Want Fewer Mass Shootings? Then Repeal Victim Zones

I’m seeing a number of people responding to the school shooting last week by calling for more gun control.  I just want to point out that the public policy most likely to prevent massacres like this is, on the contrary, less gun control:

Let the law-abiding carry guns and protect themselves.

Why do you think these mass shootings are always in “gun-free zones” (i.e., victim zones)?  As Dan Mitchell suggests, posting a sign at the entrance calling it a “gun-free zone” is tantamount to posting a sign saying, “ATTENTION CRIMINALS: This is a defense-free crime zone.  All law-abiding persons have been disarmed for your convenience.”

Arts & Letters Saturday: ‘Brick’

This week’s work is the song “Brick” (1997), by Ben Folds Five.

Repeal the Federal Deduction for State Taxes

National Review’s editors explain a creative potential solution to the “fiscal cliff” impasse:  Eliminate the federal deduction for state and local taxes.  Currently people can deduct, on their federal income taxes, the money they pay in state and local taxes; in effect, this forces taxpayers in small-government states to subsidize the big-government schemes of other states.  National Review:

Arts & Letters Saturday: Will Vinton’s Claymation Christmas

This week’s work is Will Vinton’s Claymation Christmas (IMDB, Wikipedia, Amazon).  Will Vinton (official site, current projects, IMDB) apparently invented the term “claymation”, created the California Raisins, and was a producer of the television series The PJs.

‘For purposes of comparison, the total bill for flying the entire royal family (Queen, princes, dukes, the works) around the world for a year is £4.7 million — or about enough for two Obama vacations.’

Mark Steyn has some incisive observations about an aspect of big government that you’d think all Americans (including the side that consider “fairness” one of their highest values) could agree on.

In his recent book Presidential Perks Gone Royal, Robert Keith Gray, a former Eisenhower staffer, revealed that last year the U.S. presidency cost American taxpayers $1.4 billion. Over the same period, the entire royal family cost British taxpayers about $57 million. There’s nothing “royal” about the current level of “presidential perks”: The Obama family costs taxpayers more than every European royal house put together.

All Partisan Scorched Earth, All the Time

In the Washington Examiner, Conn Carroll has a good line:

It is going to be all partisan scorched earth all the time, again, for four more years.

Obama will have changed Washington. But for the worse.

Read the whole thing.  Further excerpts:

Liberals, including Obama, love to cite Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s, R-Ky., line that “the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” They claim it proves that Republicans were never willing to work with Obama from day one. But McConnell did not utter that line until October 2010, 22 months after Emanuel said, “F[   ] ’em.” Republicans were willing to work with Obama. He just wouldn’t let them.

Arts & Letters Saturday: Lame Duck Hunt

Small-government advocates Americans for Prosperity (about) have a new twist on an old game: Lame Duck Hunt, a play on Nintendo’s old Duck Hunt for the original NES and the current “lame duck” Congress, the time between the election, November 6th, and when those elected are seated, January 3rd.