Tag Archives: Liberty

News

New CDC study on gun violence that Obama requested undermines gun control

1 Comment

Here’s an article about the CDC study from the leftist Slate magazine. (H/T ECM)

First – Obama ordered this study, and it was performed by an agency under his control – the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The article says:

Earlier this year, President Obama ordered the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assess the existing research on gun violence and recommend future studies. That report, prepared by the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council, is now complete. Its findings won’t entirely please the Obama administration or the NRA, but all of us should consider them.

The article explains 10 findings of the report.

Here are a few of them:

2. Most indices of crime and gun violence are getting better, not worse. “Overall crime rates have declined in the past decade, and violent crimes, including homicides specifically, have declined in the past 5 years,” the report notes. “Between 2005 and 2010, the percentage of firearm-related violent victimizations remained generally stable.” Meanwhile, “firearm-related death rates for youth ages 15 to 19 declined from 1994 to 2009.” Accidents are down, too: “Unintentional firearm-related deaths have steadily declined during the past century. The number of unintentional deaths due to firearm-related incidents accounted for less than 1 percent of all unintentional fatalities in 2010.”

5. Mass shootings aren’t the problem. “The number of public mass shootings of the type that occurred at Sandy Hook Elementary School accounted for a very small fraction of all firearm-related deaths,” says the report. “Since 1983 there have been 78 events in which 4 or more individuals were killed by a single perpetrator in 1 day in the United States, resulting in 547 victims and 476 injured persons.” Compare that with the 335,000 gun deaths between 2000 and 2010 alone.

7. Guns are used for self-defense often and effectively. “Almost all national survey estimates indicate that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year … in the context of about 300,000 violent crimes involving firearms in 2008,” says the report. The three million figure is probably high, “based on an extrapolation from a small number of responses taken from more than 19 national surveys.” But a much lower estimate of 108,000 also seems fishy, “because respondents were not asked specifically about defensive gun use.” Furthermore, “Studies that directly assessed the effect of actual defensive uses of guns (i.e., incidents in which a gun was ‘used’ by the crime victim in the sense of attacking or threatening an offender) have found consistently lower injury rates among gun-using crime victims compared with victims who used other self-protective strategies.”

10. It isn’t true that most gun acquisitions by criminals can be blamed on a few bad dealers. The report concedes that in 1998, “1,020 of 83,272 federally licensed retailers (1.2 percent) accounted for 57.4 percent of all guns traced by the ATF.” However, “Gun sales are also relatively concentrated; approximately 15 percent of retailers request 80 percent of background checks on gun buyers conducted by the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.” Researchers have found that “the share of crime gun traces attributed to these few dealers only slightly exceeded their share of handgun sales, which are almost equally concentrated among a few dealers.” Volume, not laxity, drives the number of ill-fated sales.

The findings of the CDC study are not aligned with either side of the gun control debate, but considering the source (an agency of the Obama administration), I expect them to be even more liberal than the real state of affairs.

A better place to look for the truth about guns is in the academic literature. Here are two books I really like for that.

Both of those books make the case that permitting law-abiding citizens to own firearms for self-defense reduces rates of gun violence.

News

Colorado man faces fine and/or jail for refusing to bake for gay couple

2 Comments

The Heritage Foundation reports on the latest episode of the conflict between gay activism and religious liberty.

Full text:

A same-sex couple in Denver has filed a discrimination complaint against baker Jack Phillips for refusing to provide his services to help celebrate their wedding.

Phillips declined on the grounds that participating in such a ceremony violates his religious beliefs about marriage. Similar cases have involved a Washington florist and a New Mexico photographer.

Even though the Colorado celebration was for a marriage actually performed in Massachusetts, and Colorado does not recognize same-sex marriage under its laws, the baker stands accused of violating Colorado’s nondiscrimination law. Heritage’s Tom Messner has written how situations such as those in Colorado are triggered:

Conflicts between same-sex marriage and religious freedom will often involve some type of previously adopted nondiscrimination law or policy, and nondiscrimination laws can impose burdens on religious freedom even in jurisdictions that do not legally recognize homosexual unions as marriages.

Colorado is proving the point. Same-sex marriage is not formally recognized in the state, but nondiscrimination law can, even in states without same-sex marriage, produce conflicts with religious freedom.

In this case, the attorney general of Colorado issued a formal complaint at the behest of the ACLU. The case is expected to go before Colorado’s Civil Rights Commission. The complaint urges Phillips to “cease and desist” his activity. Phillips could face fines of $500 and up to a year in jail.

For Phillips, the issue at stake is whether law will force him to use his creative services in a way that violates his faith.

Phillips told a reporter he serves non-wedding cakes to all customers—regardless of sexual orientation. It’s the same-sex marriage to which he objects.

Phillips’s attorney believes that actions against him are yet another example of recent trends that restrict conscience.

“At its heart, this is a case about conscience,” said Nicolle Martin, his attorney. “It would force him to choose between his conscience and a paycheck. I just think that’s an intolerable choice.”

Phillips refuses to compromise and remains determined to stand up for his religious views. “If it came to that point, we would close down the bakery before we would compromise our beliefs, so that may be what it comes to,” Phillips told KCNC-TV.

There was a pretty good article on this issue a few days ago on the Public Discourse, and it’s worth reading and sharing with people who think that gay marriage won’t affect them. The truth is that gay marriage is not compatible with religious liberty, and gay activists are willing to use the state to push their views onto anyone who refuses to celebrate and affirm their lifestyle.

Podcasts

Frank Turek responds to Obama’s speech opposing Christian schools

3 Comments

Frank Turek’s latest radio show podcast discusses Obama’s assertion that Christian schools are divisive.

Let’s start with a news story from the Daily Caller, and then we’ll review the podcast.

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama suggested that religiously-affiliated and denominational schools are at the root of The Troubles, the ethnic, religious and nationalist conflict that seems to perpetually afflict Northern Ireland.

Obama made the chastising remarks in front of about 2,000 mostly young people at Belfast’s Waterfront Hall on Monday, the Scottish Catholic Observer reported.

“If towns remain divided — if Catholics have their schools and buildings and Protestants have theirs, if we can’t see ourselves in one another and fear or resentment are allowed to harden — that too encourages division and discourages cooperation,” Obama lectured.

[…]Monday’s statement is not the first time Obama has suggested that religion is a dangerous crutch.

In 2008, when he was running for president, Obama criticized unsophisticated Americans in “small towns in Pennsylvania” and the Midwest for their attachment to Christian religion and firearms.

“So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment, or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” Obama famously declared, according to The Huffington Post.

I’m sure that he has no problem with Maddrassas and secular-leftist public schools, though.

Anyway, on to the podcast, and let’s see what Frank Turek makes of it.

The MP3 file is here.

Topics:

  • Obama’s point: he thinks that religious schools encourage division rather than cooperation
  • The point is NOT that he wants to shut down Christian education
  • His point is, though, that teaching religion in schools is a source of segregation and division
  • Obama toured Muslim countries, but he didn’t say a word about Muslim schools being divisive
  • In Ireland, the violence is not in accordance with Christianity
  • We should not judge a religion by actions that are inconsistent with that religion
  • George Washington: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
  • You can see how morality has degraded, for example in public schools, as society has become more secular
  • Our human rights and freedoms are in fact rooted in a Creator, and government should recognize that
  • Instead of being critical of religion, Obama should have emphasized the unity of Christian denominations like Thomas Jefferson
  • In order to be right with God, the essential thing is to believe that Jesus’ death is an atonement for human sinfulness
  • We should not lose sight of what we have in common with other denominations and how important those common points are
  • Augustine: “In essentials, unity; in non-essentials, liberty; in all things, charity.”
  • The most important question for humans to ask “Does God Exist?”, because it determines whether there is meaning and purpose
  • The question cannot even be asked or debated in public (government-run) schools
  • Problem: how can our education system be sound if we do not and cannot investigate life’s most important question?
  • The answer to the question “Does God exist?” is assumed to be NO in our public / government-run school system
  • Why do parents who are forced to pay thousands of dollars for public schools go on and spend thousands more on private school?
  • It’s because everyone knows that it’s worth the money to send children to private schools, they learn more there
  • The President’s comment: denominational schools cause divisions, is itself divisive
  • Jesus himself says that Christianity will involve some appropriate divisiveness: e.g. – Matthew 10:34-38
  • See 1 Corinthians 5, Obama himself would be expelled from the church for claiming to be Christian while excusing sexual immorality

Then there is a period of people calling in and discussing the topic with Dr. Turek.