NRA's proposal for school safety

A copy of their report is available here.  From Fox News:

Hutchinson, though, did call for the creation of a 40-60 hour training program for armed officers. To accompany that, his group proposed a "model" state law that would allow certain personnel who have undergone this training to carry weapons on school grounds.  

"This is not talking about all teachers," he said. "Teachers should teach."  

The 225-page report also called for states to require schools to conduct a safety assessment and for a pilot program to be created assessing mental health as a pre-indicator for violence. . . .

Besides being costly, having armed officers at schools makes them a target for these killers.  There is a big benefit if the killers don't know who they have to worry about.

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David Kopel might be in some trouble regarding his congressional testimony because he forget to tell people he got over $100K a year from NRA

Obviously this is a hit piece, but it still may damage his ability to testify in the future, mainly because he apparently didn't tell people on the Hill about this.

One witness, David Kopel, who testified on January 30, identified at the hearing as a law school adjunct professor, received more than $108,000 in grants from the NRA’s Civil Rights Defense Fund in 2011. Another witness, David T. Hardy, testifying Wednesday as a private attorney in Tucson, Arizona, received $67,500 in grants from the same NRA Civil Rights Defense Fund in 2011. . . .

I wonder whether this will also effect his ability to write op-ed pieces on gun issues.  Remember the problems that Jonathan Gruber got in for not acknowledging the money that he was getting from the Obama administration.  The WSJ would have required Gruber to note in his op-ed pieces that he was getting $400,000 total from the Obama administration.  Kopel getting $100,000 a year for many years seems like it should have also been listed.

Do I believe that Kopel changed his views for $100,000 a year?  No, of course not, but again the problem is that Kopel apparently didn't tell Republican staff whether he had any conflicts of interest.

UPDATE:  It turns out that Kopel may have gotten even more money.  It looks like he received an average of about $173,750 per year from 2004 to 2011.

And FOX31 Denver has found that Kopel has received $1.39 million in grant money from the N.R.A. Civil Rights Defense Fund between 2004 and 2011. The group continues to fund Kopel, although tax information from 2012 and 2013 isn’t yet available. . . .

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Paul Krugman on owning guns for self-defense

From Krugman's appearance on ABC's This Week:

“What strikes me is we've actually gotten a glimpse into the mindset, though, of the pro-gun people and we've seen certainly Wayne LaPierre and some of these others. It's bizarre,” he said. “They have this vision that we're living in a ‘Mad Max’ movie and that nothing can be done about it, that America cannot manage unless everybody's prepared to shoot intruders, that the idea that we have police forces that provide public safety is somehow totally impractical, despite the fact that, you know, that is, in fact, the way we live.” 

 “So, I think that the terms of the debate have shifted,” he added. “Now the craziness of the extreme pro-gun lobby has been revealed, and that has got to move the debate and got to move the legislation at least to some degree.” . . .

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Critical discussion of Fox News Sunday and their interviews about gun control

When issues like the attacks in other places such as movie theaters are raised, why not talk about all the attacks in gun-free zones?  For movie theaters, LaPierre could point to this discussion about the Aurora attack.  A more detailed discussion is available here.

I also don't understand why LaPierre can't correct the record on some of the claims being made.  The claim that "1.7 million prohibited people have been prevented from buying a gun" what they really mean is that "1.7 million people have been initially denied buying a gun."  Remember the five times that the late Sen. Ted Kennedy missed flights because his name was on the "no fly" list? This method of counting would be the equivalent of saying that the "no fly" list stopped five flights by terrorists. Sen. Kennedy may have been kept off those flights, but he still flew on later planes.

The problem is that at least 95% of these initial denials are false positives and that is just the tip of the iceberg.  After these initial denials are made, there is an initial review process in which 94% of the cases are dropped.  No discretion is allowed in this review stage.  If the person purchasing a gun was a prohibited individual who attempted to buy a gun, that is a crime and the investigation should be moved on to the next stage.  There was a 2004 survey of the cases that were then referred to local BATF field offices and that found that over 22 percent of those cases were still false positives.  There could be other cases, but at that point the annual reports become extremely murky.  We know for example in 2010 that there were 76,000 initial denials, 62 of those were eventually referred to prosecutors, prosecutors went ahead with 44 cases, and there were 13 convictions.  Yet, these numbers are an obvious overestimate as they say they might drop cases where the prohibited offense is "old," but strangely some of the cases that they go forward with have involved cases with prohibitions that are over 4 decades old.

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Boy, that NRA sure makes a lot of donations, right?

The Washington Post has this set of graphics illustrating the NRA's corrupting influence on politics.  In 2011-2012 election cycle, the NRA gave almost $600,000 spread across 236 Republican candidates (an average of $2,473 per candidate) and $74,000 to 25 Democrats.

Pretty impressive numbers until you look at donations by other groups such as lawyers.  I would have liked to have found donations by just trial lawyers, but these donations are still lopsided towards Democrats by a huge amount that completely dwarfs donations by the NRA.  Still, I suspect that the Washington Post isn't going to run a similar spread on these numbers.  Just donations to Democratic Senator Killibrand dwarfs the NRA's donations by 3.2 times.

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