There's been much commentary about how the gun control debate reflects cultural differences between densely populated Blue States and thinly populated Red States. (In fact, I put that idea forward in my 2004 Baby Gap article.)
But, my impression is that one major exception to this pattern is the entertainment industry belt on both sides of the Hollywood Hills. I don't know anybody around here who hunts, but guns still come up all the time. I don't have any reliable numbers, but as far as I can tell, based on the number of guns stocked in general-purpose sporting goods stores near studios, the visibility of indoor gun ranges, and the number of times my sons got invited to go with their friends' and their friends' dads, often minor entertainment industry workers, to go blast hell out of stuff, a sizable number of Hollywood-types are armed to the teeth.
I can imagine multiple reasons.
- For one thing, the local top dogs in cultural influence, the big name movie directors, are not exactly shrinking violets. They may not expound in public the same political views as, say, John Milius, but they aren't all that different in personality.
- Fake guns play a huge role in movies and TV, so it's not surprising that many guys in those businesses think real guns are cool.
- Hollywood employs lots of ex-soldiers and ex-cops in various capacities, in part because they are familiar with guns.
- The LAPD has been, since Chief Parker's reforms after WWII, a thin blue line with not many cops per capita.
- Prestigious people tend to live in out of the way places, up canyons that the police can't get too quickly.
- Celebrities tend to attract crazy stalkers.
- Bling. Music celebrities and off-season jocks and their women wear a lot of jewelry, which makes them targets for robbers, whereas most normal people carry nothing more valuable than a smart phone or an engagement diamond ring.
- Celebrities tend to attract crazy stalkers.
- Bling. Music celebrities and off-season jocks and their women wear a lot of jewelry, which makes them targets for robbers, whereas most normal people carry nothing more valuable than a smart phone or an engagement diamond ring.
- The Rodney King riots demonstrated vividly that armed Korean shopkeepers did better than unarmed Korean shopkeepers.
- A major theme in the local imagination going back at least to Nathaniel West's Day of the Locust is the L.A. Apocalypse. The zombie hordes will attack and it will be every household for itself.
- And, there really will be an L.A. Apocalypse: the Big One. At some point, the San Andreas Fault will slip, and the cops will be too busy pulling people out of the rubble to answer your calls when the looters arrive.
Generally speaking, the arming up of the area since Rodney King doesn't seem to have had too many bad effects. Property crime is way down.
Generally speaking, the arming up of the area since Rodney King doesn't seem to have had too many bad effects. Property crime is way down.
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42 comments:
Carrying a licensed firearm may make sense for many people in the entertainment industry. Let's say that you're a B List celebrity, for example the co-star of a moderately popular network sitcom. Hiring 2/7 armed security would be a bit excessive and costly, but given your fairly high public profile you do have reasonable security fears that a non-celebrity wouldn't have.
Peter
Good mash up of celebrity gun control advocates and violent scenes from their films.
Somebody else online mentioned this Hollywood/celebrity gun love too: Celebs will usually proffer a pro-gun control quip on demand, but a surprisingly high number end up in tabloids and gossip websites for waving a gun around or getting arrested for illegal gun carry and/or possession.
I think the reasons Steve cites are all valid.
Steve mentioned stalkers, but another factor could be the thinking in many people's minds that actor=famous which therefore must = rich. I remember a couple years ago some DJs on a morning radio program were talking about a report that claimed an insanely high percentage of pro athletes carried guns. Supposedly most carried because they were often being challenged by idiots who thought they'd prove themselves by fighting the big jock, but many may have thought news of their multimillion dollar contracts may attract muggers.
Korean merchants in street shootout These scenes haven't gone from the memories of anybody in southern CA.
Guns for me but not for thee is perfectly consistent with the idea of liberalism/leftism as merely a new aristocracy. Only suckers believed that it was anything else than a scam, leftism that is, and restricting arms to only aristocrats (however that is defined) is pretty much feudalism 101.
Or the Edo period. Whichever you prefer.
Russian elites have always been armed. Aristocrats, and their successor aristocrats, come to mind. As do Chinese Red Princes and their armed goons.
Occam's Razor - Hollywood liberals are simply flaming hypocrites, as are nearly all other wealthy liberals, few, if any of which, allow themselves be as exposed to the dangers of everyday as the rest of the plebes.
I wonder how much of the reduction in cime is the result of shipping out undesirables to less politically powerful Palmdale via Section 8.
http://www.callawyer.com/clstory.cfm?eid=923321
"Currently, 17 percent of L.A. County's Section 8 recipients reside in Lancaster"
I drove through there the other day. What a hole. It used to be OK back in the early 80's.
Two words: Sharon Tate
I'd also add celebrities have the cachet to get a CCW from the Sheriff's Department - good luck for hoi poilloi.
"And, there really will be an L.A. Apocalypse: the Big One. At some point, the San Andreas Fault will slip, and the cops will be too busy pulling people out of the rubble to answer your calls when the looters arrive."
Do LA cops really do that? I imagine that they'd be...you know....securing a perimeter, contolling the situation, conducting force protection operations.....that sort of thing.
Most likely, they'd be hightailed off to see about their own homes and families.
What is it they say about LA? It had a two hour supply of water, a two day supply of food, and a two week supply of ammunition.
O/T, but right up your alley:
Foreign Students Are Hurting US Innovation
By Norman Matloff
In the old days, the U.S. program for foreign-student visas helped developing nations and brought diversity to then white-bread American campuses. Today, the F-1 program, as it is known, has become a profit center for universities and a wage-suppression tool for the technology industry....
Last year, this was taken to a new level at California State University, East Bay, a public institution just south of Oakland. The school directed its master’s degree programs to admit only non-California students, including foreign students. Even before this edict, international students made up 90 percent of its computer-science master’s program. ...
Focusing on computer science and electrical engineering, my recent research, which is scheduled to be published by the Economic Policy Institute in March, compared American natives with former F-1s who were working in the U.S. as of 2003. For workers of comparable age, educational attainment and so on, the former foreign students on average had fewer patent applications, attended lower-ranked U.S. universities and were less likely to be working in research and development positions. (Here is an earlier report I wrote.)
Interviewed after the Cal State East Bay furor, biology professor Maria Nieto said the increase in foreign students had decreased overall quality. The weak foreign students are being admitted “because they can pay,” she added....
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-12/glut-of-foreign-students-hurts-u-s-innovation.html
Foreign Students Hurt US Innovation
By Norman Matloff
(Bloomberg News)
In the old days, the U.S. program for foreign-student visas helped developing nations and brought diversity to then white-bread American campuses. Today, the F-1 program, as it is known, has become a profit center for universities and a wage-suppression tool for the technology industry.
International students are attractive to strapped colleges because they tend to pay full tuition or, in the case of public institutions, pay more than full price in out-of-state rates.
Last year, this was taken to a new level at California State University, East Bay, a public institution just south of Oakland. The school directed its master’s degree programs to admit only non-California students, including foreign students. Even before this edict, international students made up 90 percent of its computer-science master’s program.
The pursuit of foreign students by U.S. schools affects not only college access for Americans but also their careers. Back in 1989, an internal report of the National Science Foundation forecast that a large influx of F-1 doctoral students in science, technology, engineering and math -- the STEM fields -- would suppress wages.
READ ON...
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-12/glut-of-foreign-students-hurts-u-s-innovation.html
The Rodney King riots demonstrated vividly that armed Korean shopkeepers did better than unarmed Korean shopkeepers.
LOL'ed.
The best humor is always the simplest.
And the most truthful.
[E.g.: You know you're a redneck if you've ever mowed your yard and found a car.]
As 3D printing becomes more mainstream, its going to have some serious consequences regarding guns. Much as the ubiquity of cell phones has led to unforseen consequences for both the govt and the people of cameras at every scene, etc., guns that are printed, have no identification, all create the same marks on the casing and are readily recycled, will lead to interesting times. To some extent, weaponsmakers in the past could do some of this, but they require training, etc; 3D printers can be basically used by anyone.
There'll have to be some regulations since we can't have all those white liberals in NYC scared to death about Harlem gangbangers and pretending its Joe Bob White in Montana causing the trouble.
" Anonymous Anonymous said...
Korean merchants in street shootout These scenes haven't gone from the memories of anybody in southern CA."
Good for them. People who look like Obama's son need to learn that they can't just take whatever they want whenever they want from people who worked hard for it. White liberals may pull their pants down and bend over whenever brown people throw a temper tantrum, but there are plenty of us here who are made of sterner stuff.
My prediction: gun control will be limited to reduced capacity magazines and a better(?) database. Maybe a restriction for people on psychiatric meds. Every Democrat-voting vibrant I know with a steady paycheck is packing. They are at too much risk for shakedowns in their neighborhoods.
"It is not widely known that one of the finest gun collections on the West Coast is Steven Spielberg's. He shoots, but very privately," wrote Charlton Heston, in his book "In the Arena." Heston also wrote, "In Hollywood there are more gun owners in the closet than homosexuals."
John Milius has said that during the "Can't We All Get Along" Riot of 1992, he was contacted by a number of liberal acquaintances who wondered if he might have a spare gun or two they could borrow. Perhaps after that those folks decided to gun themselves up.
Michael Mann, whose otherwise mediocre films feature good gun-handling and realistic, well-choreographed gunfights, is a gun enthusiast who used to compete in the Southwest Combat Pistol League.
Here is an article on celebrities who own guns.Here is another.
The recent killings in Orange Cuounty by Syad. Most of the white people killed might have voted Republican and they didn't have guns which disproves liberal myth.
Forgive me for being off topic, but I wondered whether this court news is anything to do with mass immigration, or maybe dysgenics: from the Telegraph -
"The jury reached deadlock after sending the judge three separate notes containing 10 questions which suggested they were “struggling” with the most “basic concept” of trial by jury. ....
Mr Justice Sweeney said he had “never come across” anything like the jury’s response in nearly 30 years of working in criminal courts."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21469524
Murder half a millions pigs a day but take pride in saving a disabled piglet. Funny world we live in.
Yes, more heat than light. Definitely.
Do LA cops really do that? I imagine that they'd be...you know....securing a perimeter, contolling the situation, conducting force protection operations.....that sort of thing.
Most likely, they'd be hightailed off to see about their own homes and families.
Whatever their other faults the LAPD are not the NOPD. Or are their personnel more vibrant than I realized?
O/T but Londoners aren't allowed to pack heat. Is that one of the causes of Why have the white British left London?
According to the BBC this is a story of success.
Yay!!! Hurrah!!!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21511904
The commentators aren't buying it.
The gun grabbers always go for semi-automatic rifles with detachable magazines first. I.e., the most powerful guns readily available. These weapons are overwhelmingly the domain of white, rural, law-abiding Americans. They are used in fewer murders each year than knives. All murders using rifles of any kind only total up to some 600-odd deaths a year (IIRC).
Meanwhile, the overwhelming bulk of the murders are committed by black, urban criminals, using handguns. But the gun-grabbers use these crimes (folded into the over all "gun crime" stats, of course, not broken out) to go after semi-auto rifles. They haven't even talked about grabbing handguns.
I think that's because handguns are the weapon of choice for law-abiding urban dwellers. They go after semi-auto rifles because they don't need them, and because white, rural, law-abiding Americans love them and own lots of them. Banning or restricting them will have no effect at all on the skinnies bumping one another off left and right in America's cities. But it will piss off red-staters, and seriously curtail their firepower, something urban blue-staters find disconcerting and menacing.
Guns for me but not for thee is perfectly consistent with the idea of liberalism/leftism as merely a new aristocracy. Only suckers believed that it was anything else than a scam, leftism that is, and restricting arms to only aristocrats (however that is defined) is pretty much feudalism 101.
I suppose it was time for Whiskey and me to agree again.
On the other hand, Jews are pretty open about the fact that they're about as monolithic as humans get in their support for gun control. There were a couple of articles recently in the Jewish press about it (the funny part for me was the comments, where "conservative" Jews gave their tribe a pass on its gun-grabbing agenda). Not that it's hard to notice the names attached to the bills in Congress at the moment. Lautenberg and Feinstein ain't exactly old Viking surnames.
****
I think the creepiest thing in all of this is how the feds are buying up all the ammo. They take our tax dollars and use them to buy up all the ammo. Seems like the sort of thing Lenin would have cooked up.
I thought the same thing when I lived there, that a lot of Californians had a split personality about guns. The closest firing range to me was in Burbank, right across from the Cosco and not too far from the TV studios. It was very common to see guys with Pink Pistols t-shirts in West Hollywood while grocery shopping. There are also lots of gun stores and very nice outdoor tactical firing ranges in Southern California. There seems to be a disconnect between a widespread, if subtle, appreciation for firearms and the anti-gun legislation pushed by state representatives (the seven round magazine limit was a real drag).
guns for me but not for thee.
anybody who knows a few things about real guns, and watched joe biden's comments on guns, knows the democrats "in charge" of this issue at the national level, have no idea at all what they're talking about.
and i don't mean the usual case of "Oh these liberals don't know what they're talking about." i mean they are dangerously wrong. like, a blind man driving your car wrong. somebody who can't even do it and literally doesn't know what they're doing, trying to drive on the wrong side of the road. that kind of wrong.
forget obama holding the shotgun wrong in his staged photo. you can tell biden has no idea what he's talking about just by hearing him speak. he says things which are the equivalent of "first of all, in america, we drive on the left side of the road".
joe actually advised americans to break the law. fire warning shots? warning shots are illegal in most states. what goes up must come down. you NEVER fire randomly into space. you might hit something you didn't mean to hit. any regular shooter knows this. check your background. always know your target. when you practice fire into a backstop.
take a double barrel shotgun and fire 2 shots before the fight even starts? so now you want to empty your weapon before you might even need it? so you want to turn your shotgun into a club?
i won't go other reasons he was wildly, dangerously wrong, just on the shotgun thing alone. suffice to say joe biden is shockingly stupid. an absolute moron.
liberals are proudly anti-gun and never touch them, so why do they suddenly see themselves as experts on something which they proudly know nothing about? they are very vocal about hating guns and never touching them, then all of a sudden they're certified firearms instructors? it would be no different than stevie wonder advising professional race car drivers on how to do it right.
heck, it's like my mom, who hates football and tries to avoid watching it as much as possible, suddenly becoming jim nantz when she does get trapped into watching it at family get togethers.
"Mom, come on, you openly hate football and are proud you have no idea what's going on with the NFL. You don't know what's happening in this game. You don't even know which team has the ball!"
"YES I DO. I DO know what I'm talking about. Now which is the team in white again?"
A very interesting piece but it begs the question, why don't we know who have all those 500 CCWs in LA County? Aren't these public records?
The pro-second amendment forces really need to expose the hypocrisy involved in the preferential treatment in the issuance of CCWs.
Same with New York City, where Mayor Bloomberg is positioning himself as the go-to guy for gun control advocacy. It would be interesting to know who Bloomberg has given concealed carry permits to. You figure if Derek Jeter calls up and says, "Hey, Mike, I just got Minka a million dollar necklace and I'd feel better about her wearing it when we're out late if I was packing," Bloomberg gives the Yankee team captain a lecture on gun control?
Nah ...
Sean Penn's Marin county (California) CCW and his stolen guns:
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Actor-s-wheels-boosted-Sean-Penn-s-muscle-car-2623017.php
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/How-Sean-Penn-got-gun-permit-2651756.php
The LA county sheriff is actually tough to get a CCW permit from. The list is linked from here:
http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2013/02/concealed_weapons_permits_los_angeles_county.php
In California CCW permits are typically issued by the county sheriff, but they can be approved by a city police chief. It seems that in LA the route to a CCW is to go to the city police departments--maybe LAPD or one of the cities down in Orange County. Either that or have a residence in one of the friendlier CCW counties, like Kern.
but given your fairly high public profile you do have reasonable security fears that a non-celebrity wouldn't have.
Who was the last celebrity murdered by the public or even had to defend themselves with a firearm? How many celebrity victims are there a year versus an average person? The only justification that celebrity have for a concealed carry license is the same justification everyone else has.
Female stars have trouble with stalkers. Jody Foster being a famous example.
Even David Letterman had trouble with a lady who kept breaking into his house to bask in his nearness.
I have a limo
Ride in the back
I lock the doors
In case I'm attacked
-- Joe Walsh
"O/T but Londoners aren't allowed to pack heat. Is that one of the causes of Why have the white British left London?"
The filthy BBC knows exactly why it's happening. They've been censoring the news on the causes for decades.
"Svigor said...
But the gun-grabbers use these crimes (folded into the over all "gun crime" stats, of course, not broken out) to go after semi-auto rifles. They haven't even talked about grabbing handguns."
Yes they have. That is very much their intent. Feinstein's bill does not specifically exempt semi-automatic handguns. And the most common kinds of such handguns accept, as standard issue, magazines with more than 10 rounds. Actually, just about any pistol can accept an extended magazine, so even 6+1 and 7+1 pocket pistols might qualify. Under the loathsome and unconstitutional law proposed by that loathsome Senator, common garden-variety pistols could be reclassed as "assault weapons" by bureaucratic rule-making, and hence require registration. You would have to be fingerprinted, have your name put down on some kind of federal official suspects list, and receive permission from the local sherrif of police chief to even have one - not to carry one concealed, mind you - but just to own one. And, of course, with registration in hand, confiscation would follow, the next time the wheel turns and the ratchet clicks.
Make no mistake - the aim of current gun control measures is to completely disarm us.
There's no question that the eventual goal is total personal disarmament (except for connected elites, of course). But it's still revealing that the guns they're officially going after are semi-auto rifles, the type almost never used in crimes, while they say little about handguns. It's not hard to see the reason: the former are the guns of rural, traditional whites, while the latter are preferred by criminals and urbanites wishing quietly to defend themselves from the dangers their policies have brought to their neighborhoods.
It doesn't seem to me it was always this way. In the 80s and 90s, I remember lots of talk about evil handguns. Remember the gun buy-back and trade-in programs? That was all about handguns. TV sitcoms did Very Special Episodes about kids sneaking handguns into schools. When people ranted about kids killing themselves playing with their dads' guns, those were handguns (a kid couldn't accidentally shoot himself with a long gun, after all).
Seems like it took a while for people to realize that railing against handguns might look a teensy bit racist, so it's safer to complain about Uncle Jed's duck guns instead, and then deal with handguns in the fine print.
I doubt this comment will get approved, but why is there such a staggering difference in gun-related deaths, intentional and accidental, between the US and other industrialized nations? It can't all be because of the coloreds.
I doubt this comment will get approved, but why is there such a staggering difference in gun-related deaths, intentional and accidental, between the US and other industrialized nations? It can't all be because of the coloreds.
1. Why the statistically deceptive language of "gun violence" and "gun-related deaths" from gun-grabbers? Why is "gun violence" any worse than violence in general? Why is a "gun-related death" any worse than another kind of death?
2. I thought libs were into personal choice, including suicide; why do they use suicide by gun to pursue their gun-grabbing agenda? Isn't it breathtakingly dishonest to use the "gun-related deaths" of gun suicides as statistics in this debate? This is why I don't like language like "gun-related deaths." Also, I prefer that suicides do it with their guns, in their own homes, to having them find the nearest tall building and endanger people on the sidewalk below.
3. Do you know how white American rates of violence stack up against white western European rates of violence? As far as I can tell, they're pretty close, even for countries with strict gun control like England. Obviously, the implement of choice will be different in such countries, which is why I think "gun crime" and "gun deaths" is such a dishonest way to frame the issue.
I think it largely is because of the coloreds. The American population is 12.2% black, but they commit half or more of the murders.
In California CCW permits are typically issued by the county sheriff, but they can be approved by a city police chief. It seems that in LA the route to a CCW is to go to the city police departments--maybe LAPD or one of the cities down in Orange County. Either that or have a residence in one of the friendlier CCW counties, like Kern.
This recalls the source of my "green license theory" of car insurance. When I was stationed in NYC in the late '70s, I couldn't help but notice all the expensive sports cars around Manhattan with Vermont plates. After the service I went to college on the Plains, and made many transfers at Chicago on breaks. And yes, all the expensive sports cars in or near the Loop had Iowa plates! I just knew that if I went to SF or LA, the same models would sport Colorado tabs.
CCW permits are trickier, though. E.g., in New York an upstate county's easy-to-get permit is (or was) valid throughout the state-- except in the City, where you needed it the most.
By the way, "county sheriff" is redundant. And repetitive as well.
staggering difference in gun-related deaths
Accidental deaths from guns are quite low--a few hundred a year in a nation of over 300M.
The US is somewhat more violent than other nations, and it's not because of guns. The US murder rate for hands and fists is higher than other nations, too.
But about half the murders in the US are committed by blacks. The white murder rate includes Hispanics, and they're a pretty violent lot, too.
The US murder rate is about 5/100K. Divide that by two and you're down to about 2.5/100K. France is around 1/100K, UK at around 1.2/100K. So it's not really a huge difference.
"It can't all be because of the coloreds".
Uh, actually, yes it can.
"Anonymous said...
I doubt this comment will get approved, but why is there such a staggering difference in gun-related deaths, intentional and accidental, between the US and other industrialized nations? It can't all be because of the coloreds."
Yes, it can be, and it is.
First of all, why "gun-related" deaths. Why is the means of death important? Is it better that murder victims should have been hacked to death with machetes, rather than being shot? Or garroted with knotted ropes? Or bludgeoned with lead pipes in the drawing room by Colorel Mustard?
Secondly, if you look at murder rates by race, the white murder rate in the US is not very different from that of other developed nations. The murder rates in the whitest states in the US - Iowa, Wyoming, Vermont, etc., are as low as, or lower than, western European nations.
What is truly remarkable is how low the murder rate in the US is, given the staggering number of guns in circulation.
Crime rates have virtually nothing to do with the quantity of guns. They have everything to do with the quality of people.
Really, assuming non-whites commit half the murders, we're still looking at twice the murder rate of many other industrialized countries. I wonder how many of you internet tough-guys actually own guns or know how to shoot.
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