My Blog

Category: Crime

  • Guns vs. McDonald’s

    There are more than 129,817 federally licensed firearms dealers in the United States, according to the latest Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives numbers as of Aug. 1.

    Of those, 51,438 are retail gun stores, 7,356 are pawn shops and 61,562 are collectors, with the balance of the licenses belonging mostly to manufacturers and importers of firearms and destructive devices. For comparison, here are some numbers of other ubiquitous elements of American life:

    • Gas Stations in the U.S. 2011: 143,839
    • Grocery Stores in the U.S. 2011 36,569
    • McDonald’s restaurants in the U.S. 2011: 14,098

    Yes, there are more stores selling guns than groceries.

    But unlike burgers, gas and groceries, firearms are not a perishable or consumable product. They don’t go away. A rifle used in the 2009 Holocaust Museum shooting was nearly 100 years old, but was still an effective murder weapon.

    via ABC News.

    Interesting right?  But get this:

    • About 600,000 people die of heart disease in the United States every year–that’s 1 in every 4 deaths.
    • Heart disease is the leading cause of death for both men and women. More than half of the deaths due to heart disease in 2009 were in men.
    • Coronary heart disease is the most common type of heart disease, killing more than 385,000 people annually.
    • Every year about 935,000 Americans have a heart attack. Of these, 610,000 are a first heart attack. 325,000 happen in people who have already had a heart attack.
    • Coronary heart disease alone costs the United States $108.9 billion each year. This total includes the cost of health care services, medications, and lost productivity.

    via Center for Disease Control & Prevention.

    Heart disease kills 15 times more people than guns annually.  Where’s the campaign to ban tobacco and trans-fats?

    According to Pew Research there are around 160, 000 fast food restaurants in the U.S.  That’s about 30,000 more fast food places than licensed FFL’s.  But it’s actually 2.7 times the number of gun stores and pawn shops with licenses to sell guns. But these fast food places and gas stations (number one source of cigarettes) that are killing 15 times as many people.

    What we really need is to be shutting down these merchants of death… the fast food restaurants and stores that sell cigarettes. Kinda like in Clerk’s when Dante gets attacked.

  • Ken McElroy – Dead, Killed, No Tragic Loss

    In all, he was indicted 21 times, but escaped conviction each time, except for the last.  In 1981, McElroy was convicted of shooting and seriously injuring the town’s 70-year-old grocer, Ernest “Bo” Bowenkamp, the previous year.  McElroy successfully appealed the conviction and was released on bond, after which he engaged in an ongoing harassment campaign against Bowenkamp, the town’s Church of Christ minister, and others who were sympathetic to Bowenkamp. He appeared in a local bar, the D&G Tavern, armed with an M1 Garand rifle and bayonet, and later threatened to kill Bowenkamp.  The next day, McElroy was shot to death in broad daylight as he sat with his wife in his pickup truck on Skidmore’s main street.  He was struck by bullets from at least two different firearms, in front of a crowd of people estimated as between 30 and 46.  To date, no one has been charged in connection with McElroy’s death.

    via Ken McElroy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

    I stumbled upon this yesterday.  It’s a short amazing read about a town that simply had enough.

  • Police Issue Warning; No Idea Who to Look For

    From the overly politically  correct Chicago Tribune:

    The group members enter a restaurant, and when spotting a diner’s cell phone on the table they approach and present fliers claiming they are raising money for their basketball team, police said.

    The members place a flier atop the victim’s cell phone while talking, then when retrieving the flier grab the cell phone as well, police said in the alert.

    The similar thefts have taken place at 4:40 p.m. on Dec. 31 on the 300 block of North Michigan Avenue, 5:45 p.m. on Jan. 2 on the 600 block of North Fairbanks Court, 6:10 p.m. Jan. 2 on the 100 block of North Wabash Avenue and 8:40 p.m. Jan 2 on the 400 block of East Ontario Street.

    In one of the thefts a group member asked restaurant staff for a glass of water before another member grabbed a cell phone and fled, police said.

    Witness accounts have varied, but police said in general the suspects are described as three or four males, age 14-25, working together. They have been seen getting into a tan 4-door hardtop, possibly “Buick-style,” police said.

    The alert warns victims not to chase a robber but to take careful note of any unique physical characteristics — like scars or a limp — and call police immediately. If there are other witnesses, request contact information.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    So this is a community alert.  The police are doing two things:  First, asking people to be aware of the scam; and Second, asking people to “take careful note of any unique physical characteristics” of the perps.  So guess what’s missing from the article?  … Go on… Guess.

    My guess is that these crimes are most likely being committed by white college frat boys as some sort of hazing ritual.  Or maybe some lilly white LL Bean flannel shirt wearing beatniks who are just looking for bus fare back to Portland.

    People, we will not solve any issue in this land by putting our heads in the sand.  If a group of young black, brown, white, yellow, red, purple, beige, kids is going around ripping off cell phone then that’s what’s going on.  We need the cops (and everyone else) to know what to look for.

    Lies and deception — even by half-truth — is not helpful to anyone.

  • Mass Shooting: 3 Dead, 2 Wounded, in Switzerland

    No assault weapon involved:

    A man armed with an old military rifle and a handgun shot and killed three women and wounded two men in a southern Swiss village, police said Thursday.

    Police shot and wounded the suspect after he threatened to also shoot officers who arrived at the scene after the shooting in the village of Daillon on Wednesday evening, said interim cantonal police chief Robert Steiner. The gunman was then arrested.

    Steiner said the suspect was using a military rifle that was once standard issue in the Swiss army during the first half of the 20th century.

    via Fox News.

    What?  The guy was using a 60 year old rifle?  How can that be?

    I mean, it couldn’t have a high-capacity mag., or a flash suppressor, or a multi-position stock.  So it would not have been banned under any “assault weapons” ban.

    Is it time to admit that banning assault weapons will not work?

  • Shot vs. Shot & Killed – The Miracle of Modern Medicine

    This post was originally drafted in April.  Bare with me… very current story cited below.

    I’ve mentioned before that the shooting to death ratio appears very low to me. Crime stats over at Crime in Chicago suggest that in 2011 2,217 were shot, with 441 dead – 19.9% (ratio of 5:1.)  So far in 2012 we have 2,670+ shot, 532 dead – 19.9% (ratio of 5:1.)  What I have been looking for, and cannot could not find, is what these numbers were in 1975, 1985, and 1995.

    In the book Can Gun Control Work, James Jacobs writes in a footnote on pg 8 that, “Nonfatal gun injuries are complicated to compute.  Gary Kleck reasonably estimates the ratio of nonfatal gun wounds to gun fatalities at 3:1 during the 1990’s.”  Jacobs suggest we see Point Blank by Gary Kleck.  A search of Point Blank on Google Scholar does not yield that ratio.

    In 1991 Chicago has 927 homicides.  If the 3:1 ratio Kleck cites is accurate that means around 2,781 people were shot in Chicago in 1991.  That’s damn near the exact number we had last year!!

    Neat speculation but nothing scientific.

    Enter today’s WSJ:

    The number of U.S. homicides has been falling for two decades, but America has become no less violent.

    Crime experts who attribute the drop in killings to better policing or an aging population fail to square the image of a more tranquil nation with this statistic: The reported number of people treated for gunshot attacks from 2001 to 2011 has grown by nearly half.  …

    In other words, more people in the U.S. are getting shot, but doctors have gotten better at patching them up. Improved medical care doesn’t account for the entire decline in homicides but experts say it is a major factor.  …

    “Our experience is we are saving many more people we didn’t save even 10 years ago,” said C. William Schwab, director of the Firearm and Injury Center at the University of Pennsylvania and the professor of surgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.  …

    At the same time [that homicide deaths are declining], medical data and other surveys in the U.S. show a rising number of serious injuries from assaults with guns and knives. The estimated number of people wounded seriously enough by gunshots to require a hospital stay, rather than treatment and release, rose 47% to 30,759 in 2011 from 20,844 in 2001, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-All Injury Program. The CDC estimates showed the number of people injured in serious stabbings rose to 23,550 from 22,047 over the same period.Mortality rates of gunshot victims, meanwhile, have fallen, according to research performed for The Wall Street Journal by the Howard-Hopkins Surgical Outcomes Research Center, a joint venture between Howard University and Johns Hopkins University. In 2010, 13.96% of U.S. shooting victims died, almost two percentage points lower than in 2007. (Earlier data used different standards, making comparisons useless.)

    GunsShotDeaths_WSJ

    So there!!  I knew I was on to something.

    So the next time Rahm and McCarthy are out running their gums about how “safe” everything is and that “crime is down, crime is down!” Now you know that maybe some crime is down… but the odds of getting shot in this town are just about the same as they were in 1991. … Which is not very good at all.

  • 5 Found Shot in French Alps

    NOTE:  This is a story from 09/05/2012 that was stuck in the “draft” folder.  Still as timely as ever.

    French authorities say five people, including a teenage girl, have been shot in a forest in the Alps. All five were initially reported to be dead. The teenage victim is now reported to be in critical condition in a hospital, according to a local prosecutor.

    An official with the regional administration for the Haute-Savoie region says three of the bodies were found in a BMW registered in Britain.

    The Sipa news agency says the girl was found alive with bullet wounds on a forest road.

    It happened in a forest near Chevaline, near Annecy lake, in Haute-Savoie.

    The initial reports said a cyclist discovered the girl, the three bodies in the car and a fourth body, of a cyclist lying nearby.

    The identity of the victims is unclear. The British Foreign Office says it is aware of reports of the incident and is looking into it.

    via Fox New York.

    Wait a minute… how is that possible?  I mean, guns are just about completely outlawed in Europe (the Swiss being the notable exception.)

    It appears that no matter how strict the gun laws become there will always be some nut who’s willing to break the “Gun Control” law.   i.e.  to rob or kill.

  • Obama Voters’ Gun Problem

    Obama voters are killing each other

    Chicago’s murder numbers have hit that magic 500. Baltimore’s murder toll has passed 200. In Philly, it’s up to 324, the highest since 2007. In Detroit, it’s approaching 400, another record. In New Orleans, it’s almost at 200. New York City is down to 414 from 508. In Los Angeles, it’s over 500. In St. Louis it’s 113 and 130 in Oakland. It’s 121 in Memphis and 76 in Birmingham.  …

    … It isn’t the bitter gun-and-bible clingers in McCain and Romney territory who are racking up a more horrifying annual kill rate than Al Qaeda; it’s Obama’s own voting base.Chicago, where Obama delivered his victory speech, has homicide numbers that match all of Japan and are higher than Spain, Poland and pre-war Syria. If Chicago gets any worse, it will find itself passing the number of murders for the entire country of Canada.

    Chicago’s murder rate of 15.65 per 100,000 people looks nothing like the American 4.2 rate, the Midwestern 4.5 or the Illinois’ 5.6 rates, but it does look like the murder rates in failed countries like Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe. To achieve Chicago’s murder rate, African countries usually have to experience a bloody genocidal civil war or decades of tyranny.

    But Chicago isn’t even all that unique. Or the worst case scenario. That would be New Orleans which at an incredible 72.8 murder rate is ten times higher than the national average. If New Orleans were a country, it would have the 2nd highest murder rate in the world, beating out El Salvador.

    Louisiana went red for Romney 58 to 40, but Orleans Parish went blue for Obama 80 to 17.

    St. Louis has a murder rate just a little lower than Belize. Baltimore has a worse murder rate than South Africa and Detroit has a worse murder rate than Colombia. Obama won both St. Louis and Baltimore by comfortable margins. He won Detroit’s Wayne County 73 to 26.

    Homicide rates like these show that something is broken, but it isn’t broken among the Romney voters rushing to stock up on assault rifles every time Obama begins threatening their right to buy them; it’s broken among Obama’s base.  …

    Voting for Obama does not make people innately homicidal. Just look at Seattle which is agonizing over its 26 murders. That’s about the same number of murders as East St. Louis which has only 27,000 people to Seattle’s 620,000.So what is happening in Chicago to drive it to the gates of hell ahead of Zimbabwe and Rwanda?

    A breakdown of the Chicago killing fields shows that 83% of those murdered in Chicago last year had criminal records. In Philly, it’s 75%. In Milwaukee it’s 77% percent. In New Orleans, it’s 64%. In Baltimore, it’s 91%. Many were felons who had served time. And as many as 80% of the homicides were gang related.

    Chicago’s problem isn’t guns; it’s gangs. Gun control efforts in Chicago or any other major city are doomed because gangs represent organized crime networks which stretch down to Mexico, and trying to cut off their gun supply will be as effective as trying to cut off their drug supply.

    America’s murder rate isn’t the work of the suburban and rural homeowners who shop for guns at sporting goods stores and at gun shows, and whom news shows profile after every shooting, but by the gangs embedded in the urban areas controlled by the Democratic machine. The gangs who drive up America’s murder rate look nothing like the occasional mentally ill suburban white kid who goes off his medication and decides to shoot up a school. Lanza, like most serial killers, is a media aberration, not the norm.

    via Front Page Magazine.

    A fine read as to what’s really happening on the streets.

    The fact of the matter remains that Democrats cannot control their own.  They are crime ridden to the core; they do not believe in the rule of law.  Obama himself simply ignores laws he doesn’t like.

    Crazy.

     

     

  • Run, Hide, Fight — Have an Active Shooter Plan

    From the Alabama Dept. of Homeland Security.

    [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ESNae7OoyM]

  • How Liberty Dies

    People who wanted a little bit of security in lieu of liberty.

  • Propaganda Alert from The Associated Press

    Shear propaganda as written by the White House in an attempt to create some news:

    President Barack Obama has signed into law a five-year extension of the U.S. government’s authority to monitor the overseas activity of suspected foreign spies and terrorists.   ….

    The law does not apply to Americans. When Americans are targeted for surveillance, the government must get a warrant from a special 11-judge court of U.S. district judges appointed by the Supreme Court.

    via The Associated Press.

    This is of course the White House trying to move the news off of Hillary not testifying on Benghazi, Eric Holder selling guns to Mexico yet Obama now saying those guns should be illegal anyway (I guess to prevent Holder from selling any more to Mexican drug cartels,) and the ever present fiscal cliff.

    Lest we forget, Holder is the guy who said that the U.S. government can kill you without so much as a hearing or trial.  So forgive me but it’s more than just a little out of place for the same people to now try to make a big deal over taping some phone calls.

    “Don’t worry.  We won’t read your emails and tap your phone without a court order. … But, we can drone bomb your ass to kill you and your entire family based on the opinion of some nameless person in the administration who thinks you’re a threat.  Ya, we don’t need a court order for that.”