Pirate's Cove

Over in the House today, they passed two bills on guns. One, which I’ve mentioned before, simply extends background checks to almost every private transfer. No biggie there, but, hey, I’m sure criminals will comply, right? The other extends the waiting period up to 10 days for the the FBI to have to return the background check, which could be problematic. Regardless of how tame these are, and they were passed mostly on party line, they are simply steps to the real gun grabbing they want. Rather than the One Big Bill, gun grabbing by a 1,000 papercuts, with them saying, in short order (providing they even make it through the Senate), that they didn’t work, so, Something Else needs to be done. But, how do we know when data is being blocked?

California attorney general cuts off researchers’ access to gun violence data

For decades, America’s gun violence researchers fought an uphill battle against the National Rifle Association to obtain the data and funding they need to study the effects of US gun laws. But researchers in California say they are now facing a different, unexpected hurdle: the state’s outgoing Democratic attorney general.

Under Xavier Becerra, who has been nominated to serve as Joe Biden’s health secretary, California’s department of justice started to deny researchers access to firearms data used to evaluate a wide range of gun laws and policies.

The new data restrictions have put key projects at California’s state-funded gun violence research center in limbo, and locked Becerra into a bitter, bizarre public standoff with one of America’s most respected gun violence researchers.

California, which has much stricter gun laws than most American states, also has more detailed government data available, including records of individual handgun purchasers going back decades and statewide records about the restraining orders filed to temporarily bar at-risk people from owning or buying guns.

That’s interesting. I wonder why it’s being blocked?

But it’s precisely this more detailed personal information, including about gun purchasers, and subjects of gun violence restraining orders, that Becerra’s justice department is telling some researchers that it will not provide. The department is also attempting to formalize some of these policies, including in a proposed rulemaking under discussion this week that would limit researcher’s access to personal information about the subjects of gun violence restraining orders across the state.

The justice department has cited privacy concerns as a justification for the data restrictions, and has said it believes current California law does not permit the agency to release certain kinds of data to researchers.

Could that be it? Because giving up people’s private files seems like a big invasion of privacy

But Garen Wintemute, a professor at the University of California, Davis, and the director of California’s firearms violence research center, said some of the data the justice department is now denying researchers had been previously shared with them for decades, and other data is specifically mandated to be shared with the gun violence research center under California law.

So, why block it now? What is being hidden? Some are wondering if it will show that Becerra’s policies have not been successful, or California’s, for that matter. We can all speculate (I think it would show a failure of California gun restrictions and just who is shooting whom the most), but, you may see hardcore lefty gun grabbing groups, such as Brady United Against Gun Violence, Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, and the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, sue California and Becerra.

BTW

???? BREAKING ? House Democrats just REJECTED an amendment that would have required ICE to be notified if an illegal immigrant tries to buy a gun.

But they’re fine taking away the gun rights of law-abiding American citizens.

— Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) March 11, 2021