Letter to the Brady campaign: "If I choose to protect myself legally and responsibly, I have to go down, fill out paperwork, give a thumb-print and wait ten days to pickup a fire-arm, then I have to keep the fire-arm securely locked up and disabled, and I have to keep the ammunition in a different room, just to be safe, according to the State of California. But my friendly gangster pals just have to go down and pickup up a weapon from what ever source they have, walk into my house and shoot me and my family at leisure ..."


Michigan: Airsoft pistols not considered firearms : "The Washtenaw County Prosecutor's Office will no longer criminally charge anyone caught carrying an airsoft pistol, backing off an earlier edict that deemed the realistic toy guns firearms under state law. The policy change came on the heels of a letter sent by the Michigan Attorney General's Office to a state representative addressing the legality of airsoft guns, which shoot plastic pellets but look like real weapons. Washtenaw County appeared to be one of the only counties where prosecutors believed airsoft guns qualified as firearms. Several other county prosecutors and the Michigan State Police disagreed, saying the plastic pellets they shoot are not a dangerous projectile, as defined by the law."

Would-be judge-shooter gets shot: "A man fatally shot by a Rio Rancho judge was to appear before the judge October 25th to resume his hearing on charges of reckless driving and interference with police. Rio Rancho Department of Public Safety spokesman John Francis says 49-year-old Michael Tinervia of Rio Rancho had appeared before Municipal Judge Calvin Shields during a June trial. Shields ordered Tinervia to attend a pre-sentence screening. Francis says Tinervia attended the screening and was to be sentenced October 25th. Tinervia was killed late Friday night during a shootout with Shields in the judge's back yard in Rio Rancho. The judge's wife, Karen Shields, says the shooting was in self-defense." [The police were a great help, of course -- NOT. An armed wife was in fact what kept the judge safe.]




UNREPENTANT PRIEST

In February 2002, responding to a tip, police in Swinton, England, investigated the home of Father Michael Daggett, an Anglican priest. When they found over 200 rounds of ammunition, they asked him if he had any handgun in his home, and Fr. Daggett told them that, yes, he had a .22. He showed them where he kept it.

He was arrested for violating the 1998 handgun ban, plead guilty, was convicted, and served some time in jail. His bishop, the Bishop of Manchester, had been speaking about gun control at an anti-gun rally only a few days before Fr. Daggett's court hearing, and recommended that Fr. Daggett be defrocked. Apparently the Anglican Church acted on this recommendation, and Mr. Daggett has returned to his prior profession of dealing in antiques.

In an interview with Manchester Online on September 12, 2002 following his release, Mr. Daggett was, in the words of the reporter, "unrepentant" about his right to self-defense. He is quoted in the news report arguing the right to self-defense is necessary to a civilized society, and a civilized society cannot exist if government infantilizes its citizens by depriving them of the right to make moral choices.

"I would claim the gun laws in this country are illegal. Under a 1688 Bill of Rights, which has never been repealed, it says that everyone has the right to possess a weapon for self-defense. ... I am not an advocate of violence but I am an advocate of civilized society. It can only exist when people have the option to make adult choices. It is possible for a gun to be used as a defensive weapon."

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