Last Call For Dispatches From Gunmerica

Open, permitless carry of firearms has been legal in Texas for over a year now, and the results are pretty scary. Violent crime and shootings are up, and homicide deaths have exploded.

Tony Earls hung his head before a row of television cameras, staring down, his life upended. Days before, Mr. Earls had pulled out his handgun and opened fire, hoping to strike a man who had just robbed him and his wife at an A.T.M. in Houston.

Instead, he struck Arlene Alvarez, a 9-year-old girl seated in a passing pickup, killing her.

“Is Mr. Earls licensed to carry?” a reporter asked during the February news conference, in which his lawyer spoke for him.

He didn’t need one, the lawyer replied. “Everything about that situation, we believe and contend, was justified under Texas law.” A grand jury later agreed, declining to indict Mr. Earls for any crime.

The shooting was part of what many sheriffs, police leaders and district attorneys in urban areas of Texas say has been an increase in people carrying weapons and in spur-of-the-moment gunfire in the year since the state began allowing most adults 21 or over to carry a handgun without a license.

At the same time, mainly in rural counties, other sheriffs said they had seen little change, and proponents of gun rights said more people lawfully carrying guns could be part of why shootings have declined in some parts of the state.

Far from an outlier, Texas, with its new law, joined what has been an expanding effort to remove nearly all restrictions on carrying handguns. When Alabama’s “permitless carry” law goes into effect in January, half of the states in the nation, from Maine to Arizona, will not require a license to carry a handgun.

The state-by-state legislative push has coincided with a federal judiciary that has increasingly ruled in favor of carrying guns and against state efforts to regulate them.

But Texas is the most populous state to do away with handgun permit requirements. Five of the nation’s 15 biggest cities are in Texas, making the permitless approach to handguns a new fact of life in urban areas to an extent not seen in other states.

In the border town of Eagle Pass, drunken arguments have flared into shootings. In El Paso, revelers who legally bring their guns to parties have opened fire to stop fights. In and around Houston, prosecutors have received a growing stream of cases involving guns brandished or fired over parking spots, bad driving, loud music and love triangles.

“It seems like now there’s been a tipping point where just everybody is armed,” said Sheriff Ed Gonzalez of Harris County, which includes Houston.

No statewide shooting statistics have been released since the law went into effect last September. After a particularly violent 2021 in many parts of the state, the picture of crime in Texas has been mixed this year, with homicides and assaults up in some places and down in others.

But what has been clear is that far fewer people are getting new licenses for handguns even as many in law enforcement say the number of guns they encounter on the street has been increasing.

Big city police departments and major law enforcement groups opposed the new handgun law when it came before the State Legislature last spring, worried in part about the loss of training requirements necessary for a permit and more dangers for officers.

But gun rights proponents prevailed in the Republican-dominated Capitol, arguing that Texans should not need the state’s permission to exercise their Second Amendment rights.

Recent debates over gun laws in Texas have not been limited to handgun licensing. After the elementary school shooting in Uvalde, gun control advocates have pushed to raise the age to purchase an AR-15-style rifle. And after the Supreme Court struck down New York’s restrictive licensing program, a federal court in Texas found that a state law barring adults under 21 from carrying a handgun was unconstitutional. Gov. Greg Abbott has suggested he agreed, even as the Texas Department of Public Safety, which oversees the state police, is appealing.

 

As the article says, 24 US states now offer open, permitless carry, with Alabama joining those states in January. America is awash in firearms, with more guns than people in the US. Everyone is getting armed, because everyone else is getting armed.

 

It's insanity. The rest of the world must think we're mad, and that we constitute a threat to them. 

At some point, the rest of the planet is going to do something about us, if only for their own survival.

 

Ridin' With Biden, Con't

No, we're not in a recession and we really haven't been. You have Biden mistaken for Trump when we lost 20 million jobs.

 

The U.S. economy grew at a 2.6% annual rate from July through September, snapping two straight quarters of contraction and overcoming high inflation and interest rates just as voting begins in midterm elections in which the economy’s health has emerged as a paramount issue.

Thursday’s better-than-expected estimate from the Commerce Department showed that the nation’s gross domestic product — the broadest gauge of economic output — grew in the third quarter after having shrunk in the first half of 2022. Stronger exports and consumer spending, backed by a healthy job market, helped restore growth to the world’s biggest economy at a time when worries about a possible recession are rising.

Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70% of U.S. economic activity, expanded at a 1.4% annual pace in the July-September quarter, down from a 2% rate from April through June. Last quarter’s growth got a major boost from exports, which shot up at an annual pace of 14.4%. Government spending also helped: It rose at a 2.4% annual pace, the first such increase since early last year, with sharply higher defense spending leading the way.

 

That's the good news. The not as good news:

Housing investment, though, plunged at a 26% annual pace, hammered by surging mortgage rates as the Federal Reserve aggressively raises borrowing costs to combat chronic inflation. It was the sixth straight quarterly drop in residential investment.

Overall, the outlook for the overall economy has darkened. The Fed has raised interest rates five times this year and is set to do so again next week and in December. Chair Jerome Powell has warned that the Fed’s hikes will bring “pain” in the form of higher unemployment and possibly a recession.

“Looking ahead, risks are to the downside, to consumption in particular, as households continue to face challenges from high prices and likely slower job growth going forward,” Rubeela Farooqi, chief U.S. economist at High Frequency Economics, wrote in a research note.

With inflation still near a 40-year high, steady price spikes have been pressuring households across the country. At the same time, rising loan rates have derailed the housing market and are likely to inflict broader damage over time. The outlook for the world economy, too, grows bleaker the longer that Russia’s war against Ukraine drags on.

The latest GDP report comes as Americans, worried about inflation and the risk of a recession, have begun to vote in elections that will determine whether President Joe Biden’s Democratic Party retains control of Congress. Inflation has become a signature issue for Republican attacks on the Democrats’ stewardship of the economy.

Economists noted that the third-quarter gain in GDP can be traced entirely to the surge in exports, which added 2.7 percentage points to the economy’s expansion. Export growth will be difficult to sustain as the global economy weakens and a strong U.S. dollar makes American products pricier in foreign markets.

 

The problem is a real recession, the job-losing and market-crashing kind, is still a very real possibility, and given the rapid rise in interest rates by Jerome Powell and the Fed, that may only be a matter of time.  Luckily, we're nearing the point where inflation is dropping.

Thursday’s report offered some encouraging news on inflation. A price index in the GDP data rose at a 4.1% annual rate from July through September, down from 9% in the April-June period — less than economists had expected and the smallest increase since the final three months of 2020. That figure could raise hopes that the Fed might decide it can soon slow its rate hikes.

 

I hope that this continues. More rate hikes will eventually crash the economy, that's a guarantee.

Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, Con't

Arizona Democratic Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs's office was broken into and ransacked this week as police continue to search for the burglar.

The Phoenix campaign headquarters of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Katie Hobbs was burglarized earlier this week, Phoenix police and a campaign official said Wednesday.

Police responded to a commercial burglary call at the office in midtown Phoenix on Tuesday afternoon.

"Information was learned that items were taken from the property sometime during the night," a police statement said. "No suspects have been identified. This is still an active investigation with detectives checking all security cameras in attempts to identify and locate the subject involved."

The campaign released photographs of a person it said was identified as the suspect by the Phoenix Police Department after police reviewed the surveillance footage. The images show a younger man wearing shorts, a short-sleeved T-shirt and a backpack.

The Phoenix Police Department said it "has not released any images or video relating to this investigation and cannot confirm any suspects or investigative leads."

Nicole DeMont, campaign manager for Hobbs, said, "We continue to cooperate with law enforcement as they investigate, and we are thankful to the men and women of the Phoenix Police Department for their work to keep us safe."

“Secretary Hobbs and her staff have faced hundreds of death threats and threats of violence over the course of this campaign. Throughout this race, we have been clear that the safety of our staff and of the secretary is our No. 1 priority."

No one was at the office at the time of the break-in and several items were taken, said Sarah Robinson, spokeswoman for the Hobbs campaign.

 

The first person I'd question is Hobbs's Republican opponent in next month's election for Governor, election denier, conspiracy theorist, and nutjob Kari Lake, whose first act as the state's chief executive she says will be to "declare Arizona under invasion" by migrant workers and to militarize the border, and besides, she won't accept a loss anyway.

This stinks to high heaven.