Ed Griffin has boiled down almost the entire gun rights debate to just 99 concise words.

Dave Kopel recommends his ten favorite books on the Second Amendment and firearms policy.

I've read the top four books in the stack (see PDF) and second his recommendation, I'll have to work my way down the stack.

One I would add to a list of top Second Amendment books is Jeff Snyder's "A Nation of Cowards ".  He bases his arguments against gun control from the perspective of ethics rather than the typical historical or statistical arguments.  Very apropos to this recent post.  Unfortunately, Snyder's book is currently unavailable.  

via  Dave Hardy

Economist Steven Levitt, one of the coauthors of Freakonomics recently gave a lecture on the Freakonomics of inner-city gangs. The lecture is available on YouTube, clocks in at twenty-two minutes, and is as entertaining as it is informative.

Levitt explains in the video that one of his graduate students through a chance encounter had developed a relationship with the leader of an inner city gang. They capitalized upon this relationship and were given full access to members of the gangs and even to the gang’s financial books. Being economists, they focused on the finances of gang life as well as other statistics such as mortality rates. According to Levitt, the wages of a street level soldier and drug dealer works out to only about $3.50 per hour. The death rate of these same street soldiers not even earning minimum wage makes it is the most dangerous 'occupation' in the United States experience a higher mortality rate than soldiers in Iraq or even condemned prisoners on death row.

That figure of $3.50/hour is important to consider though when the gun ban lobby declares that the evil gun de jure is the "weapon of choice" of gang members. These guns are simply way beyond the means of drug dealers and street soldiers. This includes the S&W .500 magnum, the FN Five-seveN, the Barrett 50, and most if not all ARs and AKs. In fact, it probably includes a vast majority of the weapons enumerated in the 1994 crime bill.

There is a reason gang-banger shootouts involve weapons with names such as Lorcin, Jennings, and Bryco--those guns are clearly all that street soldiers can afford. Arguments to control and ban guns based on their supposed appeal to gang members and terrorists for that matter is quite simply race baiting. As Al Gore would say, "they play on our fears" and try to foster an ugly, racist fear of "the other" in the American public.

I'm still getting caught up with the news after 2 weeks out of the country and incommunicado.

In some of the rhetoric for the new proposed AWB, I heard mention of a couple of recent shootings that I missed while gone.  I'm sure they were widely reported.  What doesn't seem to have been as widely reported by the MSM was that the shooter was a Muslim who shouted "Allahu Akbar" as he went on his rampage.

Jihad within our own borders and the best answer the newly empowered Democrats have is to ban a class of weapons identified by cosmetic features that were not even used in the shooting?  Carolyn McCarthy ran for congress for one reason and one reason only.  To ban guns.  It's a fact.  She won her seat originally on the platform that the incumbent voted to repeal the original AWB.  This is her issue.  She doesn't even have an official position on terrorism.  Terrorism to her is nothing more than an opportunity to ban guns.