Birdman with $101.9 Million Worldwide Might Have Won the Oscar But American Sniper with $541.2 Million Won What Counts -- The Box Office Take!

THE PUBLIC HAS ALREADY VOTED WITH THEIR WALLETS!

Although I truly appreciate the critics picking Birdman as the best movie picture of the year and winners in all the other categories, but in the ONLY category that really counts – MONEY MADE – it appears the American and International movie going public had already made their decisions.  When it comes to picking movies, I normally "trust the mob" so here is how the movie going and paying public ranked this year’s movies as of 19 April 2015.

Worldwide Rank, Movie, Box Office Receipts (Worldwide & Domestic)

1. The Transformers: Age of Extinction -- $1,091M Worldwide - $245.4 Domestic
2. The Hobbit:  The Battle of the Five Armies -- $951.4M Worldwide - $255.1M Domestic
3.  Guardians of the Galaxy -- $772.4M Worldwide - $333.2M Domestic
4.  Meleficent -- $758.4M Worldwide - $241.4 Domestic
5.  Hunger Games: Mockingjay -- $751.4 Worldwide - $336.4M Domestic
6. X-Men:Days of Future Past -- $748.1 Worldwide - $233.9M Domestic
7. Captain America:  The Winter Soldier -- $714.8M Worldwide - $259.8M Domestic
8. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 -- $709.0 Worldwide - $202.9 Domestic
9. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes -- $708.8 Worldwide - $208.5 Domestic
10. Interstellar -- $672.7 Worldwide - $188.0 Domestic
11. Big Hero 6 -- $652.0 Worldwide - $222.4 Domestic
12. How to Train Your Dragon -- $619.0 Worldwide - $177.0 Domestic
13. American Sniper -- $541.2 Worldwide - $347.8M Domestic
14. Godzilla -- $528.9 Worldwide - $200.7M Domestic

Notice NONE of the eight nominated movies is the top money maker of the past year although the Top Earning nominee, American Sniper, was #1 domestically and #13 internationally and has made over $541 Million Worldwide.

Although it is obvious that The Transformers: Age of Extinction with over $1 Billion Worldwide and $245.4 Domestic should be this year's Oscar winner, the winner had to come from the nominees selected by their Hollywood elite peers so here is how “the Domestic mob”  ranked the nominees according to how they spent their money:

1. American Sniper -- $347.8M Domestic - $541.2M Worldwide
2. The Imitation Game -- $91.0M Domestic - $218.9M Worldwide
3. Grand Budapest Hotel -- $59.1M Domestic - $174.6M Worldwide
4. Selma -- $52.1M Domestic - $52.1 Worldwide
5. Birdman -- $42.3M Domestic - $101.9M Worldwide
6. The Theory of Everything -- $35.9M Domestic (#86) - $121.2M Worldwide
7. Boyhood -- $25.4M Domestic - $44.5M Worldwide
8. Whiplash -- $13.1M Domestic - $14.0M Worldwide

No contest ….and the WINNER is, bank statement Please (drum roll), the hands down winner by a country mile is (sorry Michael Moore, Seth Rogen and Birdman):

American Sniper!

Until next year, here’s the Old Colonel wishing you an enjoyable night at the movies!

District of Columbia 2014 Homicide Rate Once Again Tops Maryland’s and Blows Away Virginia’s! - for 2015, DC is on Track for a Record Year.

Each New Years Day I anxiously await the Washington Post article exposing the homicide stats for the District of Columbia, our Nation’s Capital, and the surrounding suburbs so I can confirm how luck I am to live in Virginia where I have the freedom to own a gun for self-protection.  From the stats it is very obvious that homicidal maniacs would much rather commit their crimes in jurisdictions like DC and Maryland that not only don’t have the death penalty but where they have little chance of being confronted by a law abiding citizen who just might have a gun of their own!

This year’s WaPo article: Homicides remain steady in District, Prince George’s ( Link at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/homicides-remain-steady-in-district-prince-georges/2014/12/31/cccb5428-8606-11e4-9534-f79a23c40e6c_story.html ) showed that a DC resident, where firearms are virtually impossible to own, was 16.32 times more likely to be a homicide victim then one of us Gun Tottin Virginians living in the adjacent DC suburbs of
Alexandria City and, Arlington & Fairfax Counties where gun ownership is almost unrestricted.  Even a Marylander living in the adjacent DC suburbs of Prince Georges and Montgomery Counties, with increasingly strict gun laws under former Gov O’Malley, was 4.1 times less likely to be a homicide victim than a DC resident; much better than DC but a Marylander was still almost 4 times more likely to be a homicide victim than one of us Virginia Gun Totters!  Those stats have gotten much worse so far this year according to the WaPo website that tracks DC area homicides.  DC is on track for a record breaking year with 106 homicides so far and as of 5 September 15, a DC resident is now almost 31 times more likely to he a homicide victim than a suburban Virginian while a DC resident is now 5.6 times more likely than a suburban Marylander.  A Marylander is now over 5.5 times more likely to be a homicide victim than a Virginians.

Like in past years, the WaPo curiously makes no attempt to explain the disparity in rates among the various jurisdictions but even a cursory analysis of the stats might reveal a motive for why the Liberal WaPo does no analysis -- could it be because it would clearly demonstrate the dramatically inverse relationship between homicide rates and restrictions on gun ownership. 

For you doubters who might want to run the figures for themselves, here is the detailed math for the 2014 numbers using the latest population estimates from Census Bureau and the Stats in the article:

DC population = 646,449
2014 Homicides = 105
2014 Homicide Rate = 16.268 / 100,000 people.

Maryland DC-suburbs of Montgomery & Prince George’s Counties
Population = 1,906,758 (Montgomery = 1,016,677; PG = 890,081)
2014 Homicides = 76
2014 Homicide Rate = 3.986 / 100,000.

Virginia suburbs of Alexandria City, and Arlington and Fairfax Counties
Population = 1,504,722 (Alexandria = 148,892, Arlington = 224,906, Fairfax = 1,130,924)
2014 Homicides = 15 homicides
2014 Homicide Rate = .997 / 100,000

Comparison of DC to VA suburbs = 16.268/.997 = A DC resident is 16.32 times more likely to be a victim than a Virginian

Comparison of DC to MD suburbs = 16.268/3.986 = A DC Resident is 4.08 times more likely to be a victim than a Marylander

Comparison of MD surburbs to VA suburbs = 3.986/.997 = A Marylander is 3.998 times more likely to be a victim than a Virginian

As of 22 Aug DC has experienced 101 homicides while the Virginia adjacent suburbs have had 8 and the Maryland adjacent suburbs 49.  Plug those numbers into the above equations to get the 2015 stats to date.

Now I’m not opposed to registration and some reasonable limits on ownership such as terrorists, ex-cons and the mentally unstable but there should be no restrictions on ownership by average citizens – anywhere in the US. There is a “God-given” right of self protection, especially in one’s own home, and a gun is the only way to exercise that right. If you don’t believe me, just ask any Bostonian who was directed to “shelter in place” during the Marathon Bomber manhunt or upstate New York resident when Police were hunting the murders who escaped from their Clinton “maximum security prison” how they feel about owning a gun now! . One has to go no further than right here in our own DC-area backyard to clearly demonstrate that contrary to liberal rhetoric, it is an “inconvenient truth” that guns actually do make us safer. Case in point, Virginia has by far the laxest gun laws and the least gun violence of any of the surrounding jurisdictions.  Could it be criminals are not so anxious to attack law-abiding citizens if they might be "packing heat?"

I would add that for those of you that are sincerely worried about the safety of children in homes with guns, I would suggest that your energies would be far more productive in saving children’s lives if you were to crusade against home swimming pools.  In any given year in this country there is one child drowning death for every 11,000 residential swimming pools or 550 children under the age of 10 drown every year in our 6 million pools. Meanwhile there is one child killed by a gun for every one million (plus) guns in this country or with about 300 million guns, approximately 175 children die. This means a child is over 157 times more likely to drown in a pool than be killed by a gun. Hence, banning residential pools is a much more effective way of protecting children than banning fire arms.