Mystery Solved? CNBC Reporter drives Tesla up I-95 without incident

Thanks to a friendly neighbor up north, I think we can say the Model S runs great over long distances and in the cold, eh?

CNBC's Philip LeBeau reporter made the trek up I-95, in the cold, and documented the drive on CNBC's website. It's fun to watch, and you can see his report here.

Range anxiety? What range anxiety? Car works great!

The same trip that vexed, flustered and flummoxed New York Times Reporter John Broder was a lovely jaunt for LeBeau.

With 61 miles to go until the next charging station in Milford Connecticut, LeBeau is calm composed. "I know I have at least 110 miles of battery charge to go."

And charge away he does. "One thing stands out" says LeBeau. "This is a car that you can drive over long distances, but you've got to manage."

Yeah. Just like with a gas-powered car. It's an internal combustion engine, not a perpetual motion machine. And we, as a society, are much more like to have a gasoline shortage than an electricity shortage.

But the promise of LeBleu's story is about so much more than a spat about batteries. Tesla Motors offers the promise of fresh air. Fresh, clean air in and around our major cities and transportation hubs.

Think about. No more children wheezing as they clutch their asthma inhalers. A drastic reduction in the number of strokes and heart attacks among the elderly. No more smog.

But what of the doubters? The New York Times is still unapologetic for John Broder's Model S meltdown. Three days after CNBC broadcast LeBeau's trek from D.C. to Boston, the Grey Lady published an article about the firestorm Broder had created. "After a charging system test, a debate rages online," said the article, viewable here. It quoted various twitter feeds and blog postings. The article did not mention the Model S's flawless performance when objectively operated.

What can be said to doubters of this promising new technology? Perhaps I shall leave the last word on this matter to Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

"The good thing about science," he says, "is that it is true whether or not you believe it."

Thanks, Neil. Call me biased, but I'm going with science on this one.

Guess who's invited to dinner?

If you can't beat 'em, dine 'em.

That seems to be the philosophy of our nation's lobbyists, and it seems to be working. Even though poll after poll shows consistant majority support for higher marginal tax rates, a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, and yes, a ban on semi-automatic rifles with at least one military feature, these issues are unlikely to get out of committee.

What if I were to lobby the lobbyists? Maybe take one of them out to dinner. And guess who I've invited? That's right, Wayne LaPierre. This is a personal invite from me to Mr LaPierre.

Sir, Arthur Avenue has some of the finest restaurants in the world. Please take a break from K Street, just for one day, and I will take you to any Arthur Avenue restaurant of your choosing. 

C'mon, Wayne, what have you got to lose?

Seriously, take me up on it.

David Frum calls BS on John Lott

Okay, so this took some research on my part, but not much. I happened to catch sight of a blogpost from GOP strategist-turned CNN pundit David Frum. In his post that you can read here, Frum implores President Obama to use the power of the Presidency to tackle the gun industry with Surgeon General Reports and Senate Panels on gun violence. Weak tea? Perhaps, but Frum points to similar success in tackling the tobacco industry in years passed. Remember, doctors used to to recommend cigarettes as a means to prevent coughing.

Former Bush-advisor turned sensible person, David Frum.

But more importantly, Frum refutes Lott's oft-repeated and bogus statistic that individual gun ownership prevents 2.5 million crimes per year, which translates to one crime deterred every 13 seconds. Frum provides a link to an earlier blogpost, written in the wake of the Aurora move theater massacre, which you can read here.

Basically, Frum cuts right to the core of Lott's sloppy research. Frum lays out five obvious flaws. Some of them are as follows:

1. Lott published his 2.5 million prevented crimes statistic in 1995. In the last 18 years, crime has decreased by one third, yet Lott and his supporters maintain that the number of crimes prevented by "good guys with guns" has remained constant. How can this be?

2. Lott did conduct a singular study from the year preceding 1995 to produce his result. Instead, his statistic is culled from 13 polls of gun users who said they used a gun to prevent a crime. And by "used" they meant owner of said gun heard a rustle in the bushes, walked outside with a gun, only to find nothing. Maybe the shotgun scared away a burglar, or maybe the wind picked up and died down. Hardly definitive methodology.

 3. The FBI counted an average of 213 justifiable homicides in the United States from 2005 through 2010. If Lott's 2.5 million number is anywhere near accurate, that would mean that defensive gun use would only result in a fatality 0.0052 percent of the time.

Which leads to Frum's final point. When one combines the actual statistics on crime with Lott's 2.5 million number, we see merely the illusion of the gun enthusiast crowd. To them, a bad guy has a gun, a good guy pulls out his gun, and problem solved. In reality, most crimes are committed among acquaintances, not strangers. Sometimes one person has a gun, sometimes both parties a gun. In either case, the likelihood of a fatality is higher than if no person had a gun, period.

Nancy Lanza thought her guns would protect her. They didn't.

His final thoughts are telling, and cut to the core of the gun culture. I will reprint, rather than paraphrase:

. . . Most of the time, gun owners are frightening themselves irrationally. They have conjured in their own imaginations a much more terrifying environment than genuinely exists -- and they are living a fantasy about the security their guns will bestow. And to the extent that they are right -- to the extent that the American environment is indeed more dangerous than the Australian or Canadian or German or French environment -- the dangers gun owners face are traceable to the prevalence of the very guns from which they so tragically mistakenly expect to gain safety.

Tragedy indeed. CNN published Frum's wise words on July 30th, 2012, five and half months before yet another "law-abiding citizen," Nancy Lanza, was shot and killed with a gun she purchased for self-protection.

The case of the New York Times and the too-hot-to-trot Tesla.

It's fast. It's beautiful. It's Motor Trend's 2013 Car of the Year.

The Model S: Fast, fun, and I'm willing to bet, reliable.

Stylish. Sexy. Pretty. And Practical. 265 Miles on a single charge. Seats Five, emits zero. If I ever feel so inclined as to buy a car again, it may be a Tesla. Nearly every person privileged to get behind the wheel of one these things is blown away by its power, it's finesse, and its practicality.

Until last week's "review" about the Tesla Model S in the New York Times. In case you missed it, in"Stalled on the E.V. Highway," John Broder writes about freezing temperatures, misleading battery information, and a car that just doesn't wan't to drive very far or very long.

In less time than it takes a Tesla Roadster to go from zero to sixty miles an hour, Tesla CEO Elon Musk cried foul. Unbeknowst to Times reporter Broder, Tesla has a little black box that records the drivers every action. Needless to say, what Broder said didn't match up with the details on the black box.

So who are we left to believe in this fiasco? Is the New York Times, a publication not known for its automotive reporting, making a fair call here? Or is Elon Musk fabricating information to save his image before his public persona bursts into flames like rear-ended Ford Pinto?

As someone who has lived along the "Electric Highway" for the better part of three decades, I feel uniquely suited to offer my own analysis into the situation.

During Broder's odyssey, he writes that he is stranded with virtually zero battery power in Groton, Connecticut. He says he had intended to drive to New York City, with a stop in Milford, Connecticut to recharge.  What was Broder to do?"

Finally! A car faster than Wayne LaPierre's mouth!

"The Tesla people found an E.V. charging facility that Norwich Public Utilities had recently installed," wrote Broder. "Norwich . . . was only 11 miles away, though in the opposite direction from Milford."

Stop right there. I know my cardinal directions, and I know my Connecticut towns. Norwich is north of Groton; Milford, to Groton's west. North and west are not opposites. That should be obvious.

And Norwich isn't exactly an inconvenient detour from Groton. Norwich is a railroad and highway hub for Southeastern Connecticut, which is probably why Tesla chose to put a charging station in that town. Once the car was recharged, I-395 conveniently allows any driver from all points south and east to "backtrack," as I-395 forms the hypotenuse of a high-speed roadway right tringle. Instead of heading south back towards Groton, the driver is headed Southwest towards Milford, linking up with I-95 in East Lyme.

Dude, why do you have so much trouble driving your car?

I can understand being confused about adapting to a car with an all-electric fuel source and drivetrain, but confusing basic directions like east and west? 

But that's just me talking. Perhaps the best question comes from another New York Times reader, who wonders why Broder didn't have any problems with the Model S after re-charging in Milford.

Broder doesn't answer, but it appears that one of three responses could accurately describe the situation:

a) The Model S got better . . . by magic!
b) Broder learned how to better drive the Model S.
c) Broder had made his a point about his preconceived distaste for the Model S, and wanted to get home as quickly as possible. 

I'm guessing C. I'm going with countless reviews from other automotive sources, Elon Musk's previous success in the electronic industry, and my own, Connecticut born-and-raised common sense. It's a great car.

What do you think?

Mr. LaPierre, Please Leave Crazy Wayne's World.

Mr. LaPierre,

I couldn't help but notice your recent plea that all citizens must arm themselves due the the post-apocalyptic wrath incurred in New York City.

New York City. My home. The place where I work and live.

A place where I have never, ever, needed a gun.

Only someone who is jaded by urban legends would actually believe that the streets of New York are unsafe. And only somebody who has never visited Grand Central in the last ten years would be dumb enough to suggest that Mayor Bloomberg has kept National Guard out of the city because of a "gun prohibition." Maybe you should do yourself, and quite frankly, everybody a favor, leave K Street for a little while, and visit my neighborhood. The Park, the Zoo, Arthur Avenue. It's lovely here. I'll show what New York is really like. My treat. I'm usually free on evenings and weekends.

Thanks for your interest.

Sincerely,

~Kevin Miner

Shooting Ranges Believe in Gun Control

Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. Here at Atwell's Shooting Range in Painesville, Ohio, people don't want just anyone walking around with a loaded gun. Because, you know, that would just be dangerous, even if the person with a gun is a responsible, law-abiding citizen.

What if the treatment is worse than the symptom?

So the House Democrats unveiled their proposal to reform our nation's gun safety laws. As usual, the other side cried foul, save for some vague promise to provide better mental heath services.

We've seen this play out before. After a mass shooting rampage, the NRA and its cohorts express sympathy for the victims, express that guns are not the problem, and we as a nation must work on providing mental health for those who need it.

You'll take away my right to lose insurance from my cold, dead hands!

I have two problems with this single-minded, overly simplistic, vague solution to the scourge of mass shootings and everyday gun violence that plague America today.

First, when Barack Obama called on Congress to pass the Affordable Health Care Act, aka "Obamacare," these same assault-rifle wielding, bed-wetting, "Tea Party" types were carrying guns to health care rallies and calling for armed insurrection if insurance companies were to be forced to provide services that customers paid for. Oh, the humanity!

The second problem cuts right to the core of the gun culture. These "Second Amendment Enthusiasts" don't view treatment from mental health professionals as the solution to gun violence in America. No, they think that guns are the solution! That's right. If you hear voices in your head, don't see a psychiatrist ASAP, go to the shooting range and pop off a few rounds.

Think I'm being naive? I wish I were, but I'm going off of the information that we have concerning Adam Lanza at this time. This was reported by the Associated Press, and it cannot be repeated often enough:

"Friends told NBC's Today show on Monday that Lanza was a devoted mother, especially to her son Adam, and that shooting guns was simply a hobby for her. Russell Hanoman said Adam Lanza was 'clearly a troubled child.'

"Hanoman said Nancy Lanza told him she introduced guns to Adam as a way to teach him responsibility. 'Guns require a lot of respect, and she really tried to instill that responsibility within him, and he took to it. He loved being careful with them. He made it a source of pride.' Hanoman said."

In less time that it takes Wayne LaPierre to say,"But wait! That was an isolated incident!" We can examine the murder of ex-Navy Seal Chris Kyle. Yes, he did take Ray Routh, a person who described his own behavior as "psychotic," to a gun range. Yes, Kyle was trying help Routh with his mental ailments.

And if we do get mental health care, we're gonna shoot up the place!

And no, this isn't a recent development. Before Sandy Hook, and even before Columbine, high school sophomore Kip Kinkel murdered both his parents, drove to Thurston High School in Springfield Oregon, and unloaded 50 rounds of ammunition on his classmates, killing four and wounding another 24.

Kip's father had taken the boy off Prozac and had allowed his son to collect guns as a mature hobby. Seriously. Just a reminder that medication has more stopping power than a Glock.

Super Bowl Myth: Busted!

Didn't you hear? Today, Super Bowl Sunday is allegedly the biggest day for spousal abuse. In fact, more women are victims of spousal abuse on this day than on any other day of the year, with domestic violence centers reporting an increase of 40 percent.

Except problem: It isn't true. Not in the slightest. Snopes.com does an excellent job detailing the history of this whopper from its origins.

Must . . . Attack . . . Women??

It's also important to examine one tremendous flaw with this logic: In football, players are hitting other men. They are not hitting other women. If the object of a football game were to have the male players attack the female cheerleaders of the opposing team, this argument might have some merit. Then again, if a football game really were played with men routinely attacking women, the NFL would have a serious problem attracting fans. Most people would find such activity abhorrent.

If people really were that impressionable, wouldn't Call of Duty video games have sparked a massive increase in U.S. military enlistment? Behavioral psychologists know better.

And yet the fact the a statistic so absurd could gain such widespread currency for so long is a reminder that our brains are programmed to take mental shortcuts. As humans, we have cognitive process that is designed to filter out garbage and decide whether something makes sense based on what we already presume to be true. Psychologists call this confirmation bias.

Are we doomed, then to eternal suffering based on our own mental shortcomings? I think not. I think we can do better. In the last half century, the American public has endured a seismic shift on equal rights based on race, equal rights based on sexual orientation, and automotive safety. Can the tackling of today's gun culture be far behind?

John Lott's Myth Busted

Has a "good guy" with a gun ever lowered the crime rate? John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime, answers strongly in the affirmative. Ironically, the biggest critic to Lott's research, is Lott none other than Lott himself.

Before we delve into statistics, it is important to analyze the evidence pool from which Lott and other concealed carry proponents draw from. The story is always the same: a good guy had a gun, you just didn't hear it because the "liberal media" didn't tell you. Somehow, John Lott got his hands on the information.

One such story, told from the prospective of a "law-abiding" gun owner, is actually perfect at illustrating Lott's logical fallacies.

From the Hartford Courant's write-up of Tuesday's legislative hearing on the Newtown massacre:

Gun owner Andrew Starczewski of New Britain testified against the magazine restrictions by relating a harrowing story about thugs surrounding him and his fiance years ago in a Hartford parking garage.

"They were all young men, and all looked thuggish and dressed that way. … They had at least two bats and two guns, all deadly weapons. We would be overwhelmed by the thugs in seconds. Luckily I was armed, a very small handgun with only six rounds of minor caliber ammunition. … I would have given an eye, an arm, my teeth for a 15-round magazine," Starczewski said.

"When I released the safety of the gun … while it was still in my small-of-the-back holster … it made a click … and the lead guy did an about-face and waved off the other guys" and they ran off, Starczewski said later.

There are several problems with Starczweski's story. Let's start with the setting: a parking garage in Hartford, Connecticut. Fair enough. But according to Starczweski's account, there are several young men, dressed "thuggish," and carrying "at least two bats and two guns." 

Stop right there. First of all, how many thugs are there? Are there just two thugs, each armed with a bat and a gun? Or two thugs, one with two guns, the other with two bats? Four people, each with either a bat, or a gun? Perhaps there were so many people, that Starczweski was simply unable to estimate, solely because he was trained to look for danger, and saw only the bats and guns that were presumably pointed in his direction. And there must be a lot of people, because Starczweski says he would forfeit a limp for the use of a 15-round magazine.

In any case, how did a group of people, armed with baseball bats and guns, bypass the gate attendant and the security cameras of the parking garage? A handgun can be concealed, but baseball bats?

Any willing suspension of disbelief goes out the window when Starczewski concludes his story. He had a gun. The "lead" guy called off his attackers. Think like the thief for a minute. You are about to rob someone. You find out he has a gun. Are you going to just walk away and give him a chance to shoot you in the back?

Even we assume that this highly dubious story is true, in spite of it incredulity, there is no evidence that Starczewski actually prevented a crime from being committed. Why? Well, for starters, he never reported this incident to the police. Stalking somebody with a deadly weapon is against the law, and by his own admission, Starczewski let them go unharmed. Now, this group of thugs is free to terrorize the next person they say in the parking garage.

The steering-wheel lock, known universally as the "club," is analogous to the aforementioned situation. The club does not reduce aggregate car theft, because a would be thief could simply walk past the "clubbed" car and steal the next one. Or, if the "clubbed" car was new model Mercedes/Audi/BMW, etc, the thief could just cut the club with a hacksaw in about two minutes, or slice right through with an angle grinder in about ten seconds. If a good citizen were to witness the thief and probe his actions, all he would need to do is smile and say, "I forgot my key."

But that's just me talking. What about Lott? For over a decade, Lott insisted that law-abiding gun owners were responsible for "preventing 2 million crimes per year." He said these were FBI statistics. Unfortunately, no one from the FBI has ever validated this claim. Lott now says that the number is somewhere "between 1.5 million and 3.4 million crimes every year."

That's right. 1.5 million to 3.4 million. By his own admission, Lott has a margin of error of 1.9 million crimes. If we hold that margin up to his original calculation of 2 million, we can conclude that Lott's margin of error is 95 percent. If we accept Lott's lower estimate of 1.5 million, we can conclude "more guns" translates into an increase of 400,000 crimes per year.

But hey, those are his numbers. And whatever model he is operating is completely at odds with basic statistical calculation. More guns and less crime? Using Lott's own research, let's consider this myth busted.

Post script: I decided to investigate Lott's claim that England's handgun ban, instituted in 1997, had caused murder rates to "double" by 2003.  So, I checked. England and Wales recorded slightly under 800 murders in 1998, and slightly over 1,000 in 2003. Hardly a double, but an increase, right?However, 176 of those "2003" murderers were due to the conviction of serial killer Harold Shipman, a sick doctor who killed his patients. After his conviction, 176 previous "accidental deaths" were subsequently recorded as homicides. So, in 2003, the murder rate was about the same. Until the next year, and the year after, in which England and Wales recorded progressively lower murder rates, with 2012 being the lowest on record. It took me all of two minutes to this look this up.