Hasta La Gadget!

How do we explain that the number of guns owned by Americans keeps increasing at a rather remarkable rate, yet violent gun crimes have been fairly level since 2000 even though gun sales exploded between 2008 and 2016? You would think that, given the ease with which a gun can be used in a violent way (as opposed to a knife or other types of weapons), that the more guns we have floating around, the more violent crime would occur.  But that has not been the case. Since 2008, arrests for murder have decreased by nearly 20 percent. Meanwhile, over the same period, more than 75 million guns were added to the civilian arsenal, a doubling of the number added during the administration of George W. Bush. So what gives?

The pro-gun gang will tell you that it’s very simple, namely, that since more people are armed, the bad guys are afraid to commit crimes. This idea that more guns = less crime has been a favorite slogan of the gun industry since John Lott published a book with the same title back in 1998. But notwithstanding the book’s popularity, it suffers from some serious flaws, not the least of which is the difficulty in using regression analysis (comparing one trend to another) to explain any type of behavior which changes over time.

There is a whole literature on why violent crime declined after 1994, and when it comes to a definitive answer, the jury is still out. The leading scholar in this regard is Franklin Zimring, Professor of Law at Berkeley, who has published two books on the great crime decline, neither of which finds that an increase in gun ownership had anything to do with crime rates at all. Professor Zimring is one of our most prolific scholars on gun violence, having published pioneering articles beginning in 1968.  Now he’s at it again, with a new article, “Firearms and Violence in American Law,” which will shortly appear in an academic journal but right now can be downloaded here.  

The article touches on just about every important current debate on gun violence, but it makes a significant breakthrough when the author talks about the apparent contradiction between the increase in gun ownership and the decrease in violent crime. What he points to are surveys that show a continued decline in household firearms ownership while, at the same time, an increase in the average number of guns found in gun-owning homes. He cites a  recent Harvard-Northeastern Study which found that no more than 3 percent of the American population may own half of all the civilian guns.

Zimring refers to the growth of the civilian gun arsenal as the ‘incidence’ of gun ownership, but characterizes the concentration of guns in relatively fewer hands as the ‘prevalence’ of gun ownership – two very different things. What makes them different is that the incidence of guns may be a decisive factor in the number of guns stolen or moved in secondary transfers (legal or not), but the prevalence of guns would increase the possibility that a gun might be used in suicides, domestic disputes or other violent acts.

He further argues that the difference between gun incidence and gun prevalence may explain the apparent contradiction between the enormous increase in the size of the civilian arsenal as opposed to the relative stability of the proportion of violence involving guns: “If the increase in guns hasn’t been accompanied by an increase in rates of personal or household ownership, it should not be expected to produce a major increase in the proportion of violence that involves gun use.”

Frank Zimring’s provocative thesis poses a challenge to the gun-sense community, because crafting a strategy for reducing the number of guns held in gun-owning households is much different than simply trying to limit the overall number of guns. But nobody ever said that reducing gun violence in a country with 300 million privately-owned guns would be an easy thing to do.

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An Australian mom and blogger got real about sex during pregnancy with a hilariously honest Facebook post.

On Monday, Mel Watts aka The Modern Mumma posted a photo of her pregnant self, along with a caption about her experience with intimacy while expecting.  

”You know there are some women who thrive when they’re pregnant,” she wrote. “They love a bit of loving from the big D and then there’s people like me.”

Though the mom said she tried to adopt a sexual energy and similarly “thrive” during her pregnancy, she didn’t feel like the “best sex goddess ever” as she’d hoped she would.

“Well here I am. Beach whaled AF. Sweaty. Wearing a liner ― not because I’m that kind of wet,” Watts wrote. “I have a rash on my stomach from stretching skin. My breasts are weapons they’ll knock anyone out. Heavy breathing. My last shaving job was a touch a feel job.”

She continued, however, with a sweet tribute to her husband. “I’m filled with 10 fingers, 10 toes and all sorts of body parts that stick out. And he’d still happily call me beautiful and sexy,” she wrote.

In spite of the leaking, sweating, moaning and groaning, Watts said her husband still desires her.  

“Maybe he’s one of those people that like this kinda situation? Or maybe he is just an amazing, caring doting and a terrible liar partner of an over emotional stretched pregnant wife,” she concluded. “Either way ― I’ll keep him.”

Watts lives in New South Wales with her husband and three children. She’s currently pregnant with her fourth child, due in June.

Her Facebook post received over 3,000 likes. “I have had many people agreeing with me and feeling the same way I do,” she told The Huffington Post.

Indeed, the comments section is full of positive responses from fellow parents.

“I LOVE your honest sincerity!!” wrote one mom. “It’s quite refreshing to hear another momma out there saying the same things I do!”

H/T POPSUGAR 

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To mark the upcoming tax deadline on Wednesday’s “Late Show,” host Stephen Colbert went undercover as an H&R Block tax preparer who isn’t afraid to use the personal touch. He offers clients an H&R Block of cheese, beer and even a hug.

Skip to the 1:42 mark for the start of the prank.

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— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

“Say goodbye, my loves,” whispered Abdel Hameed Alyousef, clinging the corpses of his infant children, Ahmed and Aya, tightly to his chest for the last time. “Say goodbye.”

So consumed by grief that he appeared barely able to stand, the heartbroken father then buried his 9-month-old twins with his own hands ― along with his deceased siblings and wife, Dalal, at a mass grave site in Syria.

“Dalal, take care of my children,” he sobbed over her tombstone. “I couldn’t save anyone. They’re all dead now.”

Alyousef lost 22 family members this week, The Associated Press reports, after warplanes dropped toxic gas over their town of Khan Sheikhoun in rebel-held Idlib early Tuesday morning, in an attack that may be considered a war crime. Later that day, airstrikes decimated a nearby hospital where victims were receiving treatment. 

While it denies responsibility, the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad is widely believed to be behind the massacre that has so far killed more than 70 civilians, including dozens of children.

“I helped a few people on my way to see my family,” Alyousef said, recalling Tuesday’s tragedy in an interview. “People were falling down on the road, and I didn’t know the reason. We could smell something, but didn’t know it would be this harsh. Then people started to foam at the mouth.” 

The World Health Organization has concluded that a banned nerve agent was likely deployed, stirring memories of the sarin gas bombardment in 2013 that left as many as 1,700 people dead in a suburb of Damascus. Western governments and human rights observers also claimed the Assad regime was responsible for that attack.

U.S. President Donald Trump added his condemnation to a chorus of world leaders’ on Wednesday, saying such “heinous actions by the Assad regime” cannot be tolerated. His administration blamed the “weakness” of former President Barack Obama in part for the assault, and is reportedly considering retaliatory options against perpetrators in Syria at this time.

All too familiar with Syria’s continued use of chemical warfare against civilians, activists are again warning that little will change without enforced consequences from global powers. United Nations Security Council resolutions seeking accountability for Syrian atrocities have repeatedly been vetoed by Russia and China.

“These attacks will continue as long as there is no justice and accountability,” Elise Baker, lead Syria researcher for Physicians for Human Rights, told The Huffington Post in an interview this week. “We’re now into the seventh year of this conflict, and there has been no credible international response to the violations we’ve seen day after day.”

More than half of Syria’s population has now been killed, wounded or displaced by the nation’s raging war, with no resolution in sight. Some 13.5 million people, including 5.8 million children, are currently in need of aid.

Thirteen-year-old Mazin Yusif survived the gassing on Tuesday, and like Alyousef, he too witnessed loved ones suffocate and die before his eyes. 

“I saw the explosion in front of my grandfather’s house,” the teen told CNN. “I ran to their house barefoot … then I became dizzy,” he said, adding that 19 members of his family are now dead.

Yusif’s 55-year-old grandmother, Aisha Al-Tilawi, was among the injured.

“Mazin was trying to wake up his grandfather,” she told the network from her hospital bed in neighboring Turkey, but he had died in the attack. “Entire families were killed.”

— This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

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