Gun Deaths in Colorado

As promulgated by the VPC, and reported in Pravda By The Platte, it is claimed that in 2009, some 583 gun deaths, and 565 motor vehicle deaths were counted.
Now I know that Denver has about 50-80 murders a year, and that's the biggest contributor to the number, but I wondered where the others were coming from so I checked the FBI's numbers:

                  Population      Violent Crime      Murder and manslaughter

State Total		5,024,748	16,976	175

Keeping in mind that about 2/3 of murders are committed with guns, this leaves some 116 attributable to firearms. Next, one notes that of any given total of gun deaths, a large percentage of these are suicides, some 55% in fact. This would add 141 to the total to make 257, well short of the advertised total.Toss in the 2% attributable to accidents, and the total rises to 262. This leaves some 321 dead bodies unaccounted for.

Does the VPC know something the rest of us don't? Have the police checked the "gardens" in their back yards or investigated the funny odor coming from their crawl spaces? Inquiring minds want to know.

The car stats come from the nadir of the recent "depression" during which a lot of people had no jobs and therefore weren't out on the streets going back and forth to work.

Update: I guess you can play all sorts of games with the numbers. Assuming that the 583 gun deaths number is correct, 55% of those are expected to be suicides, or 320. This leaves 263. Subtract off 141 murders and non-negligent manslaughter, and you get 122. Some of these are legitimate shootings including the police and citizens shooting goblins. Don't have stats on that, but it sounds about right. It is also noted that 2009 was a record year for suicides, 940 by various means, so that number may well be higher.

Gun Panic

Stories of shortages and rising prices are all over. The price of primers is again creeping up. People I know who are in the gun business tell me this happens just beforte every presidential election no matter who is favored to win. From the Casper Trib:

Arms manufacturer Ruger announced on March 22 that the company is temporarily suspending new orders for guns because it has a backlog of more than one million orders, FoxNews.com reported.
Another manufacturer, Sturm, also suspended new orders after receiving orders for more than one million guns in the first three months of the year, according to the report.

You'd think that in Casper, the journalism majors there would recognize the name of Sturm Ruger & Co.

I am informed by my highly reliable sources that the prices of guns and components will creep upward until about December, then drop. So buy a box of primers now at $27 and sell it at the gun show in October for $50. Just don't hold them too long and wind up selling for $23 in February.

Economics - Regulation

Here are a couple of articles highlighting what happens when regulation gets out of hand. It starts when some nanny shows up at the PTA meeting demanding that the new monkey bars be limited to 5 feet in height so that someones unfortunate kid won't get hurt falling from the highest bar. The kids all learn from this that success is forbidden. Later they learn that it is also punished as their financial success is taxed into non-existence. Here's a chart from Captain Capitalism showing the trend of GDP over the years coupled with the government's take of your winnings:

Click to enlarge. Then go read his piece. He thinks this and another chart showing the potential in individual earnings had the government not been so "helpful" is worthy of an appearance on Zero Hedge.  I think so too, and I'm stealing a march on them on this one.

The Assistant Village Idiot has a piece, complete with links to more such articles, denouncing the effects of over-regulation cheerfully pointing out that the regulation of banks is exacerbating problems in the financial community rather than fixing anything, and will likely be labeled as the proximate cause of the impending financial collapse.

Improving Government, The Chicago Way

Mayor Rahm (the Godfather, Rhambo) Emanuel has announced that city sanitation workers have achieved great efficiencies in workplace attendance under his administration:

In the first four months of 2012, the mayor's office says absenteeism is down 16.3 percent year-to-year for truck drivers, and 13.15 percent year-to-year for laborers. Additionally there has been a 40 percent reduction in disciplinary cases related to absenteeism – from 253 to 152.

While it is possible that removing "ghost" workers alone could account for a good deal of this, Mayor Emanuel assured everybody that there was no truth to rumors that sanitation workers had been told that anyone showing up late on Monday would find themselves in the landfill on Tuesday.

You Can't Say That

Well you can, but keep in mind Big Sister is watching.

Here's the DHS list of words that will cause eyebrows to rise in some dark cubicle in Washington. I suppose the more you use, the more attention you get. There's already a contest out there to see who can use the most of them in one grammatically correct sentence.

Come up with a contest winner in the comments and see if I get thrown in jail.

Managing Dissent

Remember when dissent was patriotic? Been a while hasn't it? Three years ago it was the highest form of patriotism, now it's just racist. So what to do with the "racists" who are criticizing the benevolent administration? In many countries, this is the province of the national police, who simply pick up anyone who complains too loudly and either beat them severely (first offense) or simply kill them (second offense).

Here we are civilized. We send the IRS, the EPA, or one of many other agencies with police powers, and drive dissenters into bankruptcy. Or at least that's the official policy. Some see this as mollycoddling the offenders or at least tolerating the racism. Clever people who have seen emergent trends have come up with a better solution.

The emergent trend in question is the militarization of the police. Every municipal police department with more that 2 officers seems to think it needs a SWAT team to handle dangerous scofflaws with overdue library books, multiple unpaid parking tickets, and other offenses against the public order. So they buy  body armor, face masks, automatic weapons, armored vehicles and the like for the boys in blue to play with on the weekends, and use this to make otherwise routine arrests, usually getting the address right.

Herein lies the new application. Don't like what someone is saying about your candidate? Call 911 at 2 AM, and in a babbling voice, identify yourself as the person in question, give the correct home address, and inform the dispatcher that you or someone there has just shot someone else and is holding a third person hostage. Then hang up. In no time the SWAT team will arrive at your victims home with drawn guns and pumping adrenaline, bang on the door, or maybe kick it in, put everyone on the ground in handcuffs and interrogate everyone on the front lawn until they realize that something is missing. An actual perp of some sort, for example, or maybe a victim.

If you answer the insistent banging on the door, do NOT come out with the cell phone you were using to call the cops about a home invasion. An I-phone is indistinguishable from a Mac-10 in the glare of the helicopter floodlight.

There have been two of these so far, and the MSM hasn't said a word. A perp has been pretty much identified as a friend of DNC terrorist Brett Kimberlin, but no action has been taken yet.

Attempting to have your political enemies killed using the police as your hit men strikes me as one of the more despicable acts someone could pull but since the militarization of the police makes this easier, I suppose someone would think of it sooner or later. At the very least someone could be charged with attempted murder, and I'm sure that a competent D.A. could think of several other things to tack on.

Update: The L.A. D.A.'s office doesn't seem to have a problem with this. Evidently it's just another service the government provides to its constituents.

Raising Kids and Urban Myths

I loves me a good hoax. One that gets the Figures Of Authority jumping up and down, wailing that Something Must Be Done (tm), or that There Ought To Be A Law (r). I have really seen nothing to compare with the smoking bananas hoax from the '60's but that may be because I've learned to look at outrageous suggestions as just that.

Still, here's a list of contenders ranging from barely plausible to to downright extraterrestrial.  Of course a good hoax needs a bit of reality to act as a base. Several of these do. Jenkem, for example  involves a process for producing methane, which if huffed, will get you high, just as breathing any other non-oxygenated gas will. "High" in this case referring to a near-death experience. Considering the source of the methane, this would be just like huffing farts, which might make death seem attractive, so who knows.

Most teenagers are convinced that their parents are deliberately holding them back, preventing them from achieving their rightful place in the Guinness book of world records, when in fact, we're trying to keep them from winning a Darwin award. Sometimes it's helpful to encourage them if the result will be sufficiently humorous or embarrassing. Tampon shots will reputedly allow the absorption of alcohol quickly, and without a breathalyzer signature. Soak a tampon in Vodka, and place it where the sun don't shine and see what happens.

Remember Macaulay Caulkins in Home Alone when he slapped the after shave on his face? You'll be laughing about that one for years. Just periodically check your K-Y and make sure there's no Ben-Gay in it.

Gun Fun

You know what's fun? IDPA shooting. Shoot, move, shoot, move, shoot and move, etc.

You know what's not fun? IDPA shooting in a 35mph crosswind with dust and smoke. The smoke was from wildfires in New Mexico. The dust was local. Some of the walls had 8 tires on the stands to hold them up and still required some human intervention once the shooters had moved on.

Add sun cream and in an hour or so you begin to look like you're growing red-tinted moss on the South sides of your legs.

Oh well, it adds to the challenge and if you actually need to use your gun, who knows, it might be raining.

Elections, The Only Polls That Matter

When your candidate can tote up 60% of the vote in an election, you have to think you've got a good candidate. When your candidate totes up 60% against a jailed felon, a local perennial candidate, a nobody, and a collection of nobodies you have to wonder how viable he's going to be running against a real opponent.

Not to worry, an explanation has been found.

And you'll never guess what it is.

Gun Fun

It appears my suggested e-postal match has had a very favorable reception to judge from the traffic. My shooting buddy assures me that the black SUV with the tinted windows will be parked outside my house bright and early Monday morning. The sun is turning black as I write, can the helicopters be far behind?

Went out and shot the Milles Bourne e-postal match with 4 different firearms. I discover that my bowling pin gun is shooting a bit to the right, which has been corrected. I also find I need more practice at bullseye shooting. Also that I get better results with the Hi Point 4095 using the Barrys hollow base bullets, which are a bit longer than the ones I normally use. I like Barrys bullets. You can get plated bullets in flat point, hollow point, and hollow base all at about the same price.

Articles I've been reading (Og the Neanderpundit) have given me some ideas regarding the inherent accuracy of the Hi Point, and how to get the most out of it. The bad news is that this is going to involve fabricating some parts, so don't hold your breath on this one.

Update: If the drone you bag is armed, I'll double your score. According to the article at the link, this will be easier and easier.

Sippenhaft

This was the policy in '30s Germany of assuming that if someone was disloyal, then the disloyalty must run in the family, therefore the whole family needed to be eradicated. Today, the Chicago version of this is to find people who donate to the "wrong" party and single them out for abuse.

The first instance of this to get wide coverage was the raid on the Gibson guitar factory on the premise that they use protected wood without jumping through all the hoops. The raid confiscated a lot of expensive wood, and all the computers and records from the plant. Imagine trying to run a plant without all your billing and payroll stuff.

The real problem was that Gibson was 1) non-union, and 2) the CEO had donated to the McCain campaign.

The Martin Guitar Co. uses the same products but since it's union and donates to Democrats, no problemo.

Now the Feds are suggesting that if any artist performs outside the U.S. , their Gibson guitars will be subject to confiscation when they try to re-enter the country.

2012: Not just an election, it's a restraining order.

Senate Dems Favor Border Control

Led by everybody's favorite gun nut Chuck Schumer

Who is proposing stricter border controls in light of Eduardo Saverin's departure to Singapore where he'll be allowed to keep some 66 million more than if he stayed in the U.S.

Alas, the wall at the border will be modeled on the one that used to separate East Germany from West.

2012 e-postal match

Sponsored by Judge Andrew Napolitano, this match challenges you to be the first to down a surveillance drone. The drone must be within U.S. territory when shot. Photograph the crash site and e-mail or fax thew photo to Judge Napolitano Deadline is Dec 31, 2012.

Class 1 = Shotgun.Any sights, any load.
Class 2 = Rimfire handgun. Any sights. If it's that small light and close, it won't matter.
Class 3 = Rimfire rifle. Any sights. See above.
Class 4 = Center fire rifle with Iron sights. Red dot will be counted as iron.
Class 5 = Center fire rifle with magnification
Class 6 = Shoulder-launched rocket
Class 7 = Other. If you have a working laser, rail gun or what-have you, this is your class.

Points are awarded by weight, 1 point per pound. Don't pass up the PETA drone because it only weighs a pound or two, remember a Predator might be heavy, but it's harder to bag.

Note also that they can shoot back.

Or you could just stick with the easy ones..

UPDATE: O.K. forget the judge, just send your entries here, in the comments.

The Future Of Transportation - Bicycles

Coming up next month is the nth annual Front Range Bike Week including Bike To Work day. This year it's June 27th.

The last time I was able to bicycle to work, the fun ended when some squirrel on a mountain bike t-boned me at a blind corner on the trail. Since then I have never been employed near enough to home that a bicycle seemed like a viable form of transport.

Sometime back in the early 90's though when the idea was first floated, I was working in a building at the top of a 12% grade about a mile long. The flyer that appeared in the company info kiosk showed a yuppie-like fellow with his briefcase bungeed on the back of his 10-speed, pedaling his little heart out presumably delivering the PJ-4 forms to the 8AM meeting. What was noticeable was that nowhere on the flyer did the word "bicycle" appear, just the graphic.

Being unable to resist the temptation, I upgraded the flyer, and replaced some of the ones in the kiosk:

A big improvement. You accomplish everything advertised, and you don't die of a heart attack on the way in. I'm working on getting our H.R. department to recognize my 1100cc Honda Sabre as a "bike" for purposes of brownie points with the health care provider.

Of course if the ride was downhill both ways, I might be more easily convinced to use the peddler. Click the link. It's quite a ride.

Urban Farming

In spite of snow falling every single time the fruit trees bloomed, it appears I'm in for big crops of peaches, apples, and plums.

Sister in law says the squirrels are going to be in Heaven.

Got that right.

Political Posturing

The House has passes, pretty much along party lines, a bill to fund the Commerce and Justice departments for next year. Included were several amendments considered favorable to gunnies.

Swell, except that without control of the Senate and a favorable president, the amendments will likely be removed in the Senate and with few or none of them put back in during reconciliation talks, the bill will then go to the president.

Putting all those nice amendments in is the House Republicans was of suggesting what they might do if they had a Republican Senate and white house as well. Senate votes against them will become campaign advertisements. Likewise in the House, embattled Dems will vote for the amendments so they can claim to be pro-gun for the election knowing that the Senate will prevent any of this from actually happening.

Next year.

Presidential Polls

With 6 months to go before the elections, practically anything can happen, but this graphic from Rasmussen is interesting.

2 things to note: first the general trend, which has Obama drifting downward and Romney slowly climbing, and second the general jumpyness of the curves. The relative performance of the candidates seems to depend on the day of the week on which the poll was taken.

With Romney gaining at 7 pts/3 mos, and O'bama declining at 3 points/3mo. by the election the margin will be Romney 64, O'b 37. Yeah I know it doesn't add up to 100%, it's an approximation. Interesting thought, though.

Gun Law

In a recent case in Denver, a friend of mine (occupant #3) was sharing a dwelling with at least two other people. One of them (occupant #1) was on the bad books of local law enforcement, who came by with a warrant and a not unexpected attitude. In the ensuing drama, the sought-after fellow was picked up with minimum fuss, and the dwelling searched. Everybody there was in possession of at least one firearm, all properly stored, and #3 had a CCW permit. #1, unfortunately, was a felon, which added to the complaint list the police had put together. Every gun in the house was confiscated, regardless of ownership, and the police say that the rightful owners can get them back upon presentation of a receipt for the purchase of said guns.

Now I don't know about you, but if I had to produce receipts for everything in my house, I'd probably wing up losing most of it.

At No Lawyers - Only Guns and Money, a similar case is mentioned with a reference to California law:

"In California, the Evidence Code makes it clear that simple possession is proof of ownership of almost all types of common property, including firearms," said Don Kilmer, attorney for the plaintiffs. "The California Department of Justice is misleading police departments in such a way that they violate the rights of gun owners who were investigated and found to not have violated the law."

I'm thinking that this is probably the case in most states. In this case, both the innocent occupants have made statements as to which firearms belonged to whom so there shouldn't be any problem with actual ownership. They even agree as to which guns "belong" to #1, who shouldn't actually have any.

The other doctrine here is what happens when one person in a group occupancy is prohibited. Does this automatically prohibit everyone in the premises?

Denver is very hostile to guns in general and the police never miss a chance to remind the peasants.

Film at 11, I guess.

Energy, the Environment, and Politics As Usual

The administration is getting desperate.First they turn the pet pit bulls at the EPA loose on the coal industry in an attempt to shut down coal fired power plants, mostly in red states, then to their horror, they nearly lose a primary to an incarcerated felon in Texas in a coal state.

As a result, their campaign website now lists "clean coal" as an acceptable approach to providing energy to the country, right up there with nuclear, oil, as long as it's not drilled here, gas, as long as it's not fracked here, and 4 different flavors of unicorn farts.

Coal wasn't on that chart in any form at all before that W.Va primary.

Going to the campaign site and clicking on the selections doesn't produce any information suggesting that some kind of plan might be under consideration either.

In this case, adding support for clean coal was easy enough since the biggest deposit of the stuff is off limits to mining, and the second largest deposit is controlled by an Indonesian who is a big contributor to the Dems. The coal in question is in Utah, not W. Va, so all you coal-digging rednecks* can forget about being employed in Obama's second term.

*What I've been able to determine about my ancestry suggests that there are a number of these folks in that part of the country who are related to me. Birds of a feather, and all that. Hi there, cousins.

Good Luck

Saturday we have a bowling pin shoot. I do O.K. The organizer mentions that we're getting perilously low on pins.
Sunday 2 of my friends tip me to a bowling alley operator with surplus pins on his hands.
Today I have 12 cases of used pins in the bed of my truck.
Life is good.

DMSC study group coming up. I need to buy each of them a nice beer.

Capitalism

In California a lady has been given a slap on the wrist for paying insufficient taxes on income of some $40,000 over 10 years ($4000/year?) from her home business selling suicide kits.

I had the same idea about 20 years ago, which involved a small helium tank, a plastic bag with an elastic closure, and a short hose. Place bag over head, connect hose to bag and tank, inflate bag, add more gas if it deflates or if you feel uncomfortable, and in 3 minutes you're painlessly dead.

In honor of Dr. Kevorkian, I was going to call my kit the "Jack In The Box". Typical of an engineer, I over thought the problem and made the price point too high. Turns out you can get a tank already filled from Balloon Time for as little as $25. Hose is easy, but the bag might have taken some actual leg work to find. Might have. Today I'm sure I could find such a thing for peanuts, in bulk, from China, on the Internet.

If Romney wins, maybe I could get a celebrity endorsement from Cher. If Obama wins, I could get a hardware contract with his health care program. Either way I get rich, no?

Corporate Taxation

Over at Townhall Finance, Chris Edwards has a piece suggesting that there may be empirical proof of the validity of the Laffer curve. Art Laffer, as you know, famously suggested that as tax rates go up, so do revenues collected, but only to a point, beyond which revenues fall off as the effort to avoid the taxation pays bigger and bigger dividends.

The ideal tax rate for individuals and for corporations has been hotly debated with the left favoring numbers in the 70-100% range and the right generally favoring numbers around 10-20%. My own position on corp[orate taxes is that they should be near zero, which is what they pay right now.

When a corporation makes a widgett, it sells it to somebody for say $10. Doing this, it makes a profit over the cost of manufacturing which goes toward bigger factories, R&D for new widgetts, and yes, pay raises all around. If the government demands 38%, as it currently does here, the price to the consumer is simply raised to cover the tax. Thus the corporation pays no tax, it simply passes it on to the consumer, who is now less able to afford the product.

Even this has its limits as this chart suggests:

In the low 30's revenue increases sharply. Nice, but I think there's something missing. As the corporate tax rate goes down, the landscape becomes more and more business friendly. People are hired. The supply of available labor dries up. Wages go up, and thus income tax receipts go up. This without even raising the income tax rates.

When the Irish "harmonized" their tax rates at 12%, corporate and individual, every European in Europe began moving his now portable Euros to Ireland to start a business. This gave Ireland double digit economic growth for years. Unfortunately they elected a government capable of spending it faster than it came in, so the country, if not the underlying economy, now borders on bankruptcy.

France just elected its own version of Obama who will shortly either sell out his socialist principles to avoid national default, or will cheerfully lead France over a cliff. We'll see.

Springtime In The Rockies

Saturday 83 deg, shooting bowling pins in a 3 mph breeze, got 5 out of 10 tables and didn't get sunburned.
Sun: 60 degrees with a threat of rain. O.K. we need the moisture.
Mon 53 deg, rain sometimes mixed with snow.
Tue: depends on who you ask, should be tapering off by PM though.

'Tis a privilege to live in Colorado.
                                       Pravda On The Platte

Ridicule

Those who aspire to high office need several skills to get there. The ability to wear a good suit without it looking like a rental, for starters. The ability to read a speech from a teleprompter, head bobbing left and right, using a voice that makes people think you actually believe what you're saying. The ability to eat anything and sleep anywhere, anytime is good as well.

Some rudimentary knowledge of economics, geography, and history is helpful, but not actually required. Especially at the federal level.

What will kill your dreams deader than a rock, beyond the abilities of any holy man living or legendary to bring back, is ridicule. Witness Walter "I was brainwashed" Mondale. Barry "In your heart, you know he's right." Goldwater. Gary "Monkey Business" Hart, Richard "I am not a crook" Nixon, and countless others. Angus the Scot:
(Best told after several scotches and with a Scottish accent.)

So Angus and McTavish are sitting around in the pub. Angus takes a long pull at his drink, looks out the door and says "Mac, you see that bridge out there."

"Aye Angus, I do"

"S'a goood bridge. Built it with me bare hands I did. But do they call me Angus the bridge builder?"

"No Angus they don't" he says sympathetically.

"And ya see that roof on the school. S' a good rooooof, took me a month, with me bare hands." He takes a pull again. "But do they call me Angus the Roof Maker?"

"No Angus they don't"

Angus takes another deeeeep pull at his beer, his face going red.

"But you foook WAN Gooot . . .!!!!"

In that spirit, here are a couple of items I've found. First from Twichy:

Synchronized ovulation, I tell you!
From Power Line, here's another, inspired by Romney's comment on the new DNC slogan:

 "Forward? Where? Over a cliff?"

Romney is going to be tough to ridicule. Everything he's done that annoys the right is considered a big selling point with the left. About all that's left is his religious cult* and that invites examination of Obama's  guru, Rev. Wright.Still, if you go down south and pick up some of the jokes told about Baptists and Methodists, some of these might prove adaptable.

*Cult: From Billlls handy and cynical dictionary: Any religious group that's younger or smaller than yours.

Unemployment Statistics

...and damn lies, and then there's statistics. Today the unemployment rate "officially" went down from 8.2 to 8.1%. You may have noticed that no one seems to be getting a job in spite of this rosy rate.

Q and O has several pieces covering this but my favorite is by Dale Franks who points out that:

Additionally, 141,865,000 people were employed in April, down from 142,034,000 in March, a decline of 169,000 in the number of people employed.

So with fewer people actually having jobs, the unemployment rate goes down because more people who were looking, and thus were counted as unemployed, have simply given up, and thus are now simply not counted.

Remember, when workforce participation reached 58% or so, unemployment will be zero.

It is worth noting that it's not retiring boomers that are driving this dropout rate either, in fact the 55 and up demographic is actually  going back to work. It's the younger groups that are taking it in the shorts.

Going back to Dale:

As always, I’d point out that, if the labor force participation rate were at the historical average of 66.2%, the actual unemployment rate for April would be 11.73%, up from 11.56% in March.

This is the new math. You won't see a resurgence of the old math until a Republican gets elected.

Getting Out The Vote

Colorado used to be a fairly reliable red state with the hippies mostly confined to Boulder County and a central Denver. Voter registration reflected this with the numbers moving pretty much in lockstep with one another as this chart from the Colorado Observer shows:

Until Sept 08 when ACORN began wholesale registration of large numbers of previously unheard from entities, some of whom later proved to be figments of an acid-tainted imagination. Now those 10,000 new voters may well be mostly real, but jumps like that look suspicious to me. The SOS is starting a campaign to discover a total of 900,000 new potential voters, but I think his efforts might be as well directed to cleaning up the existing rolls.

Of course the other side of this is that a lot of people prefer to let their neighbors do the voting for them. Be interesting to see what the actual participation rates look like this time.

Economics

Lord, I'm tired of economics. Guns are so much more fun. Still, here's a comparison of results between two presidents efforts at fixing an economic slump:

At this point in the second Summer Of Recovery, you'd have to think things might be looking rather grim for the Lightworking Messiah, but remember, FDR parlayed a similar result into four terms and even got his veep elected before the electorate decided to quit blaming Hoover.

The cheery chart above is brought to you by the Financial Times, at which you will read that they believe the electorate will wise up much faster this time. Why not? They caught on to Carter quickly enough.

Going Postal

More gun fun. This month looks like a fun target with lots of classes over at Sand Castle Scrolls.

10 shot limit, and the green light is mandatory. If I can get out on a non-match weekend, I plan to shoot this with everything I can lug out to the range. The pistol caliber carbine is a 3MOA gun, so there's not much point in pretending it's a center fire rifle. I'll think I'll put the irons back on and shoot seated at 50 yards and see if I can see the target at that distance.

Meantime, results from the last match here.