Date: Fri, 19 Nov 1999 14:32:48 EST
From: [email protected] (Neal Knox)

Nov. 19 update — The House passed the budget last night, and
thinks — and hopes — that it has completed its work for the year.
No gun provisions were included.

The Senate is still wrangling and could even come back after
Thanksgiving. The chances of inserting a gun amendment are remote.

———–

The Justice Department has reluctantly agreed to a test to
determine how an infrared camera sees gunfire — like the apparent
gun flashes on the FLIR tape from Waco — but they say that was a
one-of-a-kind camera that has since been upgraded.

So we’ll never know, they say, what those flashes are. The Justice
folks first said they were reflections from broken glass. Dallas Morning
News Reporter Lee Hancock says they’re now telling reporters that
“the white blips of light were inexplicable electronic ‘anomalies’
whose source will probably never be identified.”

Lee also reports that FBI has acknowledged that the sniper
rifles have been rebarreled and otherwise reworked since 1993,
which is why I’ve been saying they can never be matched to the
cases found in Lon Horiuchi’s sniper position.

FBI says they were fired by BATF snipers during the original
raid. Okay, let’s look at BATF’s .308 rifles. They won’t match
either. Maybe those Federal Match cases got there by
immaculate conception.

————

Today’s newspapers are trumpeting a new CDC study that says
gun deaths, including homicides, suicides and accidents, are all
down since 1993 — which just happens to coincide with Clinton’s
presidency. The reason, they say are tighter gun laws, better
police work, gun safety training, the better economy, the resolution
of drug wars, etc., etc.

But the decline began two years before Clinton’s new gun laws
went into effect. And there’s no hint that the decline in crime just
might have something to do with the fact that record numbers of
criminals are in prison, where they can’t prey on the public.

Violent crime peaked in 1991. In the previous five years the
number of felony convicts in custody had increased by 50 percent
– from 504,000 in 1985 to 760,000 in 1991 (according to Justice
Department statistics).

Since then, the prison population has gone up another 50
percent — to 1,130,000 — by 1997 (the last year a prisoner count
is available).

And what has happened to the crime rate?

According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports, the violent crime
rate per 100,000 is down 25 percent

Homicide is down 36 percent.

Rape is down 20 percent.

And robbery — the most feared crime, the crime most often
committed by strangers — is down a whopping 39.4 percent.

Putting criminals behind bars cuts the crime rate — including
gun crimes.

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