It’s hard to write a tribute to someone you never met, but if you shoot, you should know his name, and find the world a slightly smaller, duller place without him. Local news report here.

…pictures of guns are too dangerous to allow on a plane.

Well, maybe if they could actually hit the target at least once, instead of managing to fill a suburban neighborhood with bullet holes. Yes, officer, when you spray ammo at a fleeing suspect, the bullets that miss him actually hit something else. Remember that rule about knowing what’s behind your target? Didn’t think so.

The state of California insists that rattlesnakes have a right to self-defense. What a pity they don’t extend that same right to law-abiding citizens. Perhaps we’re not considered “important members of the community”. (via lgf, etc)

…shame none of the witnesses were, either: man beheaded with axe on London street.

Sadly, it sounds like the witnesses weren’t the sort who’d have done anything even if they’d had the means. At least half a dozen people stood there and watched for several minutes, and all they did was politely ask him to stop chopping up his victim.

The government of the city of San Francisco wants to ban all private possession of handguns. Oddly, Fark tagged it as Misc. I’d have gone with Asinine or Dumbass, myself.

Money quote:

Barnes said the initiative is a response to San Francisco's skyrocketing homicide rate, as well as other social ills.

Yes, their response to a “skyrocketing homicide rate” is to make sure that only people who disobey the law have guns. And government agents, of course. This really shouldn’t come as a surprise to the four remaining gun owners in SF, of course; the city hounded the gun-shop owners out years ago, and if there’s one thing they can’t stand in San Francisco, it’s people who don’t conform.

Just think, if it weren’t for their tough gun control laws, Canadian criminals would have access to dangerous weapons. Oh, wait:

Inside the van, police found 15 guns and as much as 135 kilograms of explosives. The firearms included automatic weapons, semi-automatic machine guns and handguns.

Extra credit to the ignorant or malicious reporter who wrote the absurd phrase “semi-automatic machine guns”.

Note that they don’t say why they think the van belonged to an organized crime group rather than, say, terrorists. It’s not like it was parked next to embassies or anything like that.

Oh, wait.

Okay, this story claims, without providing any of the details, that “safe gun storage” laws cut the teen suicide rates since their adoption in 1989. That is, the news report claims this, while the research paper (published in JAMA) simply says they may have cut suicide rates.

But by how much? First, they mention 300 less suicides between 1989 and 2001 for the 14-17 age group, and then they segue into a discussion of the number of suicides in the 14-20 age group. Sloppy reading on the reporter’s part, or is this a reflection of the actual research? And where are the rates that are mentioned in the headline? All I see are raw numbers.

Looking for real data, I found that the with-gun suicide rate for teens age 14-19 (and for other groups) has been declining for a while, but it peaked in 1994, five years after the “safe storage” laws in question. Interestingly enough, suffocation seems to be taking up the slack, although it’s not enough to stop the overall decline. It is enough to possibly account for the “prevented” with-gun suicides…