Wednesday, November 14, 2007

Idaho - lots of guns, low murder rate, F+ Brady Rating

A recent Idaho Press Tribune article complained about "open gun laws" in Idaho & a well deserved F+ Brady rating. I say well deserved because when it comes to Brady ratings, the lower the grade, the better. It's like Golf - you actually WANT a low score. More on that later.

Fewer restrictions mean the Gem State earned an “F-plus” grade two years ago from the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence regarding state laws shielding families from gun violence. The national grassroots watchdog group noted Idaho has no child access prevention law, no requirements for gun safety locks and safer design standards and a lack of background checks on secondary private sales.
Since when is the Brady campaign to prevent gun ownership a "grass roots" organization (a more appropriate name borrowed from Say Uncle -thanks)? Grass roots to me means that it gets its funding & support primarily from small donations by MANY US citizens. The Brady campaign to prevent gun ownership doesn't even boast thousands of supporters, much less millions. Where does it get its money? Primarily from wealthy anti-gun individuals such as Billionaire George Soros who has donated Millions to anti-gun causes in the US & the World. George Soros & Rosie O'Donnel are fine with taking guns away from common citizens because they'll still have their teams of armed body guards to keep them safe.

It is interesting to note that the press is willing to call the Brady campaign to prevent gun ownership a "grass roots" organization, yet the same press almost always calls the NRA, GOA, SAF, & other gun rights organizations as a conglomerate "the gun lobby." This ignores the fact that the so-called "gun lobby" is run & supported by millions of common individual citizens who are voting members of the groups they've joined in order to contribute to the cause of protecting the 2nd Amendment & the freedoms that our Constitution protects in general. The NRA alone has more than 4 Million members, the Brady campaign to prevent gun ownership doesn't even have thousands of members.

Technically the Brady campaign won't even allow you to "join" their group or to have voting rights in their organization. But they will gladly accept your money - they even tell you on their Brady Center donations page that your contribution will be "tax deductible" since they don't provide you any goods or services. I couldn't agree more, accept that they forgot to mention that they do provide one service - they will do their best to infringe upon your 2nd Amendment rights.

The Brady campaign lists Idaho with an F+ because Idaho does not infringe on the 2nd Amendment as much as the Brady campaign would like it to. You'd think that would mean there was blood on every street corner in Idaho from gun slinging cowboys shooting each other if you believe the hoopla that Brady puts out. It turns out once again that the facts say otherwise.

According to the FBI crime data for 2006, Boise had a population of 198,212 people & only had 6 murders & non-negligent manslaughters. That is a murder rate of 3.03 per 100,000 people. Compare that with Washington DC where handguns are completely banned, and long guns must be kept disassembled or trigger locked making them useless for self defense. The Brady campaign rates DC with a B - they would get an A but they give one area an F because they believe Congress has the ability to repeal the very restrictive DC gun laws. Even with such stellar ratings from the Brady Campaign, in 2006 Washington DC had a population of 581,530 & had 169 murders & non-negligent manslaughters. That is a murder rate of 29.06 per 100,000 people. That is 9.6 TIMES the murder rate in Boise! Nearly 10 times the murder rate!

To sum up, an A or a B from the Brady Campaign to prevent gun ownership is equal to a State with highly infringed or zero gun rights which results in only the criminals having guns. When they give your state an F then you can be sure your state is protecting your 2nd Amendment right to bear arms. In such Free States criminals know that there are armed citizens in their midst which makes them feel less safe to work their evil deeds. Why would criminals want to live in a Free State like Idaho when Washington DC has created such a target rich environment of defenseless victims for them to choose from? Makes it as easy for criminals as shooting fish in a barrel. I'm sure glad that I don't live in that barrel.

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

A real state would get an f minus.

Dustin said...

It's like Golf - the lower the score the better. Target should be a grade of 0. :)

Dustin said...

I took a quick look and it appears that the lowest score you can earn from the Brady group is an F. Nobody has an F-, and there appears to only be 6 states that earned an F. The rest of us still have a lot of work ahead of us to earn that valued position. Those to be congratulated for maintaining such a high amount of Freedom are the fine citizens of: Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, New Mexico, and Wyoming. Keep up the great work citizens of those great Free states - don't let the gun grabbers take your freedoms!

Anonymous said...

Excellent observations but I would make one more:

The correlation between good "Brady grades" and high crime rates and vice versa demonstrates unequivocally that the Brady Bunch has no concern whatsoever with violent crime...or even gun crime.

The "grades" that they assign demonstrate unequivocally that affecting violence is not even on their radar screen. If it were, they would be giving kudos to Idaho for their success.

Dustin said...

Excelent point Sailorcurt.

Anonymous said...

"...the Brady Bunch has no concern whatsoever with violent crime...or even gun crime."

That's mistaken. They are trying hard to increase both violent crime and gun crime. They know from experience that the way to do that is by imposing more restrictions on law-abiding gun owners, and that is exactly what they are trying hard to do.

Anonymous said...

By the way, don't forget November, 19 is AMMO DAY. BUY SOME !!!!

Boyd said...

I notice they give Vermont an F- for not requiring a permit for concealed carry, so that grade is available at the category level, at least.

Anonymous said...

Dustin, your blog has just been added to my bookmarks.

There's a guy posts daily articles, op-eds, and blogs on a website that I frequent. He pointed me here.

With your permission, I'd like to send a copy of this to my congress critters. Mine are mostly pro-gun, but one of them has been known to sway under political pressure. (I'm in Texas.)

Dustin said...

cbar10: you are probably not far off. Either that or they're just very good at ignoring the facts - they can't see past their own hypothesis to see the actual results of their failed experiments.

anonymous: Yes I plan to buy a bunch of ammo & shoot it next week :)

Boyd: good point. The ultimate goal would to get an F- overall.

Chad: Thanks. Yes please do share this with your congress critters. My ultimate goal is for as many people as possible to find the truth. The popular media will never report these facts - they're too busy pandering to the Brady bunch. :)

Anonymous said...

If you use all the data rather than just cherry pick them you find out things are quite as rosy as we would like them to be. It's not really bad. It's just not what we would hope for.

I did the numbers a few years ago.

Joe

Dustin said...

Thanks Joe. Basically you & I agree on the most important point - that the Brady grades have absolutely NOTHING at all to do with reducing crime. There is only one thing that the Brady folks are effective at reducing when politicians enact their dangerous experiments: our freedoms & our ability to defend ourselves wherever we go.

I don't personally see any correlation at all between suicide rates & restrictive gun laws - look at Australia where they banned & confiscated hundreds of thousands of guns - suicide by handguns decreased but suicide by hangings increased more, so the overall suicide rate actually increased. I don't see how moving people from suicide by handgun to suicide by hanging really helps anyone out in the end.

Anonymous said...

I don't think we have any differences worth spending much time over.

There does appear to be a relatively significant correlation between Brady grades and overall suicide rates. But correlation does not mean causation. There is a strong correlation between birds building their nests and deer giving birth but it's because they are both related to it being springtime not because one causes the other.

And just because there is a correlation does not mean there is even any underlying causation for both of them. It could just be chance. It could be Brady fudged the grades to get a match.

But there have been other studies that compared gun ownership rate and suicide and found enough evidence that I'm not going to dismiss it out of hand.

But even if it could be shown that gun ownership increased suicide rates I would be all for training to address the issue rather than attempting to reduce the ownership rates.

Joe

Dustin said...

I definitely agree with you on that Joe. Proving causation is much harder than proving correlation.

In the end, anyone who decides to off themselves will find a way. The only way to make sure somebody does not commit suicide is to lock them in a padded room with a straight jacket & monitor the person 24x7. We can't exactly ban rope, drugs that are lethal at overdose levels, carbon monoxide, tall buildings, and large bodies of water just to name a few of the methods people have used.

Guns are simply tools. Even if it were possible to take guns away from anyone who would use them for evil purposes or to do harm to themselves, they still would have baseball bats, swords, spears, & of course the classic bow & arrow or their own bare fists.

Violence & suicide were around long before guns were invented. Since the bad guys will always have guns, I plan to keep mine too. Bringing a baseball bat to a gun fight is not as good an idea as the Brady folks seem to think it is. The Brady folks can put a "gun free zone" sign on their front door & defend themselves with a baseball bat if they want to, no skin off my back so long as they don't try to force me to do the same. :)

Anonymous said...

My Founding Fathers, back in 1776, gave me the RIGHT to Self Preservation that is weighted more heavily and is first on the list to be applied and enforced than any other right - Including the Rights of the Federal Government and State Government. Anyone - Federal, State, City, Local that infringes on my RIGHTS is in fact infringing on the Constitution of the United States of America and its citizens.
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