Day: March 24, 2002

Police Shocked — More Guns, No Increase in Violent Crime

For the most part concealed weapons laws have tended to decrease violent crime in the states where such laws have been adopted. That did not stop gun control opponents from swearing up and down last year that Michigan’s concealed carry law would lead to Wild West-style shootouts in Michigan cities. On the one year anniversary of the law’s passage, thousands more people now carry concealed weapons and, of course, there has been no increase at all in gun crimes.

According to the Detroit News, over the last 8 1/2 months, the number of concealed weapons permits have increased 39 percent, up from 58,280 before the law to 81,033 today. Yet, as Wayne County Sheriff Robert Ficano conceded to the News, there has been no crime wave as predicted by the law’s opponents,

That’s really the surprise. There are no altercations or incidents I’ve seen that are at all attributable to the law change. We thought there might be some.

Of course that would not have been a surprise at all had Ficano or others simply looked at what happened with other states that passed such laws.

The law has also gained overwhelming support from Michigan residents, with polls showing 58 percent of people in the state in support of the law. Gun control activists have given up trying to repeal the law, at least for the moment, acknowledging they have been unable to raise the money necessary to mount a campaign against the bill that would likely fail anyway.

Source:

Gun permits surge, but not violence. John Bebow and George Hunter, The Detroit News, March 21, 2002.

Time to Line Up for Single File

I follow Duncan’s Jotter largely because Duncan Smeed often points to tools and web sites that I’ve never heard of that are, nonetheless, simply amazing — and in this latest case, indispensable.

Last week, Duncan pointed to Single File, and this weekend I signed up for a year’s subscription to the service. Single File only does one thing but it does that one thing brilliantly — it allows people to track their book collections.

Now if you have a small book collection of just a few hundred items, the product might be overkill. But when you get past about a thousand books, keeping track of them is a real pain. On a number of occasions I have started to catalog and organize my book collection, but usually give up after a brief burst of energy. So far I’ve managed to enter several hundred books into Single File in just a few hours of effort over the weekend.

Of course, eventually I will want to do what Duncan hints at, and bring my book collection database into Conversant, and Single File makes that as easy as it can on its end by allowing me to export my data to delimited files that can be imported by other applications. Using Single File does not lock the user in to using it forever.

All-in-all, Single File is exactly what I look for in web-based applications. Simple, straightforward and concentrates on doing one job incredibly well.

Animal Rights Movement and Excessive Regulation "Delay Lifesaving Drugs"

Medical researchers told the European Breast Cancer Conference that animal rights attacks combined with excessive regulations governing clinical trials are delaying the development of life saving cancer treatments.

Dr. Michael Baum, who chaired the conference, said,

Women will die unnecessarily because of the delays these two threats cause.

. . .

Britain has led the world in reducing deaths from breast cancer because of the research and innovation we have in this country. That is being lost. We are already seeing delays in new drugs coming through and young researchers are deciding it’s not worth coming into the field because of all the restrctions.

As if animal rights attacks were not enough, in 1996 the European Agency for the Evaluation of Medicinal Products imposed additional regulations on the conduct of clinical trials. Many medical researchers believe those regulations went too far in protecting the privacy of patients in clinical trials. According to Baum,

I accept that we need to protect patients and protec thtier privacy but these restrictions are nonsensical. There is a pently to pay for them and that pentalty is in peoiple’s lives.

Source:

Animal rights ‘delay lifesaving drugs’. Helen Rumbelow, The Times (UK), March 23, 2002.

Neil Bartlett Sentenced to Four Years in Jail

British animal rights activist Neil Bartlett was sentenced last Friday to four years in jail after he had earlier plead guilty to six counts of phoning in fake bomb hoaxes to Huntingdon Life Sciences, GlaxoSmithKline, Novartis, and other firms with connections to animal research.

In sentencing Bartlett, Judge Anthony Thorpe said,

Offences of this nature cause great concern to the public, particularly in the light of terrorist attacks all too common all over the world. The courts have a duty to protect the public particularly from acts tending to induce fear and panic.

Thorpe apparently did not buy the argument from Bartlett’s lawyer, Michelle Strange, that, “He did not realize how much disruption he caused. He had no idea of the number of people’s lives would be interrupted. He thought it was a matter between himself and the companies.”

Strange need not worry — her client will now have four years to contemplate just this matter.

Source:

Man jailed for London bomb hoaxes. Ananova, March 22, 2002.

Ingrid Newkirk Is a Liar and Bill Press Is an Idiot

Ingrid Newkirk appeared on CNN’s Crossfire last week, and she was in a neck-and-neck competition with cohost Bill Press to see who could make the most outlandish statement.

Newkirk outright lied about People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ tactics. Here’s a partial transcript of an exchange between Newkirk and cohost Tucker Carlson,

CARLSON: Actually, I don’t. I’ll save that for later. You call meat-eaters bullies. The rest of us are bullies. You say you’re pro- animal. It strikes me that you are anti-human. Let me give you an example and I want an explanation and I want an apology for this.

Last spring, I took my children to the circus here in Washington. I had my four-year-old son, very nice boy, in my arms walking up to go into the circus. And some monster from PETA leans forward and shoves in his face a photograph of a wounded elephant, and says, “This is what the circus is,” to my four-year-old son.

NEWKIRK: I doubt it very much.

CARLSON: I watched it. He was in my arms. And I want you to apologize for that.

NEWKIRK: If anyone did that, I absolutely apologize.

CARLSON: Well, good.

NEWKIRK: Because everything we do is based at adults. We’re asking adults be responsible. You were telling me about giving your children meat and milk. They’re going to be to grow up to be tubs of lard. They’re getting heart attacks.

This is an outright lie. PETA has had an open practice of targeting children with their message, including numerous demonstrations outside of schools. In fact, PETA has in the past sued schools that tried to limit their ability to protest.

Newkirk is apparently so used to habitually lying, she cannot even tell the truth about PETA’s own practices.

But Press managed to make a statement about animal rights so idiotic that it almost upstaged Newkirk’s lie. Explaining to Newkirk that he sympathizes with her cause, Press said,

Let me get to the American Meat-out. Okay? And what bothers me about it is that you connect animal rights to the American Meat-out.

I am an animal lover. I’ve received awards from animal rights groups for my commentaries on animal rights. I really believe in it. I wouldn’t go duck hunting. I wouldn’t go deer hunting. I’m against animal testing unless somebody tells me it’s absolutely necessary to save a life. I think I qualify as an animal rights person, but I eat steak and I’ll eat chicken.

He wouldn’t go duck hunting or deer hunting but he eats steak and chicken. Does Press think that chickens and cows just show up outside of supermarkets and volunteer for the opportunity to become sandwich meat and steak? What a maroon!

Source:

Is It Time to Investigate Investigator?; PETA Celebrates American Meat-Out Day. Crossfire, Transcript, March 21, 2002.

More on Infant Murder

Last week I wrote about a new study about the incredibly high risk that infants have of being murdered during their first year of life. Richard Bennett was the first to point out that the rate of infant murder turns out to be much higher than the murder rate of women.

In the CDC study of infant murders, the CDC found that from 1989 to 1998, infant murders occurred at a rate of 8.3 per 100,000 person years. By contrast, the incidence of single killer/single victim homicides where the victim was a woman was 1.35 per 100,000 in 1999.

But, of course, infant murder is not anywhere on the feminist agenda except in the 11 percent of cases where men are the perpetrators.

Source:

Variation in Homicide Risk During Infancy — United States, 1989–1998. Centers for Disease Control, March 8, 2002, 51(09);187-9.