Loophole, Schmoophole....where do bad guys get guns?

The "gun show loophole" is largely a myth, at least as far as applying to gun shows. As a study of state prison inmates suggest, crooks don't go to gun shows to acquire their firearms. Even Harris and Kleibold didn't buy at a gun show--they got a friend to do a gun show straw purchase for them as they were underage. They bought a second firearm from a buddy who knew they were prohibited persons (underage) but sold it anyway. These two gun providers were champions of civic responsibility, eh?

This doesn't mean we don't have a problem with ne'er-do-wells acquiring firearms illicitly. The real question regarding the erroneously-named "gun show loophole" is whether the entire secondary market of sales between individuals leads to gun violence, and whether significant numbers of crimes are committed because folks bought guns without a background check. That is a good question.

As a recent study, yet to be released (read, take this with a grain of salt) indicates, that old "40% of guns are transferred without a background check" number might have merit. Undoubtedly most of these unreviewed sales are to legitimate people, but to decide if the number of bad actors is enough of a problem to spend policy and resources on it, we need numbers; some examples of horror stories are here. This also means we need to address how prohibited people really get guns and how to deter them or their sources from engaging in unlawful transfers. As far as where crooks get guns, in the table below are some numbers from a published source.

But mandating universal background checks (UBCs) is begging the question on how to track and enforce such a requirement.  Tracking and enforcing UBCs for gun transfers in the private market would, in many states, be based on an honor system (or fear of BATF sting operations) since there is no universal registration and tracking of guns to owners, no idea of who owns what in many states (and likely will never be universal registration as long as the anti-gun folks cannot be trusted to avoid Aussie solutions) and as we know, there is no honor among thieves.

Source for Table: Office of Justice Programs Bureau of JusticeStatistics, Firearm Violence, 1993-2011, Michael Planty, Ph.D., and Jennifer L. Truman, Ph.D., BJS Statisticians

Table 14 Source of firearms possessed by state prison inmates at time of offense, 1997 and 2004	Percent of state prison inmates 1997	Percent of state prison inmates 2004
Source of firearm	1997	2004
Total	100%	100%
Purchased or traded from	14%	11.3%
Retail Store	8.2%	7.3%
Pawnshop	4.0%	2.6%
Flea Market	1.0%	0.6%
Gun Show	0.8%	0.8%
Family or friend	40.1%	37.4%
Purchased or traded	12.6%	12.2%
Rented or borrowed	18.9%	14.1%
Other	8.5%	11.1%
Street or illegal source	37.3%	40.0%
Theft or burglary	9.1%	7.5%
Drug deal/off street	20.3%	25.2%
Fence/black market	8.0%	7.4%
Other	8.7%	11.2%

Note from original source: Includes only inmates with a current conviction. Estimates may differ from previously published BJS reports. To account for differences in the 1997 and 2004 inmate survey questionnaires, the analytical methodology used in 1997 was revised to ensure comparability with the 2004 survey.  Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Survey of Inmates in State and Federal Correctional Facilities, 1997 and 2004.

Reference: Office of Justice Programs Bureau of JusticeStatistics, Firearm Violence, 1993-2011, Michael Planty, Ph.D., and Jennifer L. Truman, Ph.D., BJS Statisticians

Why have rifles and shotguns in gun safes at the schools?

"Nice try kid, but I think you just brought a knife. To a gunfight." --From Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

There have been several letters (example) sent to the Post questioning why the lack of public input into placing secure firearm storage in the schools; some have objected to such placement. Perhaps a public hearing for the purposes of educating the public and soliciting public input is a good idea. But this suggestion is based on extensive police tactical thinking that has grown out of past mass shootings.

The carnage of Columbine drastically changed police tactics when responding to a school shooter. Traditional police tactics at the time of Columbine involved first responding officers securing a perimeter and waiting for a SWAT team to arrive. But Columbine was not a traditional hostage situation but a mass shooting; this tactic simply gave the shooters more time to kill people. Presently, many police forces stress that first responding officers actively engage and eliminate the threat as soon as possible in order to save lives.

This, of course, puts the first responders at tremendous risk. A 2014 study, “The Police Response to Active Shooter Incidents”, put together by the Police Executive Research Forum indicates that when a solo officer enters an active shooting situation while the shooter is still firing, in three quarters of the situations the officer directly engages the shooter and in one third of those situations the first responding officer is shot.

In the case of Columbine, the first officer on the scene, a school resource officer, attempted to engage Harris and Kleibold with a sidearm (note that our SRO's have sidearms, so there are already police carrying guns in the schools) while they responded with rifle fire. This is not surprising; the 2014 study indicates that roughly a quarter of shooters have rifles (think Newtown, Dallas, TX and Orlando, FL) and some have multiple weapons (Virginia Tech). If a responding officer cannot rapidly and safely obtain adequate firepower, the officer and trapped victims are at even greater risk. One police training guide written for a large police organization specifically calls out that first responding officers to an active shooter situation should, at a minimum, be equipped with a rifle (AR-15, Mini-14, etc.) or shotgun with slug rounds.

As far as likelihood? While school shootings are still rare, they are becoming more frequent and occur where you would not expect them: Newtown and Columbine are examples. That Los Alamos resembles Lake Wobegon does not immunize us. Indeed, it has not been that long since a local youth went on a burglary rampage and was in possession of multiple assault style rifles and handguns (for those who worry about guns being stolen from a school safe, there are obviously much softer targets around). He was later arrested when he violated his release conditions and entered school grounds. Thankfully, he did not do so for homicidal purposes.

Stolen guns found by police in a local youth's bedroom.
Daily Post photo, with permission

While a school shooting is unlikely, it is not out of the question; this attempt by police to securely cache weapons has been proposed so first responders can be prepared for a worst case scenario. But having tactical weapons is the last line of defense here. While school personnel and police must train and be familiar with how to respond to specific active shooter situations, the real work is in avoiding them. We in this community must understand these events and dedicate the emotional and mental health resources needed to ensure that none of us, and none of our children, ever take on the distorted point of view of an active shooter.

Let’s make sure these weapons are truly secure and responders properly trained in emergency response. But let's not get too myopic and only think about the pros and cons of gun safes. There are a lot of other considerations we need to address in order to ensure those safes merely collect dust.

A version was published in the Sunday, 4 Sept. Los Alamos Daily Post

Breaking Bad, Breaking Worse...

Its interesting that New Mexico was so proud of the TV series "Breaking Bad" which of course extolled the horrific violence that plagues this state in large part due to the drug trade and drug addiction (compounded with poor education, lousy jobs, and poverty, all of which, across the USA, breeds drug abuse). Crystal meth is one of the more violence-inducing of the various drugs that plagues us. But New Mexico's pride in that TV series was basically all about the money that the series brought to the state; the estimate in the link above was about 700k per episode. At 62 episodes, that was about 42 million bucks. Plus or minus the usual smoke and mirrors when the government auctions off tax dollars to bring in business.

The real cost of "Breaking Bad"
Michelle Martens, from the Abq Journal

 Of course the cost of the real meth epidemic is far higher. One RAND study put the U.S. social cost of crystal meth addiction at 23 billion dollars. Scaled just on the basis of population, that would mean that meth costs New Mexico somewhat more than an order of magnitude more than the movie brought in. Some deal.

Aside from the financial cost there is the social one. Fabian Gonzales, Michelle Martens, and Jessica Kelly epitomize the worst of the worst of the meth epidemic. I won't repeat what they did here. Go read about it if you want to lose lunch.  Their crime, as well as other recent henious acts, have resulted in calls to reintroduce the death penalty. These folks sure are the poster children for such a fate.  But all the death penalties in the world will not deter people who have sunk so low; killing them will not bring little Victoria Martens back from the grave. What we really need is to spend more on social services to save kids like Victoria from our worst elements and to try to interdict the drug scourge to keep potentially good people from circling the bowl--and taking others with them. The staggering cost of a capital punishment trial is throwing good money after bad and we don't have money to waste in New Mexico.

"A society where citizens maintain the right to bear arms must maintain a gun culture that instills the corresponding obligation to preserve life"  -Ben Peterson

A society where citizens maintain the right to bear arms must maintain a gun culture that instills the corresponding obligation to preserve life. - See more at: https://home.isi.org/node/68882#sthash.9ER0cxWG.dpuf

A society where citizens maintain the right to bear arms must maintain a gun culture that instills the corresponding obligation to preserve life. - See more at: https://home.isi.org/node/68882#sthash.9ER0cxWG.dpuf

Most of the people in New Mexico are good folks. But it only takes a few of the rotten ones to ruin it for us. Going back to that gun raffle in Otero County, it would not bother me in the least if 100 people who were peaceful, law abiding members of a gun culture won some guns. Hurray for them! Even a high capacity AR or God forbid, that "sniper rifle" Barrett 50BMG (basically, it is a large caliber, long range and very accurate rifle--the military use is sniping and light anti-vehicle; I would have to take it to the Whittington Center to really exercise the thing). What makes me pause is that we are all held hostage to the lowest of the low.  I once blogged that we in the firearms community should never sell a gun to someone we do not know well without going through a background check. I'll say it again here: if one of those guns ends up being flipped to a third party and used in a nasty crime, the United Way will be wearing the hair shirt. Its up to the gun community to push for high standards; blunderbuss gun laws don't do that. If we don't lead the way, as Ben Peterson says so well, we will be punished by laws and political attacks that assume low standards.

But Gonzales, Martens, and Kelly did not use a firearm to commit one of the most heinous crimes that New Mexico can remember (and that is a stiff competition). Their prey was so helpless they did not need to resort to engineered violence. For others in our underworld, whether gangs, drug dealers, or disaffected spouses, guns are a tool of trade and violence. But the usual suggestions for gun laws primarily affect law abiding gun owners. The solutions to gun violence, as well as violence in general, is not to further saddle good citizens with poorly thought through laws and regulations. We need to solve the social ills that damn us and in addition, recruit the gun owning community to help draft policies that keep guns out of the wrong hands because as long as we have the war on drugs, poverty, and income inequality, to name just three things, we will have the wrong hands with us.

You are blocked from following @CeasefireOregon and viewing @CeasefireOregon's tweets

Khalil Spencer ‏@khalil_spencer

@CeasefireOregon Five rounds is high capacity??? Whose def? A lot of your proposals are harassment if not unproven or both.

Yep. This post got me blocked.  Support common sense query control.

Added later. I posted this comment to Greg Camp's critique of the NMPGV Huffington article.


"A society where citizens maintain the right to bear arms must maintain a gun culture that instills the corresponding obligation to preserve life"-Ben Peterson, in "Gun Availability Isn't Gun Culture", Intercollegiate Review, Fall 2015

As far as a gun raffle, it would not bother me in the least if 100 people who are peaceful (caveat: peaceful people can use lawful violence in self defense), law abiding members of a gun culture win some guns. Good for them. Even those high capacity ARs or God forbid, that "sniper rifle" Barrett 50BMG (If I won it, I would have to take it to the Whittington Center to really exercise the thing--its not a good beginner's gun!)

What makes me pause is that we are all held hostage to the lowest of the low. I once blogged that in my opinion, we in the firearms community should never sell a gun to someone we do not know without going through a background check. I'll say it again here: if one of those raffle guns ends up being flipped to a less than stellar third party and used in a nasty crime, the United Way will be wearing the hair shirt.

Its up to the gun community to push for high standards of gun ownership because blunderbuss gun laws don't do any good. If we don't lead the way, as Ben Peterson says so well, we will be punished by laws and political attacks that assume low standards.

My problem with the Huffington piece is that it doesn't draw a distinction between responsible gun ownership and a gun raffle. It pretty much begs the question that these guns will become "instruments of mayhem" rather than challenging us to make sure that they do not go that route. If the question is whether these guns will be responsibly owned and responsibly sold (if they are sold), that is a good question that the Otero County folks need to assert. No one else can do that for them.

I've lived with guns for over fifty years. They don't jump off tables and do bad things. They are at the will of their owners. Those 100 folks who win guns must live up to their responsibilities as members of Ben Peterson's gun culture. If so, we are OK.

Exasperation has its limits--I'm taking out futures in clothespins

To the Daily Post

The unsigned letter from the Los Alamos GOP and Dr. Reilly's letter about Hillary Clinton are not up to the standards I expect in this community. Just a few comments.

Under the U.S. Supreme Court case Communications Workers of America v. Beck (1988) non-union members in a union shop do not have to pay for union political activity but only that part of the dues that go to representation with the employer. Union members vote on what political activity their union will become involved with through their own representatives such as union board members. I was once a union board member.

The Second Amendment will not fall if open carry is not allowed. In the landmark Heller vs. D.C. et al decision, the Court stated "...Like most rights, the Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose..."; the court let stand many state laws regulating the personal possession of arms.

So we don't need the disastrous candidate Donald Trump to protect us from encroachments on the Second Amendment or to keep union workers from being fleeced by union leadership.

As far as Hillary Clinton and Servergate, FBI Director Comey's crystal clear statements indicated Clinton's mishandling of classified material. Comey's statement was reviewed in these words by the New York Times:  "...Of 30,000 emails Mrs. Clinton handed over to the State Department, 110 contained information that was classified at the time she sent or received them. Of those, Mr. Comey said, “a very small number” bore markings that identified them as classified. This finding is at odds with Mrs. Clinton’s repeated assertions that none of the emails were classified at the time she sent or received them. The F.B.I. did not disclose the topics of the classified emails..."

Four Pinocchios

   Indeed Los Alamos is the last place on earth where one would want to misstate the definition of, or responsibilities of handling, classified matter. Regardless of her early life as a middle class tomboy, etc., etc., Clinton as Secretary of State was careless, pure and simple. And I won't even get into the Clinton Foundation or what she said to Wall Street execs for a quarter million dollars a pop, as that has not been revealed.

In an election where most of us will be holding our nose as we vote for president, the least we can do is clearly understand the issues. Both parties need to do better.

Be The First One On Your Block To Have Your Kid Come Home With a Glock

With apologies to Country Joe and the Fish. And, thanks to my wife Meena for making the connection. And, not to single out Glock. Its just that it rhymes.

A bit of a dustup over the United Way of Otero County raffling off guns to raise money. New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence protested, saying this violated the United Way rules that exclude fundraising involving alcohol, firearms, tobacco, adult entertainment and gaming products. But then UW backed off and the raffle is on. The NRA rejoiced. More guns, better world. America's Maslow's Gun wins again.

As usual, I come down somewhere in between everyone else and suggest a graded approach. Looking at the list of guns to raffle off by the UW affiliate, here was my comment, slightly edited for clarity, lack of profanity, and because I keep editing everything, to United Way and NMPGV.

To: Miranda Viscoli, Co-president, NM To Prevent Gun Violence
Brian Gallagher, President, United Way
MacKenzie Allen, NMPGV
From: Khal Spencer, Firearms owner and NMPGV

 I looked at the  list of firearms being raffled by the Otero County UW.

Most of the guns are everyday guns. But of course an everyday gun is only as safe as whoever owns it. I would hope that if someone wins an everyday gun, there is an attempt to make sure the person has basic knowledge of safe firearms handling. Of course, the gun shop is responsible for NICS background checks.

The Bushmasters (and civilian versions of military assault rifles in general) are always a point of contention. I think they are interesting guns but refuse to buy one on general principles.  Personally, I wish they were never marketed to the civilian market or if they were, under restrictions analogous to those that cover machine guns, i.e., a National Firearms Act item. With millions out there, we need to make sure law abiding owners respect them and prohibited persons don't get them. I would actually prefer that if someone is going to get an AR, they pay full freight.

The Barrett (it is an M-95) is the one that would worry me. That fires a 50 cal round that is lethal at extreme ranges of several miles and if used carelessly (I know of a couple people who own similar arms and are quite respectful and careful of them), can be a problem. If I were United Way, I would not want to raffle off a military grade gun that could kill at several miles and then read about it in the paper when someone has no idea what is downrange, like another town. Or, if someone flips it to a unknown third party to turn a fifty dollar raffle ticket into 10k in the bank. Plus, I strongly suspect a 50 BMG firearm is not protected under Heller's “in common use at the time” clause in section (2).

I have a particular bone to pick with raffling off a Barrett and not knowing if the winner would know the muzzle from the breech. When we lived in Hawaii, we were about a mile and a half from a civilian rifle range at Koko Head. One day we came home from the University, where Meena and I both were faculty members, and there was drywall dust on the floor and a hole in the roof. I put a stick through the hole and it pointed to the range.  Range officer said there was no way a civilian from his range could do that, so we called the police and the cops called a forensic firearms investigator, who used a fiber optics probe to get the bullet out of an interior wall where it had come to rest. Turns out the bullet was the tungsten core of a military, armor piercing 50 cal BMG round. The range officer confessed and said he let some Air Force guys practice with a Barrett on the civilian range (which was illegal) and obviously someone missed the backstop. The bullet flew all the way across a densely populated residential valley to our house and penetrated the roof and an interior wall. Air Force eventually paid for the damages but that damn bullet lodged in a wall two feet from where Meena used to sit and grade papers.

So. As a gun guy myself, my admonition to United Way is this: Is UW confident that selling military grade hardware to raffle winners is safe, even if it is legal?

Added much later. Rather than getting into a dustup over gun rights vs. gun control, two things are relevant here. One, this appears to have violated United Way's own rules and an officer at another UW affiliate (Santa Fe) working on gun violence prevention is justified in calling them on it. Two, if you are going to raffle off guns up to and including semiautomatic assault style rifles and a Barrett 50BMG rifle, someone worried about those guns in civilian hands is going to challenge it. If I were the President of UW, I would, at minimum, ditch the Barrett. Maybe even the ARs. If someone wants a 50 BMG, let them pay full freight. Generally, that means that the only folks who own them really do appreciate their capabilities.  As well as the cost of ammo.

And of course, since I love the song.

Guns to Gardens on 11 August

A sub-600 word version of this was printed in the Santa Fe New Mexican on 7 August.

In August, the New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence will hold a fund raiser for the Guns to Gardens program, in which unwanted guns are fabricated into garden tools.  I'll be there.

Gun buybacks make some nervous; seen as an attack on the Second Amendment. But these are not mandatory buybacks, i.e., the "Australian Solution" that raise Constitutional issues. Voluntary buybacks held in some cities do not abrogate the Second Amendment as recently affirmed in District of Columbia v Heller and MacDonald v Chicago. It appears they have a minor impact on reducing crime (discussed here, and here). They still serve an important purpose, operationally and philosophically. Not alone in thinking so, either.

The idea is not to melt down one's prize handgun or rifle but provide a means for people to safely and securely dispose of unwanted, abandoned, or unused firearms. Those which end up in the back of a closet or in a drawer and more likely to be misused, forgotten, accidentally discharged by a child (sometimes at a person), or stolen. Such efforts as these also provide a convenient disposal mechanism for people who have inherited or otherwise own guns but who are not part of a firearms culture, may simply not know what to  do with guns or how to use them effectively, nor are interested in learning. The First Amendment is a right too, but not everyone writes letters to the editor. Its our choice.

Someone who is unsure of the value of a firearm can also take it to a gun shop for a knowledgeable appraisal and then decide what to do with the gun. It would bring tears to my eyes to see someone melt down a pre-64 Model 70 Winchester in good condition. But in such a case of disposing of a gun with a lot of value, please sell it via a background check.

The Guns to Gardens program is a rational political statement about reducing civic violence and putting guns in a proper perspective, i.e., ensure we do not see guns as the only tool in one's mental toolbox.  Guns should not be America's Maslow's Hammer, i.e., if all you have is a gun, everything looks like something to be shot. Solving social ills with firearms is rarely a good idea, whether disgruntled blacks in Dallas or Baton Rouge, political protestors performing armed occupations of wildlife refuges over federal land policy, disgruntled spouses, road ragers, gang members in poverty stricken communities, or disgruntled employees.

A gun buyback program must be part of a greater context. Violence reduction requires focused efforts; a target rifle rather than the scattershot proposals of some gun control advocates. Some efforts can involve carefully vetted laws to keep guns out of the hands of prohibited persons. Mass shootings are low likelihood, high consequence evens; we need to minimize their occurrence by controlling lethality or minimizing the desire to be a mass shooter or some combination. A larger effort needs to address why people commit crime. Andrew Papachristos' work, studying cohorts of violent people, is a good place to start. Papachristos has shown that much urban violence is not random but highly concentrated in networks, transmitting similarly to STDs. It is thus is predictable, and potentially controllable (and not primarily with gun control). Article about that here.

I reject abridging folks Second Amendment rights, including my own. I favor reducing gun violence, and thus reducing both the cost to society of shootings and the perception that citizens cannot be trusted with their 2A rights. Lets build bridges to reduce violence rather than burn bridges fighting across the ever widening gun control moat.

Note added later. I've added a few links from Mike the Gun Guy.

Actual Event Brite Link to info below here.