Spring has arrived.

How can I tell?

By the blood running through the streets in Gun Ban Land:

Fifteen people were shot -- including one man who died -- all over the city Thursday night in just under six hours.

How ironic that the gun banner's prediction of blood in the streets only happens in the places were people can't (legally) carry guns. Yet they still think people who are lawfully carrying guns are the problem.

Of course, this violence will be blamed on the places that haven't banned handguns, yet experience less violence.

Gun Guys playing the race card again.

Apparently, it's time for their yearly, "Black People Should Support Gun Control" post. It's the same story as usual: Out of all ethnic groups, black people are the most likely to get shot to death, which on the surface is true.

However, as always, they ignore the fact that not only is a black person the least likely to own a gun, they are also most likely to be killed by another black person. In other words, there are other ethnicities out there that own more guns and manage to kill not only fewer of each other, but fewer people in general.

That means guns aren't the problem. The real killers in the black community are the higher rates of poverty, low quality/no education, drug use, fatherless homes, and gang involvement.

They didn't get it last year. They didn't get it the year before last. They didn't get it this year. Maybe they'll get it next year. I doubt it though.

Is the VPC attempting to conflate Maurice Clemmons with CCW holders?

Pay attention to the language used.



I guess CCW holders aren't killing enough people for Josh Sugarmann's taste. He has to use Maurice Clemmons and the power of association to drum up extra fear. Hopefully, he won't use Clemmons to pad his numbers. The reality is whether Clemmons was carrying the gun concealed or not, it doesn't change the fact that he was illegally in possession of a gun in the first place.

2009 Hall of Shame

1. Jimmy Carter - Apparently thinks anyone who owns one of the most popular, yet least abused firearms in the nation wants "to kill policemen or go to a school or workplace to see how many victims we can accumulate before we are finally shot or take our own lives." Who would have thought a peanut farmer would have a peanut brain?

2. MSNBC - A black man carries a gun and becomes an angry white person through the magic of television.

3. Eric Holder - Mexico, a country with a corrupt government and an even more corrupt police force has GTS. Apparently, the solution is to ban American's guns. Because if you ban guns in America, the drug cartels (organizations that own speedboats, submarines, airplanes, and helicopters) will never be able to get guns anywhere else. It's brilliantly stupid. No wonder Eric's been put into Joe Biden's soundproof room.

4. Fort Benning - Terrorists also eat food. Therefore, anyone who eats food is a terrorist.

5. Jim Darnell - With friends like this, who needs Josh Sugarmann? A real, live, breathing concern troll. At least someone was smart enough to delete his tripe before it cost them their entire subscriber base.

Mark Twain once said, "The trouble isn't that there are too many fools, but that the lightning isn't distributed right." Personally, I don't think there is enough lightning.

So for 2010, may the lightning be both plentiful and accurate. Especially around Washington D.C.

Anti-snitching = anti-gun = pro-criminal.

Stigma of 'snitching' creates a street code of silence that hampers Chicago cops.

Though the streets have long been governed by a code of conduct that discourages cooperating with cops, the anti-snitching mind-set gained momentum with the release of an underground DVD in 2004. Its staying power was enhanced through song lyrics, apparel and Web sites such as whosarat.com.

As if Chicago didn't have enough problems to burden the rest of the country with, add to it the idiotic "anti-snitching" movement. But how is the anti-snitching movement anti-gun?

Any behavior that enables criminality, whether it's people on the street not snitching, politicians protecting gang members from harsh sentencing, women not being more selective with who they mate with, or men not sticking around to properly raise their children, will always result in more calls for gun control.

The so-called "leaders" of these broken, dysfunctional communities will never turn to the people they lead and say, "Hey, perhaps we need to start looking at ourselves." No. Instead, they will blame the responsible, upstanding members of society, including gun owners, for all their social ills.

If some kid on the south side of Chicago decides to join a gang and shoot another kid, who will be blamed? Is it the fault of the kid who procured the firearm and pulled the trigger? Nope. Is it the fault of his father who decided he'd rather be in a gang himself than raise his child? Nope. Is it the fault of the mother who knew the father was no good before she got in bed with him? Nope. Will it be the fault of the community members who refused to snitch? Nope. Will it be the fault of the decades worth of liberal, welfare-state politics that created this entrenchment of social dysfunction? Of course not. Is it the fault of some guy 300 miles away who bought a semi-automatic handgun at a gun show? You betcha!

And Mike Bloomberg, Richard Daley, Paul Helmke, and Josh Sugarmann are banking on the fact that a large portion of this country is stupid enough to believe it. That is why every time there is a shooting by some dysfunctional youth, from a dysfunctional home, in a dysfunction community, ran by dysfunctional leaders, the first thing they do is wag their fingers in contempt at... Well... The functional people. Namely, gun owners. And when they call for more gun control legislation, they always look to the functional communities to make the sacrifice. After all, it's for The Children©.

And while it's nice to have politicians and groups like the NRA to stand up against further burdening the law abiding people of this country, why will none of them stand up and state the real cause of the problem? Is it because they fear being politically incorrect? Has this country finally reached the point where we're afraid to blame people for their actions? Staying quiet on the matter is only going to encourage the very behavior that needs to be stopped.

So not only do the members of these broken communities need to start snitching, our politicians need to start snitching as well. Silence has never solved any problem.

Sugarmann: Too early to call Kansas CCW a success because no one has been shot.

Yes. That is his real justification.

In 3 years of allowing concealed weapons, Kansas CCW holders have failed to shoot people over parking spaces and fender benders (that's according to Josh's own data, to which he contests that the real numbers have to be higher). Therefore, Josh Sugarmann thinks it's too early to call Kansas CCW a success. But as soon as a CCW holder shoots someone (and it will eventually happen due to the "law of averages"), I have no reason to believe Josh Sugarmann won't think it's too early to declare CCW a failure. Or as Josh succinctly puts it, "... past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results."

And that is why his logic is truly baffling, if there is even logic to be found here. It's akin to saying, "It's too early to call the fire department a success because it's only a matter of time until a fireman commits arson."

Josh Sugarmann's "score keeping" (with rather low scores relative to the total number of CCW holders) is nothing more than another one his many attempts to attack the lawful possession and carrying of firearms.

Despite Josh Sugarmann's attacks, in the entire history of CCW, not a single state has so much as pondered legislation to repeal their CCW laws. That's because crimes committed by CCW holders, such as the ones Sugarmann documents, are extreme rarities. Statistically irrelevant and non-issue.