The Truth About Guns

“[Richard] Shoop, dressed all in black and wearing a motorcycle helmet, walked through the mall armed with a rifle modified to look like an AK-47. The rifle was taken from Shoop’s brother, [Bergen County Prosecutor John] Molinelli said.” TTAG commentator OIBL reckons it was a “Ruger 10-22 using a drop-in stock kit that makes it look really, really mean.” And so the calls will come for safe storage laws to prevent the Shoops of the world (not to mention the Lanzas) from gaining access to family members’ firerarms. Only the great state of New Jersey already has such a law .  . .

New Jersey law (Statute 2C:58-15) requires that all firearms be i

“All reported cases of criminal gun use, as well as many of the so-called self-defense gun uses, appear to be socially undesirable.” That’s the bottom line from Harvard’s David Hemenway and Deborah Azrael in their study Violence and Victims. Lumping criminal acts with “so-called defensive gun uses” seems a bit churlish, to say the least. But that’s how our David rolls. After reading and analyzing the literature on DGUs, the Cambridge resident reckons there are “only” 55k to 80k “real” defensive gun uses per year in the U.S. That still works ou

Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America (MDA) is nothing if not quick. Even before the nature of last night’s suicide-by-cop incident in Paramus NJ was revealed, the anti-gun group’s Facebook page proclaimed “ANOTHER DAY IN AMERICA, ANOTHER MASS SHOOTING THREAT.” Threat. Cute. To which they added . . .

Last night it was Paramus, but tomorrow it may be your town, your mall, your school, your college campus. Just last week there were three mass shootings America, in addition to the tragic murder of a TSA

Took me a while to figure out what ICON 1000 was selling, exactly, but here ya go: “One thousand is the empirical number that forms the boundary between boy and man. The displacement threshold between novice and expert. One thousand has always been the goal. The finest leathers, textiles, & armor have gone into every item in the ICON 1000 collection. Every detail has been critiqued and examined. Every style has endured countless miles of testing and refinement. The end result is the finest collection of motorcycle riding apparel we’ve ever created. We sincerely hope you will enjoy wearing the ICON 1000 gear as much as we’ve enjoyed making it.” Yeah but what about the guns? I mean they should be way cooler than that, right? Suggestions?

“The coverage of gun control and gun issues is really the last vestige of group-approved bigotry. It’s the one place where you can make fun of an identifiable group of people, you can do caricatures of them as being stupid.” – Gun Talk host Tom Gresham, ‘Gun radio’ is up in arms [at politico.com]

“A gunman who opened fire at a New Jersey mall Monday night later holed up in a back room and shot himself in the head,” CNN reports. “No one else was injured in the mall shooting . . . ‘We know that his intent was either suicide or to do something that would cause police to shoot him, which we call ‘suicide by cop,’ Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli told CNN’s New Day . . . Richard Shoop, 20, was known by local law enforcement. He had a history of drug use and abuse, Molinelli said. ‘He at least thought that he was reaching a point where there was no recourse but to take his own life,’ M

There’s been a report of shots fired at the Westfield Garden State Plaza Mall in Paramus, NJ. According to CNN, an employee heard “6-7 shots” around 9:20 p.m.

Writing…

A Virginia reminder: Election day is tomorrow, and it’s crunch time for Ken Cuccinelli (left above) and Mark Obenshain (right above). Clinton bag man Terry McAuliffe has outspent Cuccinelli (thanks to Bloomberg) by 10:1. As a result, he still holds a slim margin in the polls. Projected turnouts are as low as 30 percent, and the campaigns have 40 percent as the goal, so with numbers that low, every vote makes a big impact. With both sides concentrating heavily on health care in the last couple weeks, the gubernatorial election is seen by some to be a referendum on Obamacare, and as such could have influence well into the 2014 elections. Make your vote count, if not for you, then for the momentum it could give to the rest of us.

If it wasn’t there already, add Geissele Automatics to your good-guy list.

Press release from Arizona Game and Fish Department:

Non-lead ammunition supply issues across the nation are prompting the Arizona Game and Fish Department to remind hunters in the California condor’s core range that they can still help reduce the amount of lead available to the birds by removing gut piles from the field. Hunters in Arizona’s condor range that remove their gut piles (lead ammunition only) are eligible to be entered into a raffle that offers prizes including a trip on the Grand Canyon Railroad with a 2-night stay at the canyon, Cabela’s gift cards, Navajo tribal lands deer tag, Navajo rugs, Grand

TTAG’s been publishing material critical of police on a regular basis—when they deserve it. Which, it must be said, they often do. To substantiate that claim, Ralph has been directing readers to the CATO Institute’s National Police Misconduct Recap for some time. So I contacted CATO (note: not the Green Hornet’s majordomo) and asked for permission to republish that information. Granted. The thing of it is . . .

the majority of the recap is not firearms-related per se. For example, the list includes a link to a story about Tempe, AZ officer Jessica Dever-Jakuz [above] who resigned after facing a charge of hindering prosecution. As I said, nothing gun related save the fact that she’s a police officer who carries a gun. In a state with Constitutional Carry, no less.