Or is it a good argument against gun control?  I’m so confused.

Hat-tip: Well, the Web site’s name is too profane to mention.

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y friend and frequent hat-tipee Jim sent along an interesting table showing state-by-state tallies of firearm background checks. Yeah, I know, not exactly the stuff that compelling blog posts are made of. But don’t be fooled!

The first thing that jumps out is that every state except Louisianna and Utah performed more background checks in February and/or March than they did in January, the month Barack Obama took office.  And some of the increases were quite spectacular, like Michigan with a 22 percent increase in checks and Specterville with 21 percent.

But the most interesting stat of all is Kentucky, with 167,035 background checks in January growing to 175,314 in March.  To put it in perspective, the nation’s most populous state, California, did just 72,248 checks in April – less than half of Kentucky’s total, even though California’s population is nine times larger than Kentucky’s.

Another way to look at it is to compare Kentucky backgrounders to those in Texas, which has the second highest tally, at 102,372.  Kentucky performed 65,000 more background checks, with a population that’s less than a fifth the size of Texas’.

I had the good fortune to live in Kentucky for five years.  I like the people – straightforward, straight-talking … and straight-shooting.  I’m not looking for a big spike in the crime rate there!

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Hat-tip: DaveH

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Who’s To Blame For Mexico Drug Wars? Us!

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iberals’ knees are still jerking. It’s not enough that they blame America for the jihadists’ war on the West and for persistent poverty in post-colonial countries (not even our colonies, mind you!) but now it’s our fault that 6,000 Mexicans have died in the last year in the Mexican drug wars. So says LA Times columnist Tim Rutten:

America’s political decisions to treat drug addiction as a crime rather than a public health problem, and to legalize AK-47s but not pot, fuel an incipient civil war in Mexico. …

Mexico’s drug war could escalate into widespread civil strife with incalculable consequences for the U.S. — and, particularly, the Southwest. And we’re kidding ourselves if we insist that this is a problem that can be wholly solved south of the border, or quarantined there if events spiral out of control. It’s impossible to know how close either the United States or Mexico is to God, but geographically, culturally and economically, they’ve never been closer to one another.

If Americans really are concerned about the horrific toll inflicted by Mexico’s narco-gangsters, we need to ask some tough questions about our own cultural and political delusions.

The “close to God” reference is a reference to the corrupt Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz, who famously said Mexico suffered because it was located “so far from God and so near the United States,” and Rutten foolishly chooses to believe the blood-soaked despot than rational thought.

Canada is located just as close to the U.S. as Mexico, yet we don’t see poverty, corruption, a human flood across our border or drug wars on the northern fronteir – so why to we have to assume the mantle of guilt.  The same drug and gun laws exist in Detroit and Minneapolis as exist in San Diego and El Paso.

Does Rutten really think that if we legalized pot tomorrow and banned whatever guns he wants stripped from law-abiding citizens that the violence in Mexico would stop?  Of course not.  But neither does he care. Like other liberals, he is only interested in using whatever excuse he can come up with to recast America in his vision. Continue Reading »

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uried in an NY Times story lauding Prez-elect Obama for probing unmercifully into the background of anyone applying for work in his administration was this passing note:

Only the smallest details are excluded; traffic tickets carrying fines of less than $50 need not be reported, the application says. Applicants are asked whether they or anyone in their family owns a gun. They must include any e-mail that might embarrass the president-elect, along with any blog posts and links to their Facebook pages.

Why would Obama ask this question if the Supreme Court just ruled that it’s unconstitutional for jurisdictions to ban gun ownership? Why does the inquiry extend beyond the applicant and on to “anyone in their family?”

There are only two reasons I can see:  One, Obama just loves guns and wants people in his administration who feel the same way and will work with him to protect Second Amendment rights.  Or, Obama just hates guns and wants people in his administration who feel the same way and will work with him to take away Second Amenment rights.

Given the evidence, I’ll go with the latter.

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Let’s Hear It For Sharia Law!

Here’s the beauty of Islam and its perverted justice system in a nutshell: Keep women uneducated, so they don’t know how to defend themselves, and discourage men from defending them, then you can stone a whole lot of women to death without having to stone too many men! What’s not to love!?

In theory the penalty of stoning to death applies to both men and women.

But the lawyers say that in practice, many more women than men receive the sentence because they are less well educated and often poorly represented in court. (BBC)

And it’s happening again in Iran – that showplace of Islamic rule – as eight women and one man face imminent stoning for sexual sinning. The women were found guilty of adultery or prostitution, the man was found guilty of having sex with one of his students.

One imam, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, supposedly suspended stoning in 2002, but it hasn’t stopped the practice, and lawyers for the eight say they fear the sentences will be carried out at any time.

And what goes on at Guantanamo is cruel and unusual? Continue Reading »

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The NY Times Vs. Health And Truth

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recent NYT expose on the horrors of CT scans included this paragraph:

Some medical experts say the American devotion to the newest, most expensive technology is an important reason that the United States spends much more on health care than other industrialized nations — more than $2.2 trillion in 2007, an estimated $7,500 a person, about twice the average in other countries — without providing better care.

Without providing better care? Says who? Name me a country with better medical care – better results – than the good ol’ US of A!

Fortunately, there’s the internet with places like Stats Blog that provide answers to back up my jingoistic enthusiasm:

Last year, the journal Lancet Oncology published a huge comparative study of cancer survival rates in European countries and contrasted them with United States. The results:

Colon and rectal cancer: 65.5 percent in the U.S. vs 56.2 percent in Europe.
Breast cancer: 90.1 percent in the U.S. vs 79 percent in Europe.
Prostate cancer: 99.3 percent in the U.S. vs 77.5 percent in Europe.

All cancers (age adjusted), Men: 66.3 percent in the U.S. vs 47.3 percent in Europe.
All cancers (age adjusted), women: 62.9 percent in the U.S. vs 55.8 percent for women.

No individual country surpassed the U.S. on any of these measures – and these percentage differences add up to lives saved. If that doesn’t amount to “better care,” what does?

Not only to the stats show the inherent anti-American bias that runs rampant and untreated like a staph infection throughout the NYT and the MSM that mock it, it also shows the inherent weakness of socialized medicine. Europe is dominated by Big Brother with a Band-Aid programs of the sort the Dems would ape, yet they ignore the truth for the feeling and continue pushing us down that hopeless road. Continue Reading »

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he McCain camp got another gift today in the SCOTUS decision clarifying citizen’s right to hold handguns (as if clarification were needed!). And the Obama camp got another opportunity to spin crazily to clarify their messages (as if clarification were possible!).

Here’s the run-down from Politico:

A year ago, the Obama campaign told the ChiTrib their man “believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional.” That’s obviously the wrong position today, so some scrambling was in order.

Adding to the Obama policy history on gun control is this quote, which is convoluted and contradictory, in typical Obama expository fashion. He was asked to reconcile his characterization of himself as sympathetic with gun owner’s rights with his past statement that he supported the now unconstitutional DC ban. Take a deep breath; here it comes:

“I think it’s important for us to recognize that we’ve got a tradition of handgun ownership and gun ownership generally. And a lot of people — law-abiding citizens — use it for hunting, for sportsmanship and for protecting their families. We also have a violence on the streets that is the result of illegal handgun usage. And so I think there is nothing wrong with a community saying we are going to take those illegal handguns off the streets, we are going to trace more effectively how these guns are ending up on the streets, to unscrupulous gun dealers, who oftentimes are selling to straw purchasers. And cracking down on the various loopholes that exist in terms of background checks for children, the mentally ill. Those are all approaches that I think the average gun owner would actually support.

“The problem is that we’ve got a position, oftentimes by the NRA, that says any regulation whatsoever is the camel’s nose under the tent. And that, I think, is not where the American people are at. We can have reasonable, thoughtful gun control measures that I think respect the Second Amendment and people’s traditions.”

Huh? Is he fer it or agin’ it, as they say in gun-totin’-ese. From what I can tell – and I’m guessing here because who can ever really tell what Obama’s talking about – he’s for very limited, very circumscribed ownership of guns. His friends can have ‘em, but he’s going to have to think pretty hard before letting anyone else have ‘em.

Fast-forward to today when suddenly McCain’s on the right side and Obama’s out in – where else? – left field? The O-campaign tossed out this gem:

“As president, Barack Obama will continue to respect the constitutional rights of law-abiding gun owners, and for voters who have concerns about this issue, they will find real comfort in Sen. Obama’s record. But when it comes to health care and energy and other economic issues that many gun owners care about, Barack Obama offers a fundamental change, while John McCain offers more of the same.”

Let’s start at the end of the statement first. The segue to health care, energy and economic issues is about as clumsy as they come. Are we to believe that someone who was elated by today’s SCOTUS decision will align with Obama on the forced takeover by inept government of a functional health care system? That they’ll think paying more for gas while waiting … and waiting … and waiting for an alternative is a good idea? That they share his “soak the rich/expand the government” tax philosophy?

Now, to his statement to “law-abiding” gun owners: How many laws will he try to shove between today’s decision and actual gun ownership? I get the sense he’s not ready to just give up on imposing his liberal view of gun ownership on us.

As for “voters,” as opposed to mere gun owners who are likely too bitter to vote, we see that they are to take comfort in a record that, save for abortion and gun control, is pretty thin gruel. How are we then to mesh that record with his “respect” for individual gun ownership rights? We can’t; they’re irreconcilable. It’s just Obama hiding his true self behind hundreds of words of vero possumus rhetoric.

So, having scaled this typhoon of spin, we are left with an Obama who “respect” gun owners, much like Jeremiah Wright respects white folks and America Amerikkka, while promising voters – his likely voters – that, if elected, he will be right back in there trying disrespect gun owners.

Will someone please tell me where the “new” is in this politicking?

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