We in the US continue to have stupid little, unproductive state and local-level squabbles about student achievement, test standardization, teacher unions and have to laugh at ourselves a lot more these days.
Here is what people who think at the world-level about education are thinking and doing:
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
What Scared the Pants Off the NRA
This article (from ProPublica) is based on an interview with Dr. Mark Rosenburg, who led the CDC's earlier (1990s) research into the causes, effects, and strategies for handling gun violence. It has been a conclusion in other smaller studies that the presence of guns in an area, society, whatever raises the death rate by a measurable amount. However it wasn't until things started to come together demonstrating the same facts at the national level that the NRA decided to jump on their "second half of the Second Amendment only" bandwagon and have a cow about it.
The NRA jumped all over the early results (outlined in the article) and forced its mindless Congressional lackeys to withdraw funding. President Obama recently requested that the research be funded and resumed, but there is little chance of that. The NRA owns their own political party, and they are certainly not the party of free-thinkers...not that there is such a thing anywhere.
You can see why they didn't want the news getting out!
President Obama has directed the Centers for Disease Control to research gun violence as part of his legislative package on gun control. The CDC hasn't pursued this kind of research since 1996 when the National Rifle Association lobbied Congress to cut funding for it, arguing that the studies were politicized and being used to promote gun control. We've interviewed Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who led the agency's gun violence research in the nineties when he was the director of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
We talked to Rosenberg about the work the agency was doing before funding was cut and how it's relevant to today's gun control debate. Here's an edited transcript.
There's been coverage recently about how Congress cut funding for gun violence research, but not much about what the agency was actually researching and what it was finding. You were in charge of that. Tell us a little bit about what the CDC was doing back then.
There were basically four questions that we were trying to answer. The first question is what is the problem? Who were the victims? Who was killed? Who were injured? Where did they happen? Under what circumstances? When? What times of the year? What times of the day? What was the relationship to other events? How did they happen? What were the weapons that were used? What was the relationship between the people involved? What was the motive or the setting in which they happened?
The second question is what are the causes? What are the things that increase one's risk of being shot? What are the things that decrease one's risk of being shot?
The third question we were trying to answer is what works to prevent these? What kinds of policies, what kinds of interventions, what kinds of police practices or medical practices or education and school practices actually might prevent some of these shootings? We're not just looking at mass shootings, but also looking at the bulk of the homicides that occur every year and the suicides, which account for a majority of all gun deaths.
Then the last question is how do you do it? Once you have a program or policy that has been proven to work in one place, how do you spread it? How do you actually put it in place?
So what were you were able to find before funding got cut off?
One of the critical studies that we supported was looking at the question of whether having a firearm in your home protects you or puts you at increased risk. This was a very important question because people who want to sell more guns say that having a gun in your home is the way to protect your family.
What the research showed was not only did having a firearm in your home not protect you, but it hugely increased the risk that someone in your family would die from a firearm homicide. It increased the risk almost 300 percent, almost three times as high.
It also showed that the risk that someone in your home would commit suicide went up. It went up five-fold if you had a gun in the home. These are huge, huge risks, and to just put that in perspective, we look at a risk that someone might get a heart attack or that they might get a certain type of cancer, and if that risk might be 20 percent greater, that may be enough to ban a certain drug or a certain product.
But in this case, we're talking about a risk not 20 percent, not 100 percent, not 200 percent, but almost 300 percent or 500 percent. These are huge, huge risks.
I understand there was also an effort to collect data on gun violence through something called the Firearm Injury Surveillance System. What did that involve?
We were collecting information to answer the question of who, what, where, when, and how did shootings occur?
We were finding that most homicides occur between people who know each other, people who are acquaintances or might be doing business together or might be living together. They're not stranger-on-stranger shootings. They're not mostly home intrusions.
We also found that there were a lot of firearm suicides, and in fact most firearm deaths are suicides. There were a lot of young people who were impulsive who were using guns to commit suicide.
So if you were able to continue this work, what kind of data do you think would be available today?
I think we'd know much more information about what sorts of weapons are used in what sorts of firearm deaths and injuries.
Let's say you look at robbery associated homicides, and you find that in those homicides certain weapons are used in almost all of them and that these weapons come from a limited number of sources and that those weapons are not used by people to defend their home or to hunt or to target shoot. Then you can say, "Here's a type of weapon that seems to be only used in criminal enterprises and doesn't seem to have any legitimate uses, and maybe we ought to find a way to restrict the sales or access to that type of weapon."
I think it's also important to look at what the impact of these data might be.
If you look at how many deaths have occurred between 1996, when there was this disruption to surveillance and research, and now, so that's 16 years, and if you assume that there are about 30,000 gun deaths every year, you're talking about 480,000 gun deaths over that period of time.
If even a fraction of those deaths could have been prevented, you're talking about a significant impact in terms of saving lives.
Lawmakers are now trying to figure out what the most effective policies might be to curb gun violence, and how to implement them. What were you beginning to find on that?
The largest question in this category is what kind of larger policies work? Does it work, for example, if you have an assault weapon ban? Does that reduce the number of firearm injuries and deaths? In truth, we don't know the answer to that. That requires evaluation.
Does gun licensing and registration work to reduce firearm injuries and death? We don't have the answer.
The policies that make it easier to carry concealed weapons, do those reduce or do those increase firearm injuries and deaths? We don't have the answer. Do gun bans like they have in the city of Chicago, work? We don't have the answer yet to those.
These require large-scale studies of large numbers of people, over a long period of time to see if they work or don't.
I don't think those studies were fully funded or completed.
How do you think the gun control debate might be different today, if you had been allowed to continue that research?
I would like to think that we would have had answers to what works and what doesn't work. I would hope that we know whether the kind of bans and restrictions that they have in Chicago really make a difference or don't. I would hope that we would have had information about whether an assault weapon ban saves lives or doesn't. Unfortunately, when you don't have those data that really show you, scientifically, whether or not something works, then you end up with people making statements like the following, "Obviously, the assault weapon ban didn't work, because Columbine happened."
That's kind of like saying, "Vaccines don't work because someone got the flu."
The Obama administration is asking Congress for $10 million to pursue gun-related research. If you had that budget and you had your old job, what would you use the money to look at?
I think we'd want to look at what the impact of different policies would be, both restricting and enabling policies.
The other thing that I would make sure we looked at is not just how do we prevent firearm injuries, but how do we also protect the rights of legitimate gun owners? I think it would be very important to look, for example, at legislation that restricts access by certain people to firearms. Let's say these might be people who have committed felonies or people who have been adjudicated mentally ill.
People often think that there are maybe three things we should consider passing right now, something like an assault weapons ban, a ban on large capacity magazines, and background checks on all gun purchasers.
The truth is that there's not going to be a simple, magic pill or even three pills that cure the whole problem. If you look at suicides and the whole range of homicides and firearm injuries, the answers are going to come, bit by bit, over time, incrementally.
It's not one, two or even three things that are really going to solve the problem. They may salve our conscience, but they won't solve the problem. The research is really, really important. We really need to find out what works, so that we can save more lives.
It's been presented to people that research is going to hurt legitimate gun owners. That's the threat and how the NRA leadership has often presented it to the NRA membership. "Any sort of research is only going to result in your losing all your guns."
That's a tactic of fear. It's not at all the case. There are things we can do that will both reduce firearm injuries and protect the legitimate rights of gun owners and protect the children and their families.
The NRA jumped all over the early results (outlined in the article) and forced its mindless Congressional lackeys to withdraw funding. President Obama recently requested that the research be funded and resumed, but there is little chance of that. The NRA owns their own political party, and they are certainly not the party of free-thinkers...not that there is such a thing anywhere.
You can see why they didn't want the news getting out!
What Researchers Learned About Gun Violence Before Congress Killed Funding
by Joaquin Sapien, ProPublica, Feb. 25, 2013, 2:07 p.m.President Obama has directed the Centers for Disease Control to research gun violence as part of his legislative package on gun control. The CDC hasn't pursued this kind of research since 1996 when the National Rifle Association lobbied Congress to cut funding for it, arguing that the studies were politicized and being used to promote gun control. We've interviewed Dr. Mark Rosenberg, who led the agency's gun violence research in the nineties when he was the director of the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
We talked to Rosenberg about the work the agency was doing before funding was cut and how it's relevant to today's gun control debate. Here's an edited transcript.
There's been coverage recently about how Congress cut funding for gun violence research, but not much about what the agency was actually researching and what it was finding. You were in charge of that. Tell us a little bit about what the CDC was doing back then.
There were basically four questions that we were trying to answer. The first question is what is the problem? Who were the victims? Who was killed? Who were injured? Where did they happen? Under what circumstances? When? What times of the year? What times of the day? What was the relationship to other events? How did they happen? What were the weapons that were used? What was the relationship between the people involved? What was the motive or the setting in which they happened?
The second question is what are the causes? What are the things that increase one's risk of being shot? What are the things that decrease one's risk of being shot?
The third question we were trying to answer is what works to prevent these? What kinds of policies, what kinds of interventions, what kinds of police practices or medical practices or education and school practices actually might prevent some of these shootings? We're not just looking at mass shootings, but also looking at the bulk of the homicides that occur every year and the suicides, which account for a majority of all gun deaths.
Then the last question is how do you do it? Once you have a program or policy that has been proven to work in one place, how do you spread it? How do you actually put it in place?
So what were you were able to find before funding got cut off?
One of the critical studies that we supported was looking at the question of whether having a firearm in your home protects you or puts you at increased risk. This was a very important question because people who want to sell more guns say that having a gun in your home is the way to protect your family.
What the research showed was not only did having a firearm in your home not protect you, but it hugely increased the risk that someone in your family would die from a firearm homicide. It increased the risk almost 300 percent, almost three times as high.
It also showed that the risk that someone in your home would commit suicide went up. It went up five-fold if you had a gun in the home. These are huge, huge risks, and to just put that in perspective, we look at a risk that someone might get a heart attack or that they might get a certain type of cancer, and if that risk might be 20 percent greater, that may be enough to ban a certain drug or a certain product.
But in this case, we're talking about a risk not 20 percent, not 100 percent, not 200 percent, but almost 300 percent or 500 percent. These are huge, huge risks.
I understand there was also an effort to collect data on gun violence through something called the Firearm Injury Surveillance System. What did that involve?
We were collecting information to answer the question of who, what, where, when, and how did shootings occur?
We were finding that most homicides occur between people who know each other, people who are acquaintances or might be doing business together or might be living together. They're not stranger-on-stranger shootings. They're not mostly home intrusions.
We also found that there were a lot of firearm suicides, and in fact most firearm deaths are suicides. There were a lot of young people who were impulsive who were using guns to commit suicide.
So if you were able to continue this work, what kind of data do you think would be available today?
I think we'd know much more information about what sorts of weapons are used in what sorts of firearm deaths and injuries.
Let's say you look at robbery associated homicides, and you find that in those homicides certain weapons are used in almost all of them and that these weapons come from a limited number of sources and that those weapons are not used by people to defend their home or to hunt or to target shoot. Then you can say, "Here's a type of weapon that seems to be only used in criminal enterprises and doesn't seem to have any legitimate uses, and maybe we ought to find a way to restrict the sales or access to that type of weapon."
I think it's also important to look at what the impact of these data might be.
If you look at how many deaths have occurred between 1996, when there was this disruption to surveillance and research, and now, so that's 16 years, and if you assume that there are about 30,000 gun deaths every year, you're talking about 480,000 gun deaths over that period of time.
If even a fraction of those deaths could have been prevented, you're talking about a significant impact in terms of saving lives.
Lawmakers are now trying to figure out what the most effective policies might be to curb gun violence, and how to implement them. What were you beginning to find on that?
The largest question in this category is what kind of larger policies work? Does it work, for example, if you have an assault weapon ban? Does that reduce the number of firearm injuries and deaths? In truth, we don't know the answer to that. That requires evaluation.
Does gun licensing and registration work to reduce firearm injuries and death? We don't have the answer.
The policies that make it easier to carry concealed weapons, do those reduce or do those increase firearm injuries and deaths? We don't have the answer. Do gun bans like they have in the city of Chicago, work? We don't have the answer yet to those.
These require large-scale studies of large numbers of people, over a long period of time to see if they work or don't.
I don't think those studies were fully funded or completed.
How do you think the gun control debate might be different today, if you had been allowed to continue that research?
I would like to think that we would have had answers to what works and what doesn't work. I would hope that we know whether the kind of bans and restrictions that they have in Chicago really make a difference or don't. I would hope that we would have had information about whether an assault weapon ban saves lives or doesn't. Unfortunately, when you don't have those data that really show you, scientifically, whether or not something works, then you end up with people making statements like the following, "Obviously, the assault weapon ban didn't work, because Columbine happened."
That's kind of like saying, "Vaccines don't work because someone got the flu."
The Obama administration is asking Congress for $10 million to pursue gun-related research. If you had that budget and you had your old job, what would you use the money to look at?
I think we'd want to look at what the impact of different policies would be, both restricting and enabling policies.
The other thing that I would make sure we looked at is not just how do we prevent firearm injuries, but how do we also protect the rights of legitimate gun owners? I think it would be very important to look, for example, at legislation that restricts access by certain people to firearms. Let's say these might be people who have committed felonies or people who have been adjudicated mentally ill.
People often think that there are maybe three things we should consider passing right now, something like an assault weapons ban, a ban on large capacity magazines, and background checks on all gun purchasers.
The truth is that there's not going to be a simple, magic pill or even three pills that cure the whole problem. If you look at suicides and the whole range of homicides and firearm injuries, the answers are going to come, bit by bit, over time, incrementally.
It's not one, two or even three things that are really going to solve the problem. They may salve our conscience, but they won't solve the problem. The research is really, really important. We really need to find out what works, so that we can save more lives.
It's been presented to people that research is going to hurt legitimate gun owners. That's the threat and how the NRA leadership has often presented it to the NRA membership. "Any sort of research is only going to result in your losing all your guns."
That's a tactic of fear. It's not at all the case. There are things we can do that will both reduce firearm injuries and protect the legitimate rights of gun owners and protect the children and their families.
Sunday, February 24, 2013
A Single Amendment to the Constitution....
I know of one single amendment to the US Constitution that could work...but unfortunately is guaranteed to never happen because of all the "dark money" forces that would line up against it. Still...it is intriguing enough to be fun to think about.
My idea is to include an amendment that allows a special, nationwide election. The election would be a "vote of confidence" of the citizens of the US for their "representatives" -- Congress in Washington. I am thinking this should be a straight up-or-down confidence vote. If the people vote "no confidence" the entire Congress is instantly dissolved, members (all 535 Representatives and Senators) are out of office, and new elections are held. The ejected members are banned from running for re-election...and the citizens actually have to work to find representatives they can support and trust.
The only part I am not 100% certain about is how to trigger such an election. Maybe a combination scale of actual legislation that is really considered in the two bodies as opposed to dying in some partisan committee combined maybe with an overall average of legislation that actually gets passed? (Pork projects would be excluded).
I think the key is we the people need to have a hammer when we have had several years of inaction in Congress for any number of items --- a Real Democracy is after all a Working Democracy.
My idea is to include an amendment that allows a special, nationwide election. The election would be a "vote of confidence" of the citizens of the US for their "representatives" -- Congress in Washington. I am thinking this should be a straight up-or-down confidence vote. If the people vote "no confidence" the entire Congress is instantly dissolved, members (all 535 Representatives and Senators) are out of office, and new elections are held. The ejected members are banned from running for re-election...and the citizens actually have to work to find representatives they can support and trust.
The only part I am not 100% certain about is how to trigger such an election. Maybe a combination scale of actual legislation that is really considered in the two bodies as opposed to dying in some partisan committee combined maybe with an overall average of legislation that actually gets passed? (Pork projects would be excluded).
I think the key is we the people need to have a hammer when we have had several years of inaction in Congress for any number of items --- a Real Democracy is after all a Working Democracy.
Coal as a Power Source
Living here in the Pacific Northwest, one of our blessings is the predominant use of hydro power for electricity - it has its own environmental impacts of course, but the alternatives (particularly coal) are much worse. These people are fighting the very real health problems of living near a coal-fired plant and not getting any assistance from a near-comatose federal government.
We do have a bit of coal controversy brewing here, because if certain plans come to fruition large quantities of coal will be shipped through our Northwest cities on the way to feed the ravenous appetites of a modernizing China for energy. Coal dust is not the same as the coal ash residue (the Chinese will probably ignore that aspect as they ramp up) which has arsenic levels some 300 times a 'safe' level...but it makes one pause - there is not a lot about coal that can be classified as 'good' other than it burns....sort of....
We do have a bit of coal controversy brewing here, because if certain plans come to fruition large quantities of coal will be shipped through our Northwest cities on the way to feed the ravenous appetites of a modernizing China for energy. Coal dust is not the same as the coal ash residue (the Chinese will probably ignore that aspect as they ramp up) which has arsenic levels some 300 times a 'safe' level...but it makes one pause - there is not a lot about coal that can be classified as 'good' other than it burns....sort of....
Friday, February 22, 2013
And Now, For Something Intelligent
Another quality session with Shields and Brooks on the PBS NewsHour. This is how reasonable people think and disagree, laying the groundwork for progress. There will be sadly, no such intelligence emanating from Congress in Washington, DC anytime soon. I guarantee you will learn more here than in a week of watching the ignorant shouting heads on any of the cable news channels.
Watch Shields, Brooks on Gun Legislation, Sequester, and Medicaid on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.
F-35 Troubles Continue
Whatever falls out of the sky over the next few days, it won't be an F-35...the platinum-plated warplane that is way over budget and way behind schedule. Of course it was delivered to the Marines sans guns...so maybe falling out of the sky is the only threat it has right now!
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Pentagon Sinkhole V
Sometimes I swear folks, the proudly unauditable Pentagon just manages to write its own ... I don't know -- expose` ?
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Medical Costs
One of the best TV programs for thinkers today is PBS's Need To Know. Extraordinarily even-handed analysis of some of the really hard issues in modern life tackled head-on -- unlike anyone in Washington DC.
One of them was on the medical malpractice mess -- the report was partially underwritten by Common Good - another of my favorite sites when I need some 'thinking material'.
One of the things I like about this program is that it doesn't come out with an "in your face" ardent recommendation. Sometimes (like this episode) where the program has obviously proved that the current system is broken beyond repair, they make a mild suggestion -- but there is still plenty of room for thinking....how would such a system work here? ....what kind of adjustments would need to be made so that no one abuses it with our wide-open justice system?
One of them was on the medical malpractice mess -- the report was partially underwritten by Common Good - another of my favorite sites when I need some 'thinking material'.
Watch 1/25/2013: Do No Harm and Danish Medical Courts on PBS. See more from Need To Know.
One of the things I like about this program is that it doesn't come out with an "in your face" ardent recommendation. Sometimes (like this episode) where the program has obviously proved that the current system is broken beyond repair, they make a mild suggestion -- but there is still plenty of room for thinking....how would such a system work here? ....what kind of adjustments would need to be made so that no one abuses it with our wide-open justice system?
Pew Research News IQ Quiz
Pew Research recently put out a short little news quiz. I am not sure that it is as much news knowledge as image recognition, but I did score all 13 right. It's somewhat disconcerting that only 8% of the population in their random sample of 1,041 got them all right though -- it wasn't exactly an in-depth news test.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
School as a Capital Offense
Imagine a place where simply attending school is an offense punishable by death - not just for you, but your family as well. This is the reality of young girls in Afghanistan under the Taliban and their form of Islamist extremism. Whether or not the one Soviet and two US wars there had any positive impact on it remains to be seen (there is no evidence of this - in fact it seems to be getting worse). However, as can be seen from this Ted Talk, some of the people are taking matters into their own hands.
This makes one appreciate universal public education all the more...and wonder at the arrogance and short-sightedness of any American (girl or boy) who takes it for granted...or drops out. Listen to this young woman's story -- and her passion and thirst for an education...for all Afghan girls. It will make you see things differently, and provides yet another reason to be grateful that through birth location or naturalization...you are in the US and not any number of other countries in the world.
This makes one appreciate universal public education all the more...and wonder at the arrogance and short-sightedness of any American (girl or boy) who takes it for granted...or drops out. Listen to this young woman's story -- and her passion and thirst for an education...for all Afghan girls. It will make you see things differently, and provides yet another reason to be grateful that through birth location or naturalization...you are in the US and not any number of other countries in the world.
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Interesting TED Talk - Reading the Koran
Interesting talk by author/researcher Lesley Hazleton. My Goodreads review of her excellent book on the Shia-Sunni split (the most important factor driving Middle East politics) follows the talk.
After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam by Lesley Hazleton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
As the description says, this is a narrative history. However, if you are completely in the dark about the Middle East and Islam in particular (as was the entire Bush administration apparently), this is a good introduction to the single most important event in Middle East history, that which has affected all of its history - the original schism between the Shia and Sunni.
I had the good fortune to travel to Saudi Arabia (pre-2001) and have studied the history of the area since that fascinating trip. I can tell you firsthand that this very basic division within Islam does not lie very far beneath the surface in anything that has happened in the Middle East in the last 1500 years. As a 'narrative history' this is a simplification of many events, but reading it as a Westerner will give you some idea of the deep passions and beliefs that are struggling for supremacy in the region today...and why the US blustering in there with a 'here's our democracy - take it or leave it' approach is never going to work.
View all my reviews
After the Prophet: The Epic Story of the Shia-Sunni Split in Islam by Lesley HazletonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
As the description says, this is a narrative history. However, if you are completely in the dark about the Middle East and Islam in particular (as was the entire Bush administration apparently), this is a good introduction to the single most important event in Middle East history, that which has affected all of its history - the original schism between the Shia and Sunni.
I had the good fortune to travel to Saudi Arabia (pre-2001) and have studied the history of the area since that fascinating trip. I can tell you firsthand that this very basic division within Islam does not lie very far beneath the surface in anything that has happened in the Middle East in the last 1500 years. As a 'narrative history' this is a simplification of many events, but reading it as a Westerner will give you some idea of the deep passions and beliefs that are struggling for supremacy in the region today...and why the US blustering in there with a 'here's our democracy - take it or leave it' approach is never going to work.
View all my reviews
Three Reasons I Don't Do SOTU
I have not listened or watched a State of the Union Speech in decades. They and the so-called "responses" are politically-laden tripe with a useful half-life about equal to last week's fish and unworthy of my time. This year's was no different.
The incumbent President usually uses the occasion to put a much positive spin on their 'accomplishments' as possible, and while President Obama's rhetorical skills are certainly much better than many in the past, he still fell prey to the same temptations.
The 'official' Republican response was certainly no better - in fact it was hardly a response at all but more of a chance for Senator Rubio to preen in front of a national audience. Senator Rand Paul on the other hand was just...well...typical Tea Party whacko.
The incumbent President usually uses the occasion to put a much positive spin on their 'accomplishments' as possible, and while President Obama's rhetorical skills are certainly much better than many in the past, he still fell prey to the same temptations.
The 'official' Republican response was certainly no better - in fact it was hardly a response at all but more of a chance for Senator Rubio to preen in front of a national audience. Senator Rand Paul on the other hand was just...well...typical Tea Party whacko.
Kaboom!
The meteor that the "ignorant press" is describing as "striking Russia did no such thing. It was actually according to NASA a tiny asteroid and it is unlikely that any fragments made it to earth, having long since vaporized at the projected atmospheric entry speed of 40,000 MPH which is considerably more than the speed of sound but only a little over one-fifth the speed of light for any conspiracy theorists who think we have been thrust into another dimension, etc.
Some of the eyewitness accounts are honest (and good for that reason) like the person who said "it looked like the sun landed over there somewhere..". Another described it as a very large explosion that followed by smaller explosions for 20 or 30 minutes.
From PBS:
Some of the eyewitness accounts are honest (and good for that reason) like the person who said "it looked like the sun landed over there somewhere..". Another described it as a very large explosion that followed by smaller explosions for 20 or 30 minutes.
From PBS:
Watch Meteor Explosion of Atomic Strength Injures 1,000 in Russia on PBS. See more from PBS NewsHour.
US Capitalism...Afghan Style
At least some, if not most of the US tax money going down this particular black hole came via the Pentagon...and I'll bet they didn't even know it was missing!
Friday, February 15, 2013
The Gun Regulation Mess
There is little doubt that the current gun sales regulations covering "licensed" gun dealers already on the books are just barely functioning. Constant interference by the NRA and outright self-interested meddling in Congress (frequently in service to the well-heeled gun lobby) existing regulations have been pretty much gutted and have crippled the ATF so that they are unable to come anywhere near the annual inspections of licensed dealers that they are allowed (a meaningless maximum inspection rate set by the NRA and happily passed by Congress).
In 2011 alone, the inspections of licensed gun dealers that the ATF was able to perform turned up nearly 177,500 guns that dealers could not "find" -- either in inventory or in their sales records. After a lot of work by the ATF with the dealers, the number was whittled down to 18,500 - a number the ATF called "a significant threat" to public safety. In 2010 they discovered 30,000 missing guns, so this is not an anomaly.
Seems like a pretty weak set of regulations, which are no good unless they have enough teeth. Frequently all a dealer has to do is turn the business over to a relative, appeal a license revocation in court which will take years to resolve while they continue operating, or even worse for the public, take the inventory "private" and escape any kind of regulation at all.
The NRA keeps saying "enforce the laws we have". The current laws are not doing the job -- but if the NRA would 'do the right thing' for a change and stop crippling the very enforcement that they claim to encourage, things might be very different.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/02/01/12117/atfs-struggle-close-down-firearms-dealers
In 2011 alone, the inspections of licensed gun dealers that the ATF was able to perform turned up nearly 177,500 guns that dealers could not "find" -- either in inventory or in their sales records. After a lot of work by the ATF with the dealers, the number was whittled down to 18,500 - a number the ATF called "a significant threat" to public safety. In 2010 they discovered 30,000 missing guns, so this is not an anomaly.
Seems like a pretty weak set of regulations, which are no good unless they have enough teeth. Frequently all a dealer has to do is turn the business over to a relative, appeal a license revocation in court which will take years to resolve while they continue operating, or even worse for the public, take the inventory "private" and escape any kind of regulation at all.
The NRA keeps saying "enforce the laws we have". The current laws are not doing the job -- but if the NRA would 'do the right thing' for a change and stop crippling the very enforcement that they claim to encourage, things might be very different.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/02/01/12117/atfs-struggle-close-down-firearms-dealers
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Finally! Congress IS Guilty!
Another Onion bit that is almost too close to the truth....
Congress Arrested On Manslaughter Charges
Congress Arrested On Manslaughter Charges
The Times, They Are a-Changing
Despite what the Republican party thinks, the world is already and will continue to change at a rapid pace. This report outlines the reasons why...and why having the biggest military on earth won't count for much.
Pentagon Sinkhole IV
The bottomless Pentagon sinkhole that Congress so loves to feed just claimed another billion dollars in tax dollars. Although this time, as Senator McCain wryly points out, we didn't even get a toilet seat:
Saturday, February 2, 2013
The Cost of "Good Oil"
The oil from Canadian tar sands is seen by the uninformed as "good" oil, primarily because it is a friendly country and we don't have to extract it with thousands of American deaths in war.
However, as a recent study shows it is definitely not obtained without a price. We get to drive around in single-occupancy huge motor vehicles awhile longer, and the Canadians get some short-term money. However the long-term costs may be around for awhile, and could spread to the US if the Keystone pipeline is built across America's heartland and a major aquifer, so the oil can be put onto the much more lucrative world market.
However, as a recent study shows it is definitely not obtained without a price. We get to drive around in single-occupancy huge motor vehicles awhile longer, and the Canadians get some short-term money. However the long-term costs may be around for awhile, and could spread to the US if the Keystone pipeline is built across America's heartland and a major aquifer, so the oil can be put onto the much more lucrative world market.
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