

Then we have Trump yesterday making a fricking federal case out of the NYC incident while he basically just shrugged and went through the motions after Vegas. There was Dotard in high dudgeon,  at a meeting with his loser cabinet,  raging against the diversity lottery program and blaming the Dems for it, yelping:

"The Diversity Lottery program sounds nice, but it's not nice.  We want a merit -based program."

The deranged cretin also referred to the program  on Twitter as "a  Chuck Schumer beauty program"

(Schumer did vote for the program like many others when proposed in 1990, but he also tried to scrap it in 2013, but GOP votes blocked the effort.)

The 1990 program was actually created by the George H.W. Bush administration which - last I checked - was under the GOP banner.  It was created to increase immigration from countries under-represented via legal entries, largely from Europe and the Middle East. Applicants entered the lottery with up to 50,000 visas available,  and had to complete the same background checks as other immigration programs.

The point is Dotard got his head exploding over a program launched under his own GOP, which he presumably is part of - though one has to wonder at times as he attacks so many Senators in his alleged party.

But what was most galling is this asshole becoming so exercised in the wake of the NYC truck attack that he could froth at the mouth and blame Chuck Schumer partly for it, while turning a basic blind eye to the Vegas gun slaughter.  He bawled at his cabinet meet:

"We need strong justice - much quicker and much stronger than we have right now. Because what we have right now is a joke and a laughing stock."

Big words for little Donny Dotard but you didn't hear anything like that in the wake of the Vegas mass shooting.   As CBS reporter Jeff Glor put it last night:  "Trump's words were in stark contrast to what he said in Las Vegas."  WHY?  The Vegas slaughter was every bit as much terror as what transpired in NYC. If you don't believe it look at the smart phone videos of the hundreds trying to escape while the rapid shots were fired from 32 floors up in the Mandalay Bay. The faces were those struck with TERROR!  That was domestic terror, but in Trump's words "we're not gonna talk about that today."  

Contrast that with Dotard's  yelping about "stepping up our already extreme vetting program" and even imposing the death penalty after the NYC attack.

The conflicting reactions angered Muslim -American leaders as they were bound to. Why are you basically mum after hundreds were mowed down and 58 killed by an elder WHITE man, but you go ballistic vowing all kinds of stiffer penalties and sanctions after a Muslim carries out a far more limited attack leaving far fewer dead?  It makes no sense, unless bigotry is at the core of the disparate responses.

Even survivors of the Las Vegas mass shooting - lobbying Capitol Hill for stronger gun control measures - were taken aback by the sheer hypocrisy. As one put it, interviewed on CBS News last night:

"We believed something needed to be done and we just assumed the country was behind us. And a month later we've seen nothing happen."

Sorry, but you aren't likely to either, because the perp that wreaked so much havoc in Vegas wasn't brown-skinned or connected to Isis or al Qaeda,  That's the way it rolls in this hypocritical country whose "leader" goes absolutely nuts when 8 are killed from a truck in New York, but who shrugs when fifty eight are slaughtered via bump-stock driven automatic weapons in Vegas.

Oh yeah, about those bump stocks: A Senate bill currently banning bump stocks has 40 Democratic votes but none from the GOP. The take is "we're waiting until the Las Vegas investigation is completed".  As if  they're going to learn any more about the function of bump stocks after the investigation than we already know.  Or,  insinuating that one needs to be a genius or legal guru to understand the lethality when a bump stock is affixed to a normal semi-automatic.

At the University of Leiden two years ago, two researchers found more than 200 definitions of terrorism scattered around the world. Most shared attributes of violence, political objectives, and causing outright fear. One historian, Walter Lacquer, summed up the differences this way:

"In the real world there is not one terrorism, but a variety of terrorisms. Any attempt to find a common denominator - a formula - say as suited to 19th century Irish terrorism as to narco-terror in Columbia, or Islamic terror in Pakistan is bound to fail"

This is because there will always be divergent emphases, as well as parameter and intensity distinctions. Recall that in many quarters, the first reaction to the 9/11 attacks was to treat them as a major crime - not terror. It was only when the Bushies introduced the "war on terror" - which is a non sequitur - that terror became a ubiquitous dynamic. The problem is it holds too many in thrall who are prepared to cry 'Terror!' at the first suspicion.

BUT - if you are going to name one form (with Muslims or Isis agents the bad actors) as "terror',  you are then hoist on your own petard and will have to name all other mass death incidents terror-based as well. This includes naming domestic terror - whether ideologically-based, like Timothy McVeigh's Oklahoma City bombing OR Stephen Paddock's Las Vegas massacre  - for whatever reason.

See also:

http://www.denverpost.com/2017/11/02/thornton-walmart-shooting-suspect-scott-ostrem/

Dotard Again Shows He's A Deranged Imbecile Re: Vegas Shooting "Miracle" & Puerto Rico

President Donald Dotard again showed why he's an asshole and deranged nitwit with unscripted comments on the Vegas shooting and Puerto Rico's continuing catastrophe. Let's take the last first given Dotard actually traveled to the island territory of the U.S. earlier today,  This degenerate "piece of trash"- as one Puerto Rican called him - actually insinuated the Puerto Ricans didn't have it "that bad" since "thousands didn't die as in Katrina".  WTF?   What species of asshole is this fruitcake, anyway?  True,  "only seventeen died up to now" , but 3.5 million lives are still up in the air as they scratch for desperately needed resources including fuel, food and clean water.  There is no guarantee up to now that hundreds more may not perish as the failure to deliver essential items continues.

Trump's implication, showing what a dunderhead he is, was that Puerto Ricans ought to be thankful their catastrophe wasn't as bad as Katrina in New Orleans.  Says who? Though the deaths are (so far) fewer the elimination of support systems is just as bad or worse, especially given that Puerto Rico is an island that requires all essentials to enter from outside - air or ship.  In addition, Puerto Rico's needy citizens are scattered over a vastly larger areas - over 1700 square miles - than Greater New Orleans.  Dispatching supplies to the several hundred thousand people of N.O. therefore was vastly easier than getting them to the 3.5 MILLION of Puerto Rico. But evidently Dotard has no conception of the difference at all.

He lacks any inkling of the differences in magnitude between the areas of the respective locations or their populations.  He has no conception that most of Puerto Rico - outside of San Juan and its beaches -  comprises a rugged terrain that in conditions now, is relatively inaccessible (most bridges, roads washed away)  That means extraordinary means must be employed to get supplies to those who need them including patients in hospitals.  What means?  Aircraft carriers based offshore enabling hundreds of choppers to make daily runs into the island's hinterlands.  Nothing short of this will halt the loss of lives - but then it appears Dotard values white lives - like Stephen Paddock's - more  than brown-skinned anyway.

Dotard was actually stupid enough to assert Puerto Ricans "didn't need flashlights any more" despite the fact 90 percent still don't have any power.   His tossing of paper towels to a crowd in a hall was demeaning and reflected what a vicious piece of crap he really is, as Gen. Russell Honore also noted. The claim about denting the budget was also cruel and imbecilic, given Puerto Rico is every bit as American as Houston, Texas or Miami, Florida.

Then there was his daft, clueless remark on the Las Vegas massacre that took out 59 people and injured 527 - many saddled with neurological (head) injuries as bad as the one that affected Gabby Giffords. People who will now need to commit to years, decades of therapy and rehabilitation to become mobile - assuming they are able - or regain their speech.

 Dotard said Tuesday that the quick response of law enforcement during the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history was “in many ways, a miracle.”. His full remarks, said as he departed the White House for a trip to Puerto Rico on Tuesday morning. were:

“Look, we have a tragedy. What happened is, in many ways, a miracle.  The police department, they’ve done such an incredible job. And we’ll be talking about gun laws as time goes on. But I do have to say, how quickly the police department was able to get in was really very much of a miracle. They’ve done an amazing job.”


No, Dotard Dummy, it was law enforcement doing its job - which still required precious time to triangulate positions to identify where the shooter was. This entailed technology and expertise not any "miracle".   Miracles are proclaimed for alleged supernatural events, and would have been the case if the suddenly mortally wounded had gotten up and walked away. They didn't.

Triangulating an active shooter position, by contrast, is no miracle, it's a process that has been developed over many decades by law enforcement. It enabled the SWAT team to eventually get to the shooter's room, but by then over fifty lay dead or dying and hundreds wounded - many seriously. That was NO miracle. But again, the depths of Dotard's ignorance knows no bounds so he can't process the difference.  To him, not having ten thousand killed - out of the 22,000 - was a "miracle", like only 17 killed in Puerto Rico (so far) dead, was a "miracle" compared to Katrina's toll. The man is a blatant idiot.

 In the Vegas massacre, it was late Sunday when Stephen Paddock, a 64-year-old retiree who lives in the area, opened fire on an outdoor country music festival from the windows of a 32nd-floor hotel suite at the Mandalay Bay. For perhaps as long as 11 minutes, bullets rained down on the concertgoers and the panicked crowd rushed to escape. As Paddock fired round after round, gun smoke filled the hotel suite and set off a fire alarm, allowing a SWAT team to zero in on Paddock’s position in about 20 minutes. As officers closed in, Paddock killed himself.

The most  damnable aspect?  Despite the historic number of people killed, Trump has repeatedly stressed that the shooting could have been even worse. Well, if the NRA and Dotard's Repuke cronies had their way in passing a law allowing silencers, he's correct.

The National Rifle Association thinks Congress owes them more armor-piercing rounds and gun silencers on the streets, and most Republicans have shown they’re happy to do what they’re told, Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ) told Politico earlier this month. “I’ve been here since 2003, and passing these bills in the name of ‘helping sportsmen’ is one of the most cynical excuses I’ve ever heard.”

Silencers mounted on Paddock's assorted weapons, which we now know were equipped with bump firing stocks to fire faster (using the recoil capacity to shoot hundreds of rounds per minute) would have likely claimed twice as many lives.  The reason is no one would have known where the shots originated from until many more had been shot.  So perhaps Dotard has contemplated signing into law the NRA- pushed provision to allow silencers on automatic weapons .

THAT would confer some basic "sense" on his comment: He'd know that had he signed a bill allowing silencers into law then yes, what actually transpired  Sunday night in Vegas would have been a comparative  "miracle" since the silencers would have killed more than twice as many, and probably injured thousands.

Thanks for telegraphing your intent, Dotard, you malicious freak bastard.  As one of the Puerto Ricans put it who was asked by a reporter what she thought of your arrival,  you ARE a pierce of trash. Toxic trash.

In the words of Gen.  Russell Honore (Ret.) who oversaw the rebuilding of N.O. after Katrina:

"The mayor (of San Juan) is living on a cot and I hope the president has a good day at golf."

In a CNN interview Gen. Honore was even more blunt:

"You don't give a damn about poor people. You don't give a damn about people of color. And the S.O.B. that rides around in Air Force One is denying services needed by the people of Puerto Rico".

My sentiments exactly, General, especially the S.O.B. part!  And let's bear in mind who the S.O.B. is pandering to.